“Mommy,” said Alex at lunchtime, “strawberries are red, just like blood.”
Wow, I thought. Never thought I’d hear that one! “Yes, Alex, they are.”
“Blood is pretty. But I don’t like ouchies.”
How could I not laugh at that? “Me, either, Alex. Me either.” Then, remembering his temper tantrums and flying feet, I had an inspiration. “Hey, Alex, remember how Julianna went to the doctor and got a big boo-boo, and we had to be really gentle with her for a while?” (Julianna had open-heart surgery at almost six months old.)
“Yeah,” Alex said around a mouthful of grapes.
“You know, when the baby comes, I’m going to have a really big boo-boo, too, just like Julianna did. Right here.” I showed him. “That’s how the baby’s gonna come out.”
“That’s how the baby comes out?”
“Yes.” Then I thought, oh, man, my kid is going to grow up thinking a C-section is the normal way to have a kid! “Most babies don’t come out like that,” I said, “but you had to, because you were so big, you couldn’t come out the way most babies do.”
Thankfully, he was too distracted by the reference to his own birth to ask how most babies come out! He chewed thoughtfully on a chicken nugget for a minute. Then, “Mommy,” he said, “when you get your boo boo and the baby comes out, can you give me a horseyback ride?”
Fast-forward to that evening, when we were all driving to choir practice. “Daddy,” Alex said, “I want to tell you something. When Mommy has the baby and has a big boo boo, she can’t give me a horseyback ride, because if she does her boo boo will break open and there will be blood everywhere!”
I started laughing so hard I cried. Christian frowned sideways from the driver’s seat. “That’s a pretty good description,” he said. “What’re you laughing at?”
“I’m laughing,” I said, “because that’s word for word what I told him!”
After I related the rest of the conversation, with its “where do babies come from?” overtones, Christian shook his head. “I don’t even know why you get into these things with him,” he sighed.
The answer is that I don’t want sex ed to be a conversation held behind closed doors, as if it’s something shameful or embarrassing or essentially unclean. A topic to be dealt with once, and then, with relief, avoided, trusting in fear to keep their behavior in line.
I got “the talk” in grade school, when one of my classmates asked me a question I didn’t understand. Mom took me in my bedroom, closed the door, and started drawing diagrams that served only to embarrass me—so much so that I blocked it all out, and had to have the talk again when I actually reached the proper age. And it wasn’t until Christian and I learned Natural Family Planning that I understood why and how my body did what it did. By that time, sex had so many layers of baggage built up around it that it took me six years of marriage and some counseling to dig back down to the initial truth, which is this:
Sex is holy. It is part of who we are as human beings, one that we can use in a holy or an unholy way—just as we can use the gift of language to build up or to tear down. It shouldn’t be cordoned off, relegated to a place behind closed doors where even God is told to butt out.
I want better than that for my children. I want them to grow up with and into a healthy understanding of sex—which does not mean that I want them to “experiment” or “explore” or whatever other words the basic sex ed courses use as euphemisms for completely inappropriate use of sex. What it does mean is that I want them to understand the underlying beauty of the gift, which I hope will then lead to respect for themselves and their peers, and to an appropriate use of the gift.
So I look for teachable moments, where I can incorporate concepts at an age-appropriate level. The first time it happened, I was trying to explain to Alex, then just barely 3, that there was a tiny baby we couldn’t see inside my tummy. He said, “How did it get there?”
“Wellllllllllllll….” I said, as my brain screamed, Oh, crap! And then it came to me in a flash. “Mommies and daddies have a special hug they can give each other,” I said. “And sometimes, when they give each other that special hug, God puts a baby in the mommy’s tummy.”
Only time will tell if this approach fulfills my hopes. Parenting is not a science, exact or otherwise. J But there’s a story I’d like to share that illustrates the varying ways we can view the human body. Two priests were walking down the street one day when a prostitute passed by them. One averted his gaze, knowing he couldn’t look at her without impure thoughts; the other met her eyes and wept for sorrow at the way she was hurting herself.
Both responses are appropriate, depending on the mindset of the person in question. Me? I’d be in category #1. But I would love to see my children living in category #2.
Kathleen M. Basi 
Good post. Good points. When I was pregnant with Elizabeth I had a video on natural childbirth I had gotten from the library and had already viewed. William was at the point of asking how the baby was going to come out, so I showed William a couple of the births. At that age, even still, he is not embarrassed by the human body and often sees me naked…although I try to avoid having him follow me to the bathroom or barge in when I’m getting dressed now that he’s a bit older, it doesn’t always work! Anyway, he was most concerned why the baby cried after he/she was born and whether it was OK or if the mom was hurt. The naked women or seeing how the baby was born didn’t bother him. He was very disappointed he missed seeing Elizabeth being born…Just thought you might be interested, also, Bill thought it a little strange I would show that to William, but I thought he was at the perfect age, non of that embarreses him and it is a beautiful thing.
Yeah, that’s probably true. We sort of took the approach that the onset of toilet training was the time when we need to start respecting privacy. Alex is pretty good about it. But you do have to be careful how you talk about privacy, too, b/c it’s easy to fall into the same “shame/dirty” trap. I think usually I talk about there being parts of the body that are for you and sometimes for mommy and daddy or the doctor. We can add the “and for your spouse” in another decade or so! 😉
Kate, I so appreciate your words on this topic. Working with families in the church, I see that all too often, parents are shying away from this conversation almost as a means to “protect” their children from something — as though it is bad. I think when you get right down to the brass tacks of it, the parents are protecting themselves from thinking they need to have the conversation in any way, much less healthy and holy ways. I am also amazed at the number of families that rely solely on the schools and the church to teach about such topics. As a minister, I find this is all too often the case — parents don’t feel “qualified” to have the conversations and trust others to have it for them. HELLO!! If I want my children to learn something in a particular way, I am not going to trust others to take care of it for me. Just as sex is holy, and our bodies are holy, our families are also holy…. we need for more families to realize that and know that as a family, they can travel these murky roads together… stumbling through the conversations and awkward moments in such a way that true bonds of honesty and respect are shared.
But you know… that’s just me preachin’ to the choir!
Again, thanks for your words!