The Talk
I bought a copy of It’s Not the Stork, the number one recommended (to me, by friends, not on a national level or anything that I know of) book for teaching young children about sex. At the time I couldn’t face telling Erik that the penis went into the vagina, so I set the book aside. I have no idea what happened to the book. It is huge. The biggest book I’ve ever seen! And it is gone. I need it!
Last night we pulled out Erik’s school library books and started reading about the life cycle of a wood frog. He prefers non-fiction and we’ve read several of these life cycle books. None of them have ever mentioned mating, so I was quite surprised by the picture of humping frogs and the explanation that went with it (nothing explicit).
I didn’t think he quite understood what was going on, so I asked him if he knew what it meant that the eggs were being fertilized. Of course he was clueless. “It’s like when you have to put fertilizer on the ground–it makes them grow.” Sort of right, but not really right at all.
We talked about what fertilizing an egg meant, then he asked the dreaded question, “But I still don’t get how the daddy seed gets into the mommy’s belly.”
I suspected this was coming and I’ve thought a lot about what to say, but it was still awkward. I explained the whole deal about the penis and the vagina. His eyes about popped out of his head and he said he would never do something like that. Then he said “so, I have to pee inside [girlfriend]. I don’t want to!” I explained it wasn’t pee, it was sperm and looked different.
People, I was dying inside!
I explained that a man could only make the sperm come out when he was really happy, and he said “I guess it’s a good thing daddy has only been really happy twice!” I could barely stifle the laughter.
He concluded that he was never “going to do that thing” and never have children. It was too weird.
Whew! First big talk over. I’m sure there are many more to come as we have to explain things a little more thoroughly when he starts developing more and becoming interested. Next time I’m referring him to Mike!