Birds and the Bees.... Hmmm....

Just one question.... "Why do we parents make our own jobs so much harder than they need to be?"

SEX!!! I had a friend named Daniel growing up who would start to laugh when we would say that word. Sitting in church I would lean over and quietly whisper, "Naked" or "Sex" and he would lurch forward laughing and his freckled face would turn some serious shades of crimson. From what I understand he does have children so it seems that he was able to stop laughing at some point... which surprised some of us.

As a parent I know the unnerving panic that starts to rise up from your stomach into your throat as you try to explain the "mechanics" of sex to a 7 year old. It's awkward trying to explain "stiff and stuff".

The problem is that we can't wait too long to tell them! By the age of 7 they are already getting a pretty good idea of what is going on with the whole sex "thing" just by watching HBO and the Victorias Secret Commercials. Not much of a secret if you ask me, Victoria. And, while they may not have a very good understanding of the "ins and outs" of the sex process, they are talking to eachother and narrowing it down!

I had a friend growing up who could draw ANYTHING!! Amazing talent! I remember him selling nude drawings of women, obviously from his imagination, when we were in the 3rd and 4th grades. Yup! For .25 cents he would sell you one of his "private collection" pieces.

The problem we all seemed to run into was that we may have had a pretty good idea of what the "upper" bumps looked like "sans bikini", but we had NO CLUE what was going on "down there" (not that we have any GREATER understanding at this point, but at least the geography isn't alien). I say this because in every picture he sold in that time the naked woman he had drawn had some GIANT boobies, but, without any other real frame of reference, there was a DEFINATE wiener going on down low.  A penis! On a naked woman!

I'm blaming my parents for the fact that I did not know any better until I was 7!


But talking to your kids about sex is HARD (Geez, stop giggling when I say "hard")! Sex is awesome and loads of fun, but deep down you don't want your child knowing that that sort of thing is actually going on just down the hall... because you KNOW that's what they are thinking the whole time you explain it to them!  "You DO that?

I remember when I got my "Big Talk".  My father was military and I'm thinking that my "talk" was somehow influenced by his military background.

At the time it didn't seem so strange, but as I sit and "recover" those memories I begin to realize that, while it may have seemed to be a strange way of presenting the topic, my dad did the very best he could... but did we really need the chalkboard??

When he came to get me for "a few minutes" I could sense that we were about to have a very serious discussion... possibly regarding the decline of the dollar or about how the GDP affects inflation. Instead, he sat me in a chair in the middle of the room and brought out his chalkboard and pointer (again! The giggling!).

Due to his military training and a need to overcome his nerves my father started out with a quick roll call... "Spuds?" .... "Here, Sir!.... "Very good!"  After the quick roll call and a brief outline of what we were going to be discussing he handed me a Acknowledgement Form stating that I, indeed, understood the nature of the discussion that would ensue.

He began... he continued... he described... he wrapped it up... he asked for any questions...

I don't remember all of the details of what he said, but I remember thinking that I was missing Gilligan's Island.  I also remember that the circles, arrows and designs on the chalkboard resembled something you might see in a Dr. Seuss book. You know the one. The one that has Thing One using a submarine-looking-contraption to torpedo Thing Two's underwater lair.

Yup. I walked out of that room wondering where in the hell Dad had the submarine parked. Thank goodness for Three's Company on TV to fill in some details, or I would have remained clueless until Laurie gave me that little smooch behind the church when I was 12. I found where my submarine was parked!! Who knew!!!

I can't say that I did much better with my kids. None of us go into the speech with the intent that we are going to start stuttering uncontrollably and suddenly forget the child's name. But it happens!!

One father, who will remain anonymous, explained the "process" as a car full of people "going into and out of a garage." I am trying to avoid any speculation as to how the garage is in any way complimentary for his wife because my mind is like a vast open space when I try to find a good example. But then I do remember that the father drove a very small car to work. But I digress.

The explanation continued with the car going into and out of the garage until everyone in the car decided to get out. Then one of the people who jumped out of the car (I'm assuming he jumped or exited the car in some sort of thrusting motion) was then able to go into the house through the laundry room door. OH! And he locked the door behind him.

I'm guessing the other people just wandered around in the front yard or something.

But I'm left with the nagging question of who backed the car out of the garage if all the people got out? My friend wasn't able to remember if her dad ever covered that important piece of information. Maybe they just left the car in neutral and it found its own way out.

Did they shut the garage door??

A friend, who's mother is a teacher, decided on the odd tact of using props. My friend was watching the Smurfs when her mom called her to the dining room table where a banana, carrot, and bagel were modestly hidden under a papertowel. The bagel makes sense, and I'm thinking there must have been a reason the mom used both a carrot and a banana, but I can't, for the life of me figure it out. But then she may have been trying to teach variety. It is, they say, the spice of life.

There is always the parent who buys the Oprah recommended "Everything Your 7 Year Old Wanted To Know About Sex" book. I have a friend who found himself assaulted by this approach. Lured to the couch for "reading time" with two cups of creamy hot cocoa; the two curled up on the couch to read stories. Talk about a sneak attack! The poor kid didn't even have a chance to position himself comfortably on the couch before he was hearing words like penis and testicles and ERECTION! What the hell, mom?

The best part is that she left the book with him so that he could peruse it later at his leisure and then retreated quickly to the kitchen, avoiding the Q and A portion of the book completely! I saw a similiar scene happen at the zoo when the lion "feeder" (I don't know what his official title would be) opened the door to the lion's "den" and took a couple of steps in, saw the lion, threw the meat at the lion and ran out.

The sad part is that when we, as parents, are finally more comfortable about explaining sex to our children they will already have graduated college and have one or two of their own.