By Every Family’s Got One Founder — Barbara Herel
Photo by Rawpixel
Oh, the sex talk… I started talking to my daughter about S-E-X when she was young – one-year-old young.
It went like something like this.
Every time I saw…
a pregnant woman, I would say, “Oh look! That woman has a baby growing in her belly. Isn’t that interesting? Babies grow in a woman’s belly.”
I’m a fan of using anatomically correct words.
Besides loving…
the downright disgusted reactions of the older generation whenever my two-year-old daughter said “vagina,” I wanted to make certain there was no shame or weirdness attached to body parts.
That’s when I began replacing the word “belly” with “uterus” in our S-E-X talk.
By four…
I was adding in more interesting details such as, “Women have little eggs inside them and when one of those eggs meets a seed, a baby begins to grow in her uterus. Isn’t that interesting?”
By five…
“seed” eventually gave way to “sperm” and I clued the kid in on the fact that those little suckers came from a man.
“Isn’t that interesting?” Which was usually met with a little shrug of the shoulders and a noncommittal “Yeah.”
And that was pretty much…
how our S-E-X talk went for six, seven, and eight – “Oh look that woman has a baby in her uterus. The woman’s egg met a sperm that came from the man and now she has a baby in growing in her uterus. Isn’t that interesting?”
Then my daughter turned nine.
And she informed me that she had an interesting question of her own to ask.
We were in the car, running errands, the time when all interesting questions are typically articulated.
It went something like this…
“Mom, I have an interesting question.”
“I love interesting questions. What is it?”
“I know the woman has the egg and the man has the sperm. And when the egg and sperm meet a baby begins to grow in the woman’s uterus.”
“That’s right, honey! You got it!” I said cheerily.
Honestly…
I couldn’t have been more pleased – or apprehensive.
“But,” she went on. “How does the man’s sperm GET to the woman’s egg?”
“That really is an inn-te-rrresting question. Very inn-te-rrresting.”
(See what I did there? That was my delaying tactic.)
“Very inn-te-rrresting,” I said until I could delay no more. “Honey, I’m not sure you’re ready to hear the answer,” I said honestly.
“I am, Mom.”
“Well, I’m not sure I’m ready to tell you the answer.”
“Mom. I can handle it.”
“Okay, well, I’m not sure I can.”
“Mom!”
“Okay, okay! So, how does the man’s sperm get to the woman’s egg? Very interesting. Okay, I’m just going to say it. The man places his penis in–“
“STOP IT!!!
THAT’S DISGUSTING! I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR IT!”
“OKAY! OKAY! I’m not saying anything more, don’t worry!” I assured her over and over until she opened her eyes and removed her little hands from her ears.
We were silent…
for a very long time.
“Any other interesting questions?” I quietly pressed.
“N-O.”
She’s 10 now…
and we still haven’t circled back around to a more illustrated answer to her interesting S-E-X question.
In the meantime, she has apparently learned about periods or rather has heard the word and doesn’t want to discuss that either, yet exclaims after every maxi-pad commercial, “I AM NOT GETTING A PERIOD.”
I don’t laugh.
I don’t say a word. The time will come all too soon when we’ll talk.
About periods and tampons. About self-respect, birth control, peer pressure, and blow jobs.
But right now…
Right now, I just want to continue being secretly delighted and highly pleased by her most horrified reactions about all things S-E-X.
*************
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Funny!
I remember my son’s reaction to a bird and the bees talk when he was. . .4! I was totally unprepared for this discussion and wished the earth would open up and swallow me. A mechanically inclined little boy, he asked me, “But how do the pieces fit together?”
LOL! That is the big question now isn’t it? Too funny. Janet.