Probably one of the scariest parts of being a parent is that knowledge that one day you're going to have to tell your children about sex. I know I wasn't really thrilled about it.
I always decided that when my daughters asked, I would tell them, at an age appropriate level. But my oldest daughter never asked.
Now I hit puberty quite young; it was right around my eleventh birthday. So when Rebecca was 10 1/2, I decided it was time to spill the beans on everything.
I took her away for the weekend, and we listened to a CD set called Passport2Purity (Book & CD Set) It's put out by Family Life, the group that I do marriage conferences with, and it's really good. There are five talks, and activities to do with each talk. We only listened to the first three, which had to do with what happens at puberty and sex. The other two are more about vowing to stay pure and deciding about dating, and since my 10 1/2 year old was grossed out by the whole thing and would have vowed to anything at that point, I thought it was better to wait until the idea of it seemed at least a little enticing!
The activities are easy to do, but illustrate well what sex is supposed to be like. And we had a good talk about what it means to grow up, and have your period, etc. etc.
With my second daughter, everything was very different. She asked questions at 8 or 9, and I told her everything. And she was awfully funny about it. (Sample question: how long does he have to leave it in for?). I told the whole sad story in this podcast: When Bees Come Buzzing, Teaching Your Kids About Sex.
But something else happened. We've been to Africa, to an orphanage in Kenya, twice now (and my mother is going again next month). And one of the big projects I've had is teaching the girls how to make cloth menstrual pads, because they just can't afford disposables. And the cloth ones are really cute!
This Sunday I'm even having a sewing party where dozens of women are coming over and we're hoping to mass produce them before my mother leaves for Africa.
The girls think I'm gross, but awfully funny, because I'm always collecting flannel and fleece for my "craft project". So they know all about it.
But when they each got their periods, I also decided it was time to teach them how to handle money. So I gave each of them $100 and a large set of cloth pads. I told them they could use the cloth, and keep the money, or they could take the money and buy disposable pads. They tried the disposables, and both decided to go with the cloth. They're more comfortable. So they only buy the disposables when they're going out.
I figure that they may as well learn to manage money! And they stick the pads in the washer, too, so they manage that as well.
I wanted to do one more rite of passage when they hit thirteen, so I held a blessing party for Rebecca. I haven't had one for Katie yet, since she's only 11, but it was a great time with Becca. I invited important women in her life over and they all said a blessing over her, while we did our nails and enjoyed a chocolate fountain. You can read all about it here.
What I've found, though, is that the kids don't have a problem asking me anything now. Because I was up front with them from the beginning, and because we tend to be open about these sorts of things in our family, they really will talk to me. It takes courage to discuss growing up with your kids, but it is worth it. I would so much rather they get their information from me than from anybody else.
So go for it! Once your kids hit 8 or 9, look for opportunities to talk with them. And at 10 or 11 for girls, or 11 or 12 for boys, make sure they do the Passport to Purity weekend with you (or your husband, in the case of boys). Then start giving them increasing responsibility as they hit puberty. It really is an exciting time for everybody, and it's fun to see what kind of person they're becoming!
What about you? Have you had experience talking to kids about sex? How did it go? Leave your ideas in the comments!
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You know that moment you've been dreading for almost a decade? When the kids finally come to you and ask, "Mommy, where do babies come from?". And you hem and you haw and you don't know what to say.
I've been through this. Twice. And I've survived. And I think my kids are both better for it!
Today's podcast is a hilarious clip from a talk I gave to a MOPS group about how I told my kids about sex. It's followed by a column I wrote on the subject, focusing especially on my curious youngest daughter.
I know you'll like it! So why not listen in? Just go here and click download. You can listen right now while you browse other sites. Or don't forget to subscribe with iTunes, and then you'll get all the episodes that you can download to your iPod! Just go to iTunes and search for To Love, Honor and Vacuum!
Bra shopping has never been a hobby of mine. Perhaps it comes from being so anatomically tiny that nothing ever really fits. I finally bit the bullet and went to one of those posh lingerie stores, and had a proper fitting, and the woman there was so nice.
She told me I wasn't actually an A cup.
After reviving from the faint, I heard the reason. The best thing to do was to go down a band size or two, and up a cup size. And everything would fit better! So I'm actually closer to a 32B. I said Hallelujah.
Well, the time has now come when my daughter is bigger than I am. She is a 32C. And she is lovely. My younger daughter also needs something more than just an undershirt. She needs a real bra, too. So last night I finally decided it was time and we went shopping.
But here's the problem. THEY DON'T MAKE BRAS IN 32 ANYMORE. This is realy frustrating.
It seems that according to the bra companies all chests begin at size 34. There may be some 32s, but they're 32As, which may be okay for my younger daughter, but not for the older one.
She's skinny. She's not even really a 32. She's more like a 30. But she is definitely a B or C cup. And you just can't find those.
We started at Zellers in the teen section. They make undershirts, and then you can buy teen bras in 32A, 34A, 36A, or 38A. No B cups there. Even the 32A didn't fit my youngest daughter well. They're just too cheap.
So I said, "we'll go to the adult section!". And with enthusiasm we crossed the aisle. Only to find no 32s.
So we went to Sears. We found a few 32As, and the occasional 32B, but nothing that fit well. The woman, though, was very helpful. Try La Senza, she said. (That's a Canadian lingerie store). I hesitated. They tend to have little Santa outfits with white boas in the windows. But we went there.
(Comment from youngest daughter: "why would anyone wear that anyway?". Mother replies with nervous laughter and tries to change subject).
Luckily, La Senza did indeed have plenty of bras in 32. Unfortunately, they were all the "Extreme Push Up" variety, where you add about two cup sizes. Since that really wasn't my intention, we walked back out.
We tried a few more stores before heading back to Sears, and buying the first ones we saw, which were not ideal, but were the best we could find.
The only good news is that they will eventually grow. But there's no way Rebecca is going to be a 34 for ages. Her ribcage is too small. She is a 32. Life is just not fair.
I was speaking on the weekend at a women's retreat, and at lunchtime one day a bunch of women with kids all the same age started talking about how you introduce the subject of sex to your children. When do you tell them? What do you tell them? And who has horror stories to share?
I wrote my own stories in a column a few years ago, which I'll just print here:
Some of these conversations, however, are not always eagerly anticipated. My nine-year-old chose these holidays to start pestering me about the exact method by which babies enter a mother’s tummy. She had already figured out the exiting part, but she had a sneaking suspicion that the story behind the entering was more interesting, and she was determined to hear it.
I always made it a policy that I would tell my kids whatever they wanted to know as soon as they asked me. I wanted them to hear it from me, and I wanted to keep the lines of communication open. By the time my oldest daughter reached ten, though, she had never asked me anything, and I was starting to worry that her body would catch up with her. So I announced we were going on a special “girls’ weekend”, just the two of us, when we would have fun together and I would tell her all about being a woman.
We went forth, and I spilled everything. She handled it well, asked loads of questions, and then had fun exploring craft shops. She now knows she can now ask me anything she wants and I’ll tell her, so frequently as I’m tucking her into bed questions do indeed arise.
She had never been a particularly curious kid about these sorts of things prior to our excursion, though, except for one incident I recall when she was playing with her four-year-old cousin. After checking on the munchkins, my sister-in-law emerged from the basement stifling laughter. Apparently Rebecca had gotten a hold of her new plastic doctor’s kit and had decided to examine Matthew. She had affixed the clamp to a particular piece of his anatomy, which had promptly grown rather red.
When Tina saw this, she asked that stupid question that inevitably pops out of every parent’s mouth when confronted with something horrible: “what are you doing?”, as if it were not immediately obvious. Rebecca looked up with innocent indignation and replied, “we are playing doctor.” Tina told her that was fine, but from now on they should do it with clothes on. They complied. And as far as I know, that was the only real curiosity Rebecca demonstrated.
Katie, on the other hand, has always been more sensitive to these things. When she was three, we were camping with a family who had two boys, one of whom had an “outie” belly button. Katie decided that the thing that differentiates boys and girls must be the belly button, so this must be an incredibly private part of the body. She proceeded to pull down her two-piece bathing suit (which had quite modest tank top and tank bottoms) so that the offending piece of anatomy was covered, leaving the pieces of anatomy that were supposed to be covered by tank tops visible for everyone to see.
So this Christmas when she started asking questions, I was not surprised, and I tried my best to answer. I told her the whole “entrance” part of the equation, and for once the child actually stopped talking. She pursed her lips and replied, “I see.” Then she thought for a moment and said, “but Mommy, if you’ve had three babies, did you have to do it each time?”. I nodded. She looked horrified.
The next day she sidled up to me in the kitchen, gave me a big hug, and said, “Oh, Mommy, thank you for going through that with Daddy. But don’t feel too badly. At least you’ve got me!”.
I tried to reinforce once more that people actually enjoy the exercise, but I truly don’t think she believed me. After drilling me more on what those things in the “Tampax” box were, she asked what I hope is her last question for a while.
“Mommy,” she said, “Why don’t men have to use so much toilet paper?”. I smiled, and replied, “go ask your dad.”
Here's what I left out of the column. As soon as I had told Katie the truth, she turned to me and said, "How long does he have to leave it in for?". And it only went downhill from there.
And when she found the Tampax, her younger cousin announced that she knew exactly what that was. It was a butt plug!
As much as we laugh over it, though, I am glad that I was the one to tell her. We did it in context, and even though she doesn't quite believe me, I think she gets the part that it's an enjoyable experience now, that should only be shared by married people. We could communicate that together.
The issues that the women were dealing with around my table, though, are navigating the school sex ed nightmare, because often schools tell kids things way younger than you would. And if you want to be the one to spill the beans (and I think kids should learn this stuff from parents, not teachers), you have to tell them even earlier.
What is in sex ed classes? Some of them aren't bad. But some of them are. I see two main problems: one is that sex is presented with no moral context, as a health issue. So sexually transmitted diseases are often the focus, as opposed to keeping sex within marriage. The second is that they tend to do a lot of the teaching with both sexes in the room to try to break down the kids' natural modesty, so that kids will be more comfortable talking about it. But I think natural modesty is a good thing, and we shouldn't be subjecting kids to that!
This morning an article was sent to me about that bill that Obama voted for in Illinois. He claims that he voted for it because it would teach kindergarten kids about inappropriate touching, and that is indeed what he may have THOUGHT. But if you read the bill, it teaches them a whole lot more than that.
The bill’s third purpose was to remove value-laden language in the old law. For example, the old law contained passages like this:
Course material and instruction shall teach honor and respect for monogamous heterosexual marriage. Course material and instruction shall stress that pupils should abstain from sexual intercourse until they are ready for marriage… [Classes] shall emphasize that abstinence is the expected norm in that abstinence from sexual intercourse is the only protection that is 100 percent effective against unwanted teenage pregnancy [and] sexually transmitted diseases…
The proposed bill eliminated all those passages and replaced them with wording like this:
Course material and instruction shall include a discussion of sexual abstinence as a method to prevent unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. Course material and instruction shall present the latest medically factual information regarding both the possible side effects and health benefits of all forms of contraception, including the success and failure rates for the prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV…
We need to wake up and realize that the schools are going to be teaching about something extremely important in a moral vacuum. We homeschool, so we don't have this issue. But if my kids were in school, I would take them out of sex ed classes. I would find out when they were being taught, and that is when I would schedule all the dentist appointments, doctor's appointments, and anything else I could think of. It's part of being a good parent.
Don't leave it to the schools. Be proactive and protect your kids. It's our job, after all. It may be a little intimidating, but talking to them is not so bad once you get going!
My 13-year-old looks 15. She really does. And it happened overnight sometime last fall. She went from being a little girl to a gorgeous teenager.
Now my 10-year-old is starting to look a lot older almost overnight, too. I'm going to have to take her shopping for more actual bras, along with her cousin sometime this weekend. My nieces and nephew's parents split up last year, so I'm doing some of the "mothering" for them when their dad has them on the weekends.
Last weekend I took my 16-year-old niece shopping for some actual clothes. She tends to wear oversized jeans and hoodie sweatshirts. I thought she was a lot bigger than she actually is. I put her in some nice capris and some shirts that flattered her figure and she looked fabulous! I think she realized it, too. It was the first time she had ever had "girl" clothes. Her mother just doesn't take her to do these things.
And now it's time for me to tackle my youngest and her cousin. I'm just not ready for this. I hit puberty really young (I was barely 11), and I think Katie is well on her way. It's no fun to hit puberty that young, and she's trying to do everything she can to avoid it, which of course is fruitless. But she is not happy about the fact that you can see her undershirts through her T-shirts! Poor kid. At least she's cute!
About Me: I'm a Christian author of a bunch of books, and a frequent speaker to women's groups and marriage conferences. Best of all, I love homeschooling my daughters, Rebecca and Katie. And I love to knit. Preferably simultaneously.
It's put out by Family Life, the group that I do marriage conferences with, and it's really good. There are five talks, and activities to do with each talk. We only listened to the first three, which had to do with what happens at puberty and sex. The other two are more about vowing to stay pure and deciding about dating, and since my 10 1/2 year old was grossed out by the whole thing and would have vowed to anything at that point, I thought it was better to wait until the idea of it seemed at least a little enticing!
Stumble It!
