If there’s one thing that comes with the territory of being a parent, it’s lack of privacy – and sometimes that means your child walking in on intimate moments.

It’s nothing new. Parents have been experiencing this intrusion since time began (spare a thought for the 69 dad!). But whereas once kids might’ve been hurried back to their rooms, never to discuss what happened again, these days some parents are being more open with their children about what they’ve just witnessed.

But how open should you be exactly?

I asked former sex education teacher Kathleen Hema to walk me through how’s best to respond when a kid walks in on you having sex – and the key takeaway is, it doesn’t have to be a big a deal as you think.

Hema, who can often be found on social media teaching parents how to answer their kid’s sex questions, told HuffPost UK it’s important for parents to teach basic boundary setting early on in a child’s life.

This is because “when parents are setting and maintaining boundaries from an early age with their kid, it’s going to be so much easier to respond to a child walking in on you”.

Boundary setting can include teaching kids to knock on your bedroom door before entering (same goes for the bathroom) – and equally, you can reciprocate by knocking on their bedroom door.

This means that when a young child walks in and you’re in the middle of business, you could say: “Are you OK?” and the child might respond with “yeah” or “I thought I heard something”.

At this point, you can say: “OK. I didn’t hear you knock. It’s respectful to knock before entering someone’s room. Since you are OK, can we practice knocking? Can you go back out and shut the door and knock?”

This simple response gives parents a moment to gather themselves and put their clothes on, Hema suggested.

“When you go to the door and open it, you must praise them for knocking and then you can ask them a question,” she added.

You could say something like, “Great job knocking! I really appreciate you knocking when the door is closed. What’s up? I wanna help you. What do you need?”

She continued: “This type of response is positive and immediately focuses the conversation back to why they came into the room in the first place. For many young kids, that’s enough! They tell you they need a drink of water and you assist them with that request and walk them back to bed.

“Oftentimes with young kids, they don’t have any questions because they may not have really seen anything.”

Sometimes, with primary school-age children (aged five and up), a bit more explaining might be needed as a child might ask their parent “was [name] hurting you?”.

Hema said this is a common question from a young child when this situation happens and said parents can respond by saying: “Nope. [Name] wasn’t hurting me. I am OK. When adults are alone, we sometimes do adult activities and it may have looked uncomfortable to you, but I will reassure you that I am OK.”

You can then redirect them with another question: “Do you need anything else before going back to bed?”

You don’t even have to call it sex. In fact, Hema said she recommends for parents to say “adult activities” because kids understand this.

“There are loads of things that kids observe as ‘adult stuff’. For example, drinking coffee or alcohol, driving, going to work. This is just another thing they can tack on to this list,” she said.

If your child does have questions, the crucial thing is that you stay calm and relaxed while you have these conversations. Parent Map advises using “factual, plain language” and answering any questions a child asks “without supplying additional information or answering questions the child isn’t asking”.

And maybe a trip to B&Q for a bedroom lock could be a wise move afterwards, too.

Raising teens can be a bit of a minefield – where once your sweet, adoring child worshipped the ground you walked on, all of a sudden they simply don’t want to know.

You might be facing more arguments, major mood and sleep changes, as well as having to become a full-time translator while your kid keeps calling everyone “chat”.

But there is one innocent mistake parents might be making in the teenage years, according to a child psychiatrist – especially if you want them to be able to open up to you.

Child psychiatrist Dr Willough Jenkins said in a TikTok video that it “might sting a little” for parents to hear, but she wants everyone to know: “If you’re doing most of the talking, you’re probably not having a conversation with your teen… that’s called a lecture.

“You want them talking more than you. That’s how you learn what they’re really thinking, and how they learn that you’re really listening.”

Her advice to facilitate more conversations with teens is simple: “Start with a question. Then pause. And really listen.”

In a separate video, the psychiatrist said one of the things that makes a successful parent is “listening more than lecturing”.

She also suggested “staying calm when things go wrong”, “repairing after you mess up” and “setting boundaries with love, not fear” are “what real success looks like”.

Therapists previously told HuffPost UK that creating a space that feels emotionally safe and low-pressured is important to help teens open up – especially if you think they might be struggling mentally.

Make conversation by asking open-ended and emotionally neutral questions and statements. You could say something like: “How’s everything going lately?” or “How are things feeling for you at school/with friends/life right now?”.

BACP-accredited therapist Lauren Young also suggested resisting the urge to fix everything for teens and instead, validating their feelings and thanking them for trusting you if they come to you with a problem.

All of this can help teenagers know that you’re there for them. As BACP-accredited member and psychotherapist Debbie Keenan told us: “Sometimes, the goal isn’t to get your teen to ‘open up’ immediately, but to remind them that they’re not alone, that emotions are valid, and that you’re a reliable presence in their life.

“Trust is built in the quiet, everyday moments, often more than in the big talks.”

A mum revealed how a simple TikTok hack helped her track down her three-year-old when she went missing in a large play area.

Krista (@krista.piper) said she’d managed to go seven years without losing one of her children – but when it did eventually happen in a very public place, she remembered to “look loudly”.

In a matter of minutes her daughter Lily was found safe and sound.

“Another mum actually found her for me and found her way faster than if I had done what I normally would have done,” said the wedding photographer in an emotional TikTok video recalling the gut-wrenching moment she lost sight of her child.

It’s a method where a parent shouts a description of what their child looks like and is wearing, rather than their name.

So, for example: little boy, bright green t-shirt, blue shorts, age seven, black hair.

The idea is that rather than relying on a young child to respond to their name, you’re putting dozens, if not hundreds, of people on high alert to find the child.

Krista, who has two children, recalled: “I started calling her name. Right after I started calling her name, a little lightbulb went off in my head and I remembered a TikTok I had seen probably over a year ago.”

The video, she said, was of a mum who had lost her child in a supermarket and instead of shouting her child’s name, she shouted the description of what her child was wearing.

“So that is what I did,” said the mum-of-two. “I stopped calling out her name and I started yelling: little girl, pink shirt, pink Minnie Mouse shirt … I’m sure people thought I was a little crazy.”

She started to hear other mums repeating it, and within a couple of minutes another parent said she’d spotted a girl fitting that description, and she was reunited with her daughter.

“It got the job done really fast,” she added.

Some people commented on the post to say they know of parents who’ve used the tip and successfully found lost kids.

“This happened at the pumpkin patch last year,” wrote one person in the comments. “Hundreds of people and a mum was screaming about a girl with a blue bow and found her fast.”

Another said: “I heard a mum doing that one day at a park. Kid was fine and was playing but people pointed her out quickly.”

One parent said hearing a description of a child would definitely spur them into action, more so than hearing a name being yelled: “As a mum, if I hear someone yelling a name [I] probably don’t think much of it, but yelling a description is like a call to action to mums!”

Children’s author and mum-of-three Jess Martini has been incredibly vocal about the technique on TikTok.

In some of her previous videos on “looking loudly”, which have millions of views, the author also advised parents to dress their kids in bright colours when going to busy, public places and also to take a photo of their child before going out.

For reasons we don’t fully understand yet, most people with dementia (about 65%) are women.

That might be because women live longer than men – old age is the number one risk factor for dementia. Some think that hormonal changes, including menopause, as well as differences in known risk factors, such as spending fewer years in education compared to men, might contribute to the discrepancy, too.

And now, a paper from the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University has suggested that some common verbal tests used to help diagnose dementia could be leaving women undiagnosed for 2.7 years longer.

Verbal memory tests such as the Rey’s Auditory Learning Test (RAVLT), which tests how well people remember lists of words in both immediate and delayed settings, are “widely used in Alzheimer’s disease assessments”, the paper said.

But the researchers think women, on average, have better verbal memory. Their study suggests that women keep that “advantage”, even when their brains are facing as many Alzheimer’s-related brain changes as men.

So, the study authors wanted to see whether “this form of cognitive reserve masks symptoms and delays diagnosis in females”.

They found that compared to men whose brains appeared to be in the same stage of dementia development, women kept healthy verbal memory for about 2.7 years longer.

That might leave them undiagnosed for longer. “This masked period represents a window for earlier detection and timely intervention before irreversible neurodegeneration,” the authors wrote.

After that 2.7-year point, the cognitive abilities of women with dementia-related brain changes seemed to decline 25-50% faster than men’s.

Typically, the study suggested, this is when tests begin to pick up the condition among women.

On their site, Alzheimer’s Society said that “the vast majority of experiments and clinical trials carried out by dementia researchers have not been designed to see differences between male and female participants”.

But we know that women have both different possible risk factors (including hypertensive pregnancy disorders) and symptoms (women with dementia are more likely to report anxiety and depression).

The charity added that this means we still have a “poor understanding of how diseases causing dementia might work differently in females,” and that it might take us a while to catch up.

Tom Holland is getting candid about the unglamorous truths of playing Spider-Man.

In the run-up to the latest film’s release, the stars of the billion-dollar-making Spider-Man: Brand New Day sat down with IMDb to answer burning questions about the film.

Asked about the reality of wearing that Spidey suit for 12 hours a day, Tom happily confessed: “The worst thing is definitely the smell.”

“You know, like, I’m not going to shy away from it,” he laughed. “You spend 12 hours in that thing in a deep lunge, jumping up and down all day.”

He went on to praise the movie’s costume department, and revealed he had sat down with them and Brand New Day’s director, Destin Daniel Cretton, to speak about all the things they loved about previous Spider-Man suits.

“We did a really interesting exercise when we were in pre-production, where I tried on Tobey [Maguire]’s suit, I tried on Andrew [Garfield]’s suit, and I tried on my original suits,” Tom explained.

Tom added that the new Spidey suit took inspiration from both of his predecessors Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s outfits, which makes sense, since his Peter Parker crossed paths with them in the previous Spider-Man film No Way Home.

“The idea behind the design of the suit was to try and make an homage to the things we loved about those original costumes,” he noted.

Elsewhere in the interview, Tom claimed that the two actors who had previously played the superhero had a much easier time of it thanks to the logistics of their costumes.

“They had zips in different places. They could use the bathroom. They could take their mask off by themselves. Take their gloves off. They could take their gloves off,” he told IMDB, but hilariously added: “You are still in a onesie.”

So, did Tom get any upgrades to his suit, considering this was his fourth film and he’s now one of Marvel’s hottest properties?

“It was the first time I could comfortably go to the bathroom,” he replied.

Brand New Day is also the first movie in the franchise where he could comfortably take his mask off and drink.

“And it also made working with Destin a lot easier because, you know, it is weird when you’re talking to someone with a mask on, and you’re trying to have, like, a human conversation,” he explained.

While amendments were made to Tom’s Spider-Man suit to help give the actor more “freedom”, the filmmaker discovered there were lots of other benefits.

“They had designed these new lenses, and in certain light, the camera looks straight through those lenses, and you can see my eyes underneath the mask,” Tom explained, revealing that he believes this “humanises” the iconic superhero.

Anyone who has seen the film will know that the new suit moves and wrinkles as the actor talks and does his superhero business.

“I love the imperfections of the suit,” Zendaya added.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is in cinemas now.