"The Talk"

My husband took our older son out last week to see Resident Evil Extinction. The horror! The closed eyes! The hands over ears! Am I referring to my son’s reaction to the movie? No. His reaction to “The Talk” his dad tried to have that night to open up some dialogue about the famed birds and bees. (yeah and the movie, too, if we’re being honest here)

Yes, my son says it just like that… The Talk. And he makes those little finger quotes, too. Apparently Dad didn’t get too far, bless his heart, because our poor son was mortified that his father was trying to talk to him about VAGINAS. In fact, my son threatened to hide under a table if asked to verbally repeat this horrible word. This was just in the most basic sense of “You know that girls and boys have different parts, right?”

Okay – it was my idea that my husband initiate The Talk since our son is in fourth grade. Now, I don’t know where you went to school, but in my grammar school, kids knew allll about the dirty things that adults did, and speculated about them often. A lot of that info was wrong, but a lot of it was surprisingly right. So when my son asked to get his own deodorant instead of swiping Dad’s, and then asked to use my hair dryer….. I figured now was the time he was becoming aware of his own body and as such, probably those of the fast ass girls in his class, too. (Just kidding, they all seem very nice….. so far) And remember my post not long ago – he did tell me he has an 8th grade girlfriend!

Wow I just realized I totally overuse the ellipsis...or as Wikipedia says, “colloquially, dot-dot-dot.”

I’m not quite sure at what point my husband gave up trying to talk to my son about his body or other people’s bodies but I do know that later on that night he was not too happy to have Mom try to revisit the conversation. I made some jokes to open it up, then asked him what he’s heard his classmates say about “this stuff.” He plays dumb, “What stuff?” I explain as gently as I can, “Sweetheart, you know, when boys start to be preoccupied with their penises.” Still he feigns innocence, asking for an example. SO in my parental ineptitude, I offer “schlong”. My dear sweet child finally stopped laughing long enough to tell me that one of the kids in his class calls it The Limo. Then he spouts out “how about long schlong!” and at this point I gave up, too. I just told him that we’re here to answer any questions he has without lecturing or going into too much detail, and believe me, he’s thankful for that. No one wants to hear their parents say these things. So we’ll revisit this in 6th grade when health class starts talking about things like erections…. At which point I’m leaving this whole thing to my husband. After all, he figured it all out, right??