Jonah is about to turn eleven in a few weeks and we decided that it was time for Jonah to get the "where babies come from" chat. He knows all about puberty and how his body is going to change soon. We're kinda of a hippie family, so he isn't at all self-conscious about his body. A few weeks ago, he dropped his pants and proudly pointed out a hair that was growing down there. Awesome, kid.
While he is very comfortable about his body changing, we haven't had any talks beyond that. A few years ago, I got some children books from the library with cartoony pictures about sex. I put them on the coffee table and told Jonah that he could look at them whenever he wanted. For a week, he made avoided that coffee table like it was radioactive. I returned the books unopened.
The subtle approach wasn't going to work. We were going to have to be more direct; otherwise, he was going to get some garbled message from the playground. I didn't want him to end up like me — the only one in sixth grade who didn't understand the underlying meaning behind the baseball scene in "Paradise By the Dashboard Lights". After some debate about whether we should do this together or not, Steve decided that he should have the man-talk on the way back from a soccer game this weekend.
Poor kid. He was blind-sided, horrified, disgusted. We had assumed that he had some clue about these matters. A couple of friends have older siblings and watch late night TV. But, apparently, the boys don't do much talking on the playground beyond fart jokes.
I love my sweet, clueless boy.
Apt. 11d 
They make fart jokes, but they don’t talk about naked women, or look at Playboy centerfolds, or whatever? That is very different from my boyhood.
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One of my kids’ favorite scenes in the BBC’s Blue Planet series is the one where the coral are all spewing forth eggs and sperm into the ocean, in the hope that they will find each other and create new coral reefs. The underwater photography is really beautiful. Anyway, my 7-year-old daughter says about that scene, “It’s like a fairy tale!”
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I was in 1st grade when a classmate told me what sex was.* I assume he heard it from an older cousin. I think the school gave us our first health education by fourth grade.
But, I cannot recall that anybody brought in a centerfold until junior high or so.
*This same kid still believed in Santa Claus in 3rd grade.
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There was no puberty night at J’s school? Soph had one, but she didn’t want to go, so she got all the details from her friend. I had already talked to her about getting her period because she’s almost 11. But apparently she found out that sex means penises and vaginas. Ew, was her response.
On the other hand, we finally watched last week’s 10 Things I Hate About You, and whoa, there was almost-sex. But she was busy doing some homework and barely paying attention.
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I think all such talks should try their best to be like the one in _Singles_. Maybe watching some nature movies would help.
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We started fielding those questions about where babies came from when eldest was seven. After my poor husband had to field more from the girls when I was out teaching one evening, I made sure that we went over most everything in great detail (and left a few books on reproduction available for them to browse through, which they did). I’m impressed Jonah made it so far without getting “spoiled” by his peers, though.
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What about a set of these dolls? You’ll still have to do a bit about how the baby got there, but maybe they come with instructions:
http://www.amamantafamily.com/detailed_anatomically_correct_dolls.htm
(The doll does make it look a bit like women only gain pubic hair when they are just about to give birth, but maybe that’s the style these days anyway.)
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Okay, I just quizzed the teenage boy about when he found out about sex. We talked about it a lot. And even just now, I reminded him about condom use. We’re kind of lighthearted yet serious about the whole thing. I think there are a lot of horror stories out there about kids having sex or participating in sexual activities at a very young age. And I’m sure that there are plenty of kids doing those things, but not all, maybe not even the majority.
Thanks for the prompt to reiterate our lessons around here. 🙂
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“Okay, I just quizzed the teenage boy about when he found out about sex. ”
So what was the answer?
We’ve discussed “where babies come from” with my daughter, but not sex. In fact, the book that she read was so broad in its description of where babies came from (in vitro fertilization, donor insemination, . . . ) that she has a skewed understanding of where sperm usually comes from and how it gets where it’s supposed to (petri dishes & the like seem to get equal weight).
The puberty discussion is slotted for this summer, along with some talk about sex, but we’ll let her drive that one.
We’ve already had the discussions about sexual harassment, inappropriate touching, and that girls shouldn’t do anything they don’t want to do.
She’s 9. I think it’s adorable that you have your child-boy, still. Some of the boys in my daughter’s class are troublesomely precocious (though we think it’s older brothers causing the early induction).
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Oh, the answer was 8th grade, though he had some inkling by 5th grade. We had talked to him in 5th grade. I think it just went in one ear and out the other. And he did say that by 8th grade, some boys were talking about it.
Neither kid really likes to discuss it, but we try to make it fun/funny.
During my son’s 8th grade sex ed class, where they watched films of sexually transmitted disease, he said he didn’t understand why anyone had sex if that was the risk. We told him to hold onto that idea. 🙂
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I played “show me yours and I’ll show you mine” with a girl in first grade. She was a year older. I was dumbfounded about the differences.
In third grade I was playing doctor with a fourth grade girl. Trying to get nekkid. Didn’t have a goal in mind though.
By fourth grade, an older friend had told me how sex worked, and I had gotten my hands on a few Playboy magazines. I shared my knowledge with a few slower friends.
In eighth grade, I was walking up the driveway with my very first “girlfriend” and my dad drove up, rolled down his window and said, “you know how babies are made, don’t you?” I said, “Yes,” and he said, “well don’t do it!”
So that was the birds and bees talk, which was more than a few of my friends got from their parents.
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Laura — that’s so comforting to hear. I hope mine will remain similarly innocent until their brains can handle the stress of relationships. It’s particularly nice to hear because of the constant bombardment that children become prematurely old these days.
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I hope mine will remain similarly innocent until their brains can handle the stress of relationships.
When does the brain become able to handle that stress? Maybe it is a gender-linked trait.
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When does the brain become able to handle that stress?
Menopause.
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Great post and fun comment thread. I think that it’s great that your 11 year old is still pretty clueless. I’ve been worrying about this whole question for a long time now. My oldest was never curious about it, it was the youngest who before he was 5 asked how the baby got in the mommy’s belly (I didn’t really answer in detail). Last summer I had a gentle talk with my oldest (7.5 at the time) about the subject, just a light introduction. I’ll wait to talk to him again when he asks more questions as he grows and develops.
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Huh. We showed my kids one of the “It’s so Amazing” books last summer, but I think we first explained penis-vagina in about first grade. And yes, they still believed in Santa at that point. I guess I don’t see where “understanding how sexual reproduction works biologically” equals “lost innocence.” I’d rather they learned about sex so early that it’s not a big deal than in the various gross-emphasizing ways that I did.
Then again, I’m the girl reading “Are you there, God, it’s me, Margaret” in first grade, because her mother thought it was about church. (I am not kidding.)
My MIL started her period at age 10, and both of my girls look to be following that side of the family (alas — I didn’t start until 14) so there’s no way we could have waited to talk puberty until the schools got around to it.
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