October 12, 2010

Let’s Talk About Sex Baby. . . Or Not

For the past six weeks, Big I has been participating in a club swimming conditioning program to get her ready for the winter swimming program at her school. There are rampant rumors that the girls locker room is haunted. Each night, there are stories about toilets mysteriously flushing and screams echoing through the locker room when no one else is in there. There's also something written on the shower wall that creeps me out way more than the possible haunts.

"I love sex."

It's not the fact that someone loves sex, because clearly people do. What creeps me out is that it has brought up some questions from my daughter that are insanely difficult to answer. And I thought that the whole, "What are tampons for?" question was a tough one!

So it was in the car on the ride to swimming that Big I began talking about it. She told me about the screams and the phantom flushes. And then she told me about the writing on the wall.

"It says, "I love the 's' word," she said.

"What? Why would someone write I love s%!#?" I asked her. "How weird is that?"

"No, mommy, it's not that word. It's S E X," she said, spelling it out slowly and deliberately.

"Ohhhhh," I said, tempted to turn the radio up and maybe even stick my fingers in my ears, screaming hysterically, "I can't hear you. I can't hear you."

"What IS that mommy?"

I played dumb. "What is what?" I asked her back.

"You know, that S E X word?" she questioned softly, still spelling it, and with me so grateful that those combined three letters didn't leave her mouth in one parenting nightmare of a word.

I hesitated and thought for a minute. As a parent, there is no preparation for this conversation. You don't know when it's going to come up and you certainly don't know how to answer. I thought about telling her, "it's how grown-ups make babies" but then I knew that would only lead to more questions. This kid has got a scientific mind. That wasn't going to solve anything and answering that way was going to dig me my own little personal hole to hell.

I thought about my one student today, whose topic for her persuasive speech is that sex education should start as early as the 6th grade. My daughter is just TWO YEARS away from that age. As she explained her topic, she talked about girls, as young as age nine, getting pregnant. My daughter IS nine years old.

I thought about how her friend who happens to be a boy, innocently gave her a peck on the cheek this summer. I thought about the note a different boy put in her desk this week that says, "You are cute."

And the only possible answer I could come up with was, "I'll tell you when you're a little bit older." I instantly felt a pang of guilt for not having a better response.

Then she said, "Can you just tell me this. . . is that S E X word a thing or something people do?"

"Um, well, it's something people do," I said, incredibly grateful that we were only two blocks from the pool.

And then I heard her whisper to herself from the back seat, "Wow. . . it must be something REALLY bad."

I couldn't help myself. I cracked up laughing. The truth is that I wanted to say, "You're damn right it's something bad! It's horrible and don't you EVER DREAM of doing it!!!" Not wanting to scar the kid for her adult life, I just said, "It's not really bad. You're just a little too young to know all about it right now." I then went on to explain that when pregnant ladies go to get ultrasounds, the doctor can determine the "sex" of the baby by looking at its body parts. I gave her the clinical, "It's whether you're a male or a female" business. It made me think about looking for answers in my Mom's medical books when I was a kid, a much older kid than my daughter right now.

That seemed to satisfy her, and she spent the next hour swimming.

On the drive home, she asked me what age one has to be in order to have an alcoholic drink. She also asked me why some people like to drink so much, and she went on to name a family member. This conversation was much easier. I talked to her about waiting until you're older to drink alcohol and told her that alcohol and drugs can do a growing body a lot of harm. I also talked about how it's ok to have a drink here and there. We then talked about how some people get addicted to drugs and alcohol. I told her that some of her friends may experiment by sipping an alcoholic drink or even sneaking something they shouldn't and that she should avoid doing those types of things because it can only lead to trouble.

And then she said, "One of my friends experiments with things. . . "

My breath caught in the back of my throat. She sounded so serious. Which friend and what is this friend experimenting with? My God! Already??? Already, I have to deal with this???? Was she two seconds away from telling me she's started drinking vodka?

"What are you talking about?" I asked her, as calmly as I could.

"Yeah," she said, speaking as if she was delivering a colossal secret, "she experiments by mixing root beer with apple cider with milk. I'm not going to ever do that," she said.

And I breathed the biggest sigh of relief ever. EVER.