Vol. 74 - The Talk
On answering one of parenting's toughest questions
To quote Ferris Bueller: “Life moves pretty fast.”
Three weeks. That’s all the time it took for our son to come home from kindergarten and ask us how babies are made. Three weeks. I’m not sure what they’re talking about out there on the playground, what they know or don’t know or pretend to know, or what they’re making up.
But it only took three weeks.
We were en route to Washington DC to visit Emily’s sister and her family when, out of the blue, he popped it on us.
“How are babies made?” he said, staring out of his window and onto I-95.
Everything about his question, the exact words, the pacing, the tone that every story lampooning parenthood describes, even the way he said it, was note perfect.
Emily and I took a pause and stared at each other, each wondering without words how we were going to handle this.
We’ve never condescended to our son. At least, we’ve tried our best to not. In our home, discussions of about heavy topics—though framed in a way a small child can possibly understand them—are always very frank. We discuss death and emotions, consequences and feelings all in very real and, as many might describe, very adult terms. And one arena in which we aim to treat our son like the intelligent little human he is is by not using silly nicknames for standard body parts and practices.
Weewee or any other ridiculous term has never stood in for “penis.” Nor does he use the potty. Et cetera et cetera and so on and so on.
Now that our daughter is beginning to get a firm grasp on language, we’ll approach these things in the exact same way.
(Though, it will be hard to overcome her calling her poop “beepbeeps,” because it’s one of the cutest things I’ve ever heard.)
To quote the teacher-striper from Varsity Blues: “Penis Penis Penis. Vagina. Vagina. Vagina.”
Say it. It’s not weird. It shouldn’t be weird. Why, beyond the fact that Americans skew far too puritanical, should the word “penis” be any different than the word “elbow”? They’re both body parts with body functions. And the last thing I want to do is raise kids who are anything but fully comfortable with the way their bodies look and perform. And, though I’m anything but a child psycholgist, I believe that much of that discomfort starts early, via our fear of discussing these things at home in real terms.
Of course, the entire idea of having frank and honest discussions with our son about his body was thrown into the blender when he hit us with the baby question.
What do we do? our eyes said to each other.
You want this one?
Nope. You?
Nope.
Slowly, each of us began to stutter out an explanation of sex for our five-year-old. We explained it as best we could, each cutting the other off to offer a better understanding, using some analogies, some illustratives. There was no mention of two people loving each other, because that’s rarely true, and we also clarified that sex doesn’t only happen in order to have a baby. In fact, it rarely does.
We left it there, stopping right before we broached the topics of mechanics; of how it all works. After all, he’s only five.
He paused for a moment, trying to digest everything we just told laid on him, before responding.
“That’s confusing,” he said.
Buddy, you’re telling me.