THE TALK or For Once, I'm Speechless

I knew this day was coming. I had just hoped it would come later versus sooner. I'm talking about THE TALK.

When I was in college (and was the ripe old age of 20), I took Human Sexuality, which preached teaching sexual health at all ages. I whole heartedly agreed - We Should Teach Our Children About Something So Natural! Oh, the days of being young and naive.  Little did I realize how difficult explaining this stuff would be when confronted with questions at 5:30 in the morning.  And what better time to bring up this subject I ask? Actually, I did ask. Why the heck does my eldest son ask me this crap at the crack of dawn? But I digress...

It all started when I was pregnant with Rocco. I knew the question was coming because Max was 5 and inquisitive. "How is that baby coming out??" I knew what he was feeling because I asked myself that very question in terror when I was pregnant with Max.  But the difficulty with having a son comes down to a physical issue. In case you didn't know this yet, penises are very obvious and vaginas...well, they aren't. Hmmm...how to approach this? For some reason Max always would ask this question early in the morning when I was getting ready for work and always caught me unprepared. It took 5 months, but I finally figured out what to tell him. I didn't want to go the easy route and say that babies come out of the tummy, because 1) that's not true and 2) I heard this would freak him out. I went with "Mommies have special places under their underwear and that's where babies come out of." Max of course followed up with confusion and wanted more details. After 2 more months of figuring out my next response, I went with "Well, you have private parts and so do Mommies and that's where babies come out." I thought that cleared things up, since I basically said the same thing twice. Of course Rocco ended up being an unplanned c-section, so I went through all this pain for nothing - I could have gone with "Babies come out of tummies." Ugh.

I thought the first "sex" conversation went relatively well. And I also thought it was done for another 10 years. Ha!  It all came back up when taking our new kitten to the vet to be neutered. First, I think I've mentioned before that my children are geniuses so I should have seen this coming, but I was totally blindsided. Max asked why we were taking Skippy the Kitten to be neutered. Summoning up my best Bob Barker, I gave a brief summary why we don't want to overpopulate the world with homeless kittens. And Max follows up with "Then why do we neuter boy cats? Girl cats are the ones that have the babies." Oh, he is so smart. Crap! What I wanted to say is that "It's both the boy's and girl's responsibility when it comes to babies!" Instead I stammered and said something about how it takes boys AND girls to make babies. Stop talking - Stop! But too late. Max asks "Why does it take a boy and a girl? How do you make babies?" I cowardly responded "Um, you are almost at school and I just won't have time to explain it right now." And I've been holding my breath that he doesn't bring this up again for 8 more years.

Where is my 20 year old self that thought that educating my kids about sexuality would be easy? One of my four cardinal rules for my boys is that they always practice safe sex - and now I don't even know how to explain body parts to them!  How stupid! Instead I'm speechless. What to say and how to say it appropriately? Because he should have some kind of concept of how babies are made. On a 7 year old level though?  Go with the "It's a special hug between Mommies and Daddies"? Or maybe "It's like two lego pieces that fit together"? Or do I just set a bowl of condoms on the kitchen counter when he turns 16 and hope he figures it out?  I'm pretty sure the last option is totally lame and negligent - because I don't want a lot of homeless kittens (or children) roaming around. So for now I've bought some time simply by stalling, knowing that my time is short and I'll need to come up with a decent response really soon. I'm hoping whatever I do next, it doesn't mean therapy for Max later. Unfortunately he's the guinea pig - I'll have this all figured out when Rocco surprises me with these questions as I'm putting on my mascara, first thing in the morning. That is unless Rocco gets all of his education from Max, which means I'm back to making sure I really don't screw this up any more than I already have.

Wish me luck.