The phrase "having sex with" seems to have sudden entered my sons' lexicon and, therefore, my daughter's. As I sat my bleariness down for a bagel and some caffeine Sunday morning, the five-year old girl came in to the kitchen to announce that her brothers were having sex in the living room. "We're not having sex!" they screamed back.
As I got up and peeked around the corner to make sure no actual sexual congress was taking place, I called out a general question to the troops. "Do you know what that means, 'having sex'?" The boys, who were in fact wrestling on the floor, left off trying to strangle each other long enough to answer in the affirmative. The girl followed me back to the kitchen table and stared at me. She shook her head.
"Okay, you remember about the mommy eggs and the daddy seeds, right?" Vigorous nod. "Well, the daddy puts the seeds inside the mommy so they can find the eggs and make a baby." Less vigorous nod. "To do that the man puts his penis inside the lady's vagina." Uh-oh. "That's just for grown-ups. But that's what people mean when they say 'have sex with.' Any questions?"
My middle child called out from the living room, "Mommy, did you just have The Talk with Mouse?"
Showing posts with label Examples. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Examples. Show all posts
Monday, May 19, 2008
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Innocence
Whether you're controlling your kids' environment carefully or taking a laisser-faire approach to their social and cultural formation, sooner or later they're going to be exposed to influences you didn't choose for them. This can range from exposure to language or images to the most shocking betrayals of trust.
I was lucky. While I was exposed too early to pornography (my father didn't realize he needed to put the girlie mags on a higher shelf until he found me gazing at them in wonder one Saturday morning when I was four or so, nor did he realize that the higher shelf would cease to constitute much of a hiding place once I was nine), porn was not my primary source of information about human sexual behavior. My mother gave me a lovely book and a lecture when she announced that I would have a little sister (also when I was about four), and whenever I had a question she had an answer (except when I asked her, "So tell me more about this period thing" when I was six and we were waiting in line at the Jack-In-The-Box, at which point she suggested that polite people discussed these matters in private and that not everyone wanted to hear about personal bodily functions while waiting for lunch to be served). They allowed me to read anything I wanted, even when I was reading novels like Airport and The Bastard at 10, but they restricted my movie and TV viewing until I was 15. I got loads of inappropriate information and ideas, but my parents made their feelings clear about what I was seeing and hearing, and they didn't predicate their expectations for my behavior on what they were letting me read or see.
And me? Well, my oldest came home at the age of seven asking to know what a "dirty ho" was, and the conversation went something like this:
Me: Okay, this is going to take a minute to explain.
Boy: (stares)
Me: First of all, a hoe with an e at the end is an instrument for breaking soil. But a ho without an e is another way of saying whore. A whore is a prostitute. Do you know what that is?
Boy: No.
Me: Well, when God made mating for animals and people he made it feel good so people would do it and make babies and forget about how hard it is to take care of babies and how much having babies hurts. A person who gets paid to mate with, have sex with, someone else is called a prostitute.
Boy: Okay.
Me: And dirty would be like yucky.
Boy: Yeah.
Me: So it's not a nice thing to call someone and I don't want to hear you talking like that.
It would be very easy to talk about preserving children's innocence if this were the toughest thing a parent might encounter. Unfortunately, this is the easy stuff. What's hard is when a child is exposed to sexual situations and behavior before he or she has the tools to understand them. What does a parent do with that?
I was lucky. While I was exposed too early to pornography (my father didn't realize he needed to put the girlie mags on a higher shelf until he found me gazing at them in wonder one Saturday morning when I was four or so, nor did he realize that the higher shelf would cease to constitute much of a hiding place once I was nine), porn was not my primary source of information about human sexual behavior. My mother gave me a lovely book and a lecture when she announced that I would have a little sister (also when I was about four), and whenever I had a question she had an answer (except when I asked her, "So tell me more about this period thing" when I was six and we were waiting in line at the Jack-In-The-Box, at which point she suggested that polite people discussed these matters in private and that not everyone wanted to hear about personal bodily functions while waiting for lunch to be served). They allowed me to read anything I wanted, even when I was reading novels like Airport and The Bastard at 10, but they restricted my movie and TV viewing until I was 15. I got loads of inappropriate information and ideas, but my parents made their feelings clear about what I was seeing and hearing, and they didn't predicate their expectations for my behavior on what they were letting me read or see.
And me? Well, my oldest came home at the age of seven asking to know what a "dirty ho" was, and the conversation went something like this:
Me: Okay, this is going to take a minute to explain.
Boy: (stares)
Me: First of all, a hoe with an e at the end is an instrument for breaking soil. But a ho without an e is another way of saying whore. A whore is a prostitute. Do you know what that is?
Boy: No.
Me: Well, when God made mating for animals and people he made it feel good so people would do it and make babies and forget about how hard it is to take care of babies and how much having babies hurts. A person who gets paid to mate with, have sex with, someone else is called a prostitute.
Boy: Okay.
Me: And dirty would be like yucky.
Boy: Yeah.
Me: So it's not a nice thing to call someone and I don't want to hear you talking like that.
It would be very easy to talk about preserving children's innocence if this were the toughest thing a parent might encounter. Unfortunately, this is the easy stuff. What's hard is when a child is exposed to sexual situations and behavior before he or she has the tools to understand them. What does a parent do with that?
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Bible Stories
One of my favorite bloggers (or "imaginary friends," as Mr Y likes to call them) wrote about her daughter overhearing the portion from the Torah where Jacob first kisses Rachel and asking why they were smooching when they weren't married and hadn't even been introduced. This pales in comparison to Sodom and Gomorrah and Lot's daughters in terms of Bible stories that are difficult to explain to kids, sure, but it poses a lot of the same problems. I mean, they're in the Bible, for cryin' out loud - you're not supposed to have to worry about what your kids see in the Bible! But they're not setting an example you want your kids to follow, and they're doing things that seem pretty hard to explain without putting unwelcome ideas in your kids' heads.
Whether you're parsing the week's parsha or confronted with realities in your day-to-day life, there are two kinds of questions that inevitably arise in discussing these situations with kids. Questions of definition ("what is that?" or "what does that mean?") call for minimalistic answers couched in age-appropriate language.
Kid: "What were they doing in Sodom and Gommorah that made God so angry?"
Parent: "They were doing things with their bodies that God told them they weren't supposed to do."
Kid: "Like what?"
I might tell my five-year-old that they were looking at and touching each other's 'privacy' (her word for all the body parts we're not supposed to go around showing people) when they weren't supposed to. I would tell my 10 year-old (who knows that "mating" produces offspring and that most adults think it feels good) that they were spending too much time playing with their mating parts and not enough time doing the stuff they were supposed to be doing. When one of them eventually busts out with "what is sodomy?" I will start with "things some grown-ups do with their mating parts that God told them not to do" and get more specific depending on circumstances.
In some ways, it's harder to explain what a biblical hero is doing breaking the rules about kissing strange girls than it is to answer any "what is that?" type of question. Every "what" question has a straightforward, dictionary-style answer. "Why" is a lot more treacherous, and not just in the realm of the birds and bees. Why does Jacob do something he knows he's not supposed to do? For that matter, why does Aunt So-and-so have a baby when she's not married? Why doesn't Grandpa live with Grandma anymore? Why did Uncle Whatsit hit Cousin Whosit?
1. Don't deny the obvious. Jacob wanted to kiss Rachel. Uncle Whatsit got mad and lost his temper. Aunt So-and-so made a baby with someone. Grandma decided she wanted to live alone, or Grandpa decided he wanted to live with Miss Judy.
2. Judge the choice, not the people. Acknowledge that you can love someone and still be angry at him or disappointed in her.
- "It's bad to go around hitting people, no matter how mad you are."
- "You're not supposed to make babies unless you're married."
- "Once you get married, you can't quit just because you're bored or you meet someone you like better."
- "But we love (whoever) and (s/he) is still our (whatever)."
(Don't get me wrong. "I don't know" is a perfectly valid answer in some circumstances, as is "I can tell you about it someday when you're older." Just bear in mind that there are few better opportunities to articulate your beliefs in a way that's relevant to your kids than answering their questions about what you think. If they hear non-answers to awkward questions too often when they're little, they'll be far less likely to bring you their questions and concerns when adolescence strikes.
Whether you're parsing the week's parsha or confronted with realities in your day-to-day life, there are two kinds of questions that inevitably arise in discussing these situations with kids. Questions of definition ("what is that?" or "what does that mean?") call for minimalistic answers couched in age-appropriate language.
Kid: "What were they doing in Sodom and Gommorah that made God so angry?"
Parent: "They were doing things with their bodies that God told them they weren't supposed to do."
Kid: "Like what?"
I might tell my five-year-old that they were looking at and touching each other's 'privacy' (her word for all the body parts we're not supposed to go around showing people) when they weren't supposed to. I would tell my 10 year-old (who knows that "mating" produces offspring and that most adults think it feels good) that they were spending too much time playing with their mating parts and not enough time doing the stuff they were supposed to be doing. When one of them eventually busts out with "what is sodomy?" I will start with "things some grown-ups do with their mating parts that God told them not to do" and get more specific depending on circumstances.
In some ways, it's harder to explain what a biblical hero is doing breaking the rules about kissing strange girls than it is to answer any "what is that?" type of question. Every "what" question has a straightforward, dictionary-style answer. "Why" is a lot more treacherous, and not just in the realm of the birds and bees. Why does Jacob do something he knows he's not supposed to do? For that matter, why does Aunt So-and-so have a baby when she's not married? Why doesn't Grandpa live with Grandma anymore? Why did Uncle Whatsit hit Cousin Whosit?
1. Don't deny the obvious. Jacob wanted to kiss Rachel. Uncle Whatsit got mad and lost his temper. Aunt So-and-so made a baby with someone. Grandma decided she wanted to live alone, or Grandpa decided he wanted to live with Miss Judy.
2. Judge the choice, not the people. Acknowledge that you can love someone and still be angry at him or disappointed in her.
- "It's bad to go around hitting people, no matter how mad you are."
- "You're not supposed to make babies unless you're married."
- "Once you get married, you can't quit just because you're bored or you meet someone you like better."
- "But we love (whoever) and (s/he) is still our (whatever)."
(Don't get me wrong. "I don't know" is a perfectly valid answer in some circumstances, as is "I can tell you about it someday when you're older." Just bear in mind that there are few better opportunities to articulate your beliefs in a way that's relevant to your kids than answering their questions about what you think. If they hear non-answers to awkward questions too often when they're little, they'll be far less likely to bring you their questions and concerns when adolescence strikes.
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