The Birds and the Bees Revisited

My friend here told me that her daughter was riding the bus and saw a teenager looking at a baby magazine. The daughter asked the teenager why she was looking at it. The teenager said, "Because I am having a baby." The daughter said, "Oh, are you getting married?" The teenager said, "No, I am having a baby with my boyfriend. We having been trying to make a baby for a while. We want to have a baby so bad." Has it suddenly become cool for teenagers to have babies? (Darn you, Jamie Lynn Spears!)

Jedi told me that he found the "s" word in the dictionary at school. I thought he meant sh--. So I told him that it meant poop and that we didn't use that word for it. Beau Brummel explained why swear words are swear words because they disrespect our bodies and bodily functions and how God created our bodies and so when we swear we are disrespecting God as well. PetShopgirl got a very thoughtful look on her face and said, "Sex means poop?" And then she said, "Sex and the City," a couple times. I have no idea where she heard that because we don't watch that show.

Anyway, then we had to explain what sex was to all our kids because they had the whole sex is poop idea. So we got out a children's anatomy book and showed them where things go and the book also had a picture of a sperm entering an egg. The kids asked what happens if a man pees inside a woman or vice versa and we explained that it usually doesn't happen. We also told them never to discuss sex with anyone else besides Beau Brummel and me. We told them that they can't try it until they are married. We told them that after murder, sex between unmarried people is the next biggest sin because it has to do with creation. This is what we believe as part of our religion.

There was some laughing and embarrassment. Jedi felt so embarrassed that he was covering his face with his hands and turning away from the table. PetShopgirl just had a huge goofy smile on her face. Hotdog announced that when he was a baby he drank milk from my boobs. But the house didn't fall down on top of us and the kids didn't spend the rest of the night talking about sex.

I know some of you don't approve of telling kids about sex at a young age, but our kids were already hearing about it and getting weird ideas that needed to be clarified. For us it felt like the right time to discuss it.

A week later Jedi said he needed to speak to me in private about sex. He said he overheard some adults talking about having sex in a bathtub. He asked me why they would do that. All I could think to say was that people have sex in many different places for variety and excitement. (I thought I was going to be struck by lightening then, it felt like I was giving him too much information, but I couldn't think of any other true and logical explaination.)