Clari’s Whims

If you were me as a kid, you’d get some kind of mixed idea that babies were brought by storks, but for months prior you could feel said baby kicking inside mommy’s “tummy” and that if a boy kissed you, you would have a baby and it came out the same way you pooped (sometimes I mistook that for having a baby and had to carefully check the toilet to be sure I didn’t accidentally drown my newborn)

I have been thinking about and talking about sex education for children. What do you tell them? How early do you start? And I have seen the dangers of misinformation or lack of information firsthand (see above) as well as second hand. (I am currently babysitting for an overprotective mother, who I am quite sure does not talk to her children about sex, as she doesn’t allow them to watch Hannah Montana because of the “kissy boy scenes” being “too much” for her six-year-old to handle.) My cousin is in a college course that has her thinking about and studying the same issues, and we have been talking back and forth about it non stop since we shared our embarrassing “first time I got my period and couldn’t tell my mom because we didn’t talk about ‘that kind of stuff’” stories.

We both realized that had our mothers talked to us a little bit beforehand to prepare us, and been open enough that we felt comfortable going to them, it would have made the whole thing a lot easier and a whole lot less awkward.

Then tonight when I was babysitting I spotted a book on the counter. It caught my eye because it was laying out and it had the word “sex” in the title. My poor Catholic-raised brain still jumped at the thought of “sex” in a house with children. (afterall the two are almost never associated with one another…well except for that first time) It was a book about talking to children as young as toddlers about sex and the body. The woman who wrote it has been running body science classes for children and in it she shares ideas and stories about kids she’s worked with and stories she’s heard. It was amazing. I read almost the entire thing waiting for the parents to get home, then talked to the mom for a good twenty minutes after she’d paid me.

The one major intrigue was the section about toddlers. How do you explain all of that to a toddler? I was surprised to read that you can simply answer their questions and you most likely don’t have to elaborate. You can tell a toddler “that is your penis,” and the kid will most likely be like “okay. What’s for dinner?” What was also interesting was reading about what happens if you don’t inform kids. If a child asks, “what is this?” or “why does this do this?” and you ignore it or gloss over it, the child will make up their own answers. The chapter was called “Preschoolers, the magic thinkers” or something like that, because they will invent their own stories to explain things.

I definitely experienced this one secondhand when the other day, three-year-old sheltered as all get out Claire informed me that her dad is afraid of the bathtub. This of course struck me as odd, so I asked her why she thought that. She explained that daddy never takes baths with her or her sister, but mommy does. So logically, to her three-year-old brain, daddy must be afraid of the bathtub. That’s why he doesn’t get in it.

I would be willing to bet that if, rather than avoid the inevitable, those sheltering parents explained to Claire that boys and girls have different body parts, and sometimes are not comfortable sharing them, Claire would accept that as fact and move on. It would not mean that they would have to explain penises and adult bodies to her…all she needs to know is that boys and girls are different and sometimes require privacy. Instead, Claire is going to pick up on that later, and when she finally realizes that they are different, the exact differences will be a big secret until she learns in school or from peers. By then, she will know that Mommy and Daddy never told her about such things, so they must not be something she ever talks about with them. And if she doesn’t talk about boy parts that she doesn’t even have, she definitely won’t talk about the girl parts that she does.

That’s how both of my parents were with me and my siblings. I don’t remember exactly where or how, but I know that I knew very strongly as a child that I did not talk to either parent about anything “like that.” Since they were uncomfortable and fairly immature about the body, sex, and puberty, so was I. I remember my dad snickering when he saw me grab a training bra out of the laundry, and I remember hiding my period from my mother for two horrible months because I was so embarrassed by it.

I never want my children to feel afraid, embarrassed, or like they can’t come to me for help. If everyone goes through all of these things, there is absolutely no reason to make a child feel like they are alone and the only one. I want my children to know what is going to go on with their bodies, and know that it is normal and okay to talk about with me or their father. Thankfully, Glenn has already told me that he thinks talking to our kids is important, without any prompting from me.

I highly recommend the book I read. It is called “Speaking of Sex” and is by Meg Hickling