So I don't know if you have these commercials where you live, but we have ones where a bunch of different kids are looking out of the TV telling me as a parent to talk to my kids about sex. Now, being as I got pregnant very young and that my "sex education" came from books (one that my mom gave me when I was ten that explained mechanically what would happen combined with harlequin romance novels I started reading around twelve that glamorized what it would be like physically) I knew that I wanted to have open honest communication with my kids about sex as soon as they needed/wanted to know about it.
Now Jeremiah was sitting in the living room a week or so ago and that commercial came on the TV again. Jeremiah turned and looked at me and goes, "yeah mom, lets talk about sex!!"
DAMN!
"uh, okay, what do you want to know?" I wasn't sure what if anything he already knew. "I don't know!" he giggled and then kind of went back to what he was doing. Bullet Dodged! Right?
Okay, I think when the kids were younger we had a conversation about eggs and sperm. I'm fairly certain we hadn't discussed how the egg and sperm actually meet up and party together. I decided that I wanted to have a more in depth conversation with them but wanted some back-up. After some hard core googling I came across this book http://www.robieharris.com/work_book-amazing.html and decided that it was going to be an excellent tool to help me talk with the kids. So I went and bought the book, we looked at the pictures of the boys private parts and girls private parts both internal and external and we looked at the differences. We talked about puberty and the path of the egg and the path of the sperm.
Jeremiah freaked out a bit when he saw a cartoon drawing of the male ejaculation but settled a bit when I explained again, that nothing like that could or would happen until he went through puberty. He seemed to find it comforting to start naming all the men he knew that, based on that information, could have an ejaculation. Daddy? yep. Grandpa? yep. Pop-Pop? yep. him too. I tried to not actually think about the fact that my father and father-in-law could also ejaculate...really...but I kept a straight face and answered his inquiries with the appropriate level of seriousness. After that we got to chapter 9. What is sex?
I like this chapter because it started out with encouraging kids to look at their birth certificates and they'll see the word sex right there. I showed them my driver's license and where it says sex on there. They thought it was interesting that sex had more than one meaning and even made me laugh when they saw the cartoon of a couple engaged in sex they were like oh, that's sex? you and daddy do that!
(um, remind me to analyze that later)
Granted, it was just two people no clothes showing, Dad facing down on mom with a blanket covering them up to their shoulders so it wasn't really graphic or anything at all...trust me, I'm not trying to traumatize them or anything!
Now, that is about halfway through the book and we decided to stop there for the day. The rest of the book has chapters on love, different kinds of families, how a baby grows from an egg into a baby and even shows birth and c-sections. (the whole book is drawn by a cartoonist that makes a good mix of realistic but not freaky like a photo might be to a kid).
Later in the evening, after dinner, Jeremiah is flipping through the rest of the book, I'm reading the catcher in the rye and Cody is reading to Gage. We're all kind of hanging out, winding down for the kids bedtime and then it happens. Jeremiah walks over, holding the book open to the page that illustrates how the baby is born and he climbs up on the chair next to me and points at my crotch.
Miah: Is that where Gage came out?
Me: yeah
Miah: (looking thoughtful for a minute)
Me: why? Where did you think he came out?
Miah: (points at my butt)
Me: you thought I pooped him out!?
Miah: (just giggles and giggles)
Me: Do you understand better now?
Miah: yeah
So, apparently my work is done here for the moment...my son at least knows he didn't come into life from his mother's Bowell's
I am pretty excited that you are blogging again. It seemed to me as you had dropped off a bit for a while there.
ReplyDeleteThis is a conversation I do not look forwad to if I have kids...
it is quite funny though!