When and How We Had the Sex Talk
My son was 10 or 11 and we'd been having talks about various aspects of sex, but mostly I was just fielding questions and not giving him more information than I thought he needed at any given time. Then we were watching a television show where there was a female character whose husband was infertile. The woman had also had an affair and she was just learning that she was pregnant in the scene. The husband was furious and asked, "How can you be pregnant?!" My son didn't put two and two together and said, "I bet she just ate something that had some sperms on it." I was taken aback and knew I had to straighten that out.
How the Sex Talk Went
The show was not explicit. It implied the affair but did not show anything, so I can see where he missed that part, but that his mind would leap to such a wrong conclusion about a way pregnancy could occur in the absence of sex with a mate was astonishing. I asked him what she could have eaten. He said, "Maybe some strawberries or something." How did the sperm get there? He didn't seem to have an answer for that one. In one way, I was kind of touched by his innocence because when I was his age, I think I knew too much about sex and my parents were not careful to what they exposed me to. In another way, I knew that I could not allow him to carry around this construction as truth.
The talk went really well, and he's 15 now, so you know, it's an ongoing thing. That night, we talked about the ways that pregnancy could occur. What really happens when a male ejaculates. We talked about masturbation and he admitted openly that he'd been doing that but had never produced any semen. I talked to him about what to do when that happens (thus sparing me the sticky sock / crusty sheet issue, thank heavens!). We talked about birth control.
Later, when he was 13 or so, he had more questions and there was a great episode of Oprah that talked about getting actual diagrams or drawings out (of both sexes) and explaining what things are. I had planned to do that at some point but was nervous. I printed out some diagrams and they were just so... COLORFUL. I have to admit, I was uncomfortable. I switched it over to black-and-white printing and felt a lot better. LOL. Those diagrams sat hidden away in my desk for a long time and then we were watching TV and somebody said something like, "Oh, wouldn't you love to pop your rollercoaster cherry on that ride?" They meant, of course, that someone had never ridden a rollercoaster and this one would be their first time. But my son asked me what popping your cherry meant because he'd heard it before. That gave me a reason to get the drawings out and explain what a hymen was.
It was strange at first, but he was really very interested in the structure of things. And more internally than externally. He wanted to know what the fallopian tubes were for. And he wanted to know more about his own body than the female body. I answered all his questions and have since also bought him educational books ("What's Happening to My Body?" etc.) and still field questions when we watch TV or movies together.
Advice
- Be open and honest
- Don't put it off just because you're scared or feel uncomfortable because then it will be TV, movies and your child's friends who will fill in the blanks instead of you
- Don't be afraid to use drawings
- Ask your child lots of open-ended questions (give time to formulate answers as much of this stuff isn't clear to them) to see what they already know / believe so you know where to start
- Keep talking! Don't just have one "sex talk" and think you're done. It's an ongoing process
- Get ready for your child to come to you with anything. They will now that they know they can and that feels great!
