Not Makin' Whoopee

I promise this entry will not contain graphic or lurid details of sex education.

Honest. I promise.

It’s more about values, and how we pass on moral messages to our children and fortify ourselves as role models. You know, do as I say and do.

On the way home from school yesterday, Miguel shared with me the day’s sex education lesson.
Kids can ask any question they want. The question was: Which is better, oral or anal sex?

“It wasn’t my question,” he said.

“What did the teacher say?” I asked. For some reason, the question was posed to the language arts instructor, not the science one, who teaches the unit.

“She said, ‘That’s a personal question,’ Miguel said. “So which is better?”

I will not divulge my answer, nor reveal my response to his next question: “Have you ever had oral sex?”

My answers are unimportant. I will admit that I was speechless as he fired his questions much more rapidly than I felt equipped to answer.

I always knew I’d be Miguel’s go-to guy for all matters of sex, relationships, love, etc. Verna ceded that responsibility to me when Miguel was a toddler by virtue of our shared gender. Even though I am fully committed to offer age-and-developmentally appropriate honesty to my children about sex, my conversations with Miguel have always been slightly awkward.

He first asked me about babies and sex when he was eight. After I gave him a very brief introduction into sexual reproduction, he looked at me as if he’d just swallowed castor oil and raw eggs. From time to time, as he’s approached puberty and adolescence and his body has begun to change, there have been additional talks. I have tried to be as matter-of-fact as possible. Call me Jack Webb, Mr. Dragnet: just the facts.

Oh, I editorialize. I’ve thrown in a few things about protection, emotional readiness, not wanting to be a grandfather for at least 15 years. I am not even sure I needed to go in a few directions, but Miguel’s teachers have informed us parents that teenage sex (oral and otherwise) happens earlier and earlier.

Yes, I shudder. At 13 I was content to stand in the lunch line close enough to girls to inhale the fragrance of their shampoo. The world may have changed slightly when it comes to the sexes and sex in the 21st century.

So when I got back to work yesterday, a little addled after Miguel put me on the spot, I sought out the comfort of two male co-workers. They laughed with me as I retold the car conversation, and then one said, “It’s great that he could talk to you.”

And that’s when it hit me: yes, it is great he can talk to me. And he wanted to converse with me. I have not initiated a conversation yet about sex education. He was the one who came to me with the permission slip, and Miguel has usually shared with me the various sex education lessons. I have confined myself to asking the very general, “How was school today?”

To which he invariably replies, “Fine.”

Or I might say, “What’d you do in school today?” and he will offer, “Not much.”

But with sex education, I haven’t paid closer attention to the unit than any others. Partly because I am swamped with life, work, and just getting the kids fed, to school, and to their activities.

I do know, however, the awesome responsibility I have. And it’s not really about sex. Miguel barely has girls on his radar. He texts a few, but they are in the larger context of reaching out to friends. It is really about learning how to navigate the emotionally confusing and often physically awkward world of relationships, friendships, and the delicate social dance of teenagers.

Several weeks ago, after I mentioned a new female friend, he said, “Is she hot?”

“Miguel, that doesn’t matter,” I said, feeling as if I were banging my head against a wall and wondering if he was actually listening to me. “It’s what’s on the inside.”

But I bought him two posters of Megan Fox, which now adorn his bedroom wall, so what message is really bounding through him?

Welcome to my contradiction.

I still hope (and pray) Miguel learns about girls, young women, women, relationships, and, yes, sex, by the examples I’ve tried to set for the past 25 years. Time will, um, tell. I am not sure I want to know all the questions, but I am ready with answers.

Mothers Days

I was in the bathroom last week with Maya as she went potty. She looked up at me and smiled as if we were playing in the park.

“Daddy, I want a baby in my tummy.”

Um, what?!? But all I said was, “You have to wait until you are older and get married.”

“But I want a baby in my tummy now,” she said.

My next impulse was to call for Verna, who was on the couch and feeling ill from the effects of her radiation treatments. But Maya abandoned her insistence on having a baby right at the moment I needed her to pee, and we settled into a less troubling conversation.

“Verna, guess what Maya just said to me in the bathroom,” I said as we emerged. Verna managed a smile as I told her.

We probed Maya further and found out she plans to name her baby Tullen, which is the name our friends Kylie and Steve chose for their second child who was born about a year ago.

“I’m going to hold my Baby Tullen, daddy, but who’s going to help me?” she asked.

“I can hold Baby Tullen with you,” I responded.

“No, I can do it by myself,” she said.

Then she started asking me if she could still come home after she was a Mommy to Baby Tullen? Would she still be welcome? I told her that her home now would always be her home and she could come over anytime after she was married and a mother.

She smiled. I guess she needed some reassurance.

Maya has mentioned wanting a baby several times in the past week or two, so Miguel has heard her desires as well.

“Who do you want to be your husband, Maya?” he asked her the other day.

Maya has a stable of neighborhood boyfriends, so she usually just runs down the list or chooses one or two of them. On this day she answered simply, “Luca.” He lives down the block, is also three, and had played with her earlier that day. Other times, she says Ryder, oldest son of Kylie and Steve, who used to live next door, or AJ, who lives diagonal to us.

Verna and I were talking about Maya’s maternal wishes with a few friends over the weekend.

“One time,” Verna said, “Maya woke up from her nap with one of her baby dolls stuffed under her shirt.”

So the Mommy Instinct is also quite powerful in an almost four-year-old. We live literally right next to a city park, so Maya has seen her share of mothers and babies, and a few of our friends have had kids in the past year. Maya’s best friend, Jira, has a sister who is also almost one, Kaya. Maya regularly sees mothers breastfeeding and caring for their infants. Maya has changed a few of her dolls’ diapers with real ones.

Both Verna and I know Maya’s instincts to have a baby in her tummy are normal and sweet. All this practice and play and imagination will serve her well in the DISTANT future. But I draw the line if she asks soon how to get a baby into her tummy. For now and for a very long time, Maya is going to have to be content just to cram a doll under her shirt on her own.

S-s-s-sex

Miguel’s fifth grade is class is finishing up their 8-day Family Life unit, which is just a code word for Sex Ed.

Last week, after he saw a film on the male anatomy, he said to me, “That was creepy.”

“Why?” I asked “You know what penises look like.”

“I don’t know. It was just creepy.”

A normal response from a slightly immature 11-year old, I thought.

I picked him up from school the next day after the teacher had screened the film on the female anatomy.

“Today was even worse than yesterday,” he said in response to my question about his day.

With Miguel on the cusp of puberty, Verna and I are glad he’s learning more details about the various changes his body and soul are about to undergo. But we also wonder if he’s a tad young for some of the topics.

Do fifth graders really need to know about AIDS, HIV, and STDs? His teacher, who is wonderful, said, “Yes, they do. Middle school kids are already sexually active in some places,” which is a good reason why the focus is on abstinence.

Miguel still protests loudly if I even suggest he finds another girl fascinating. So Verna and I want to protect his innocence for a couple more years. We know the raging hormonal torrent is inevitable, but why rush Mother Nature?

On the other hand, it’s not as if Miguel was clueless about the facts of life. He’s known the basic outline of where a baby comes from since he was 8. He asked the questions and I answered them.

Last year he got an involuntary refresher course when one of his classmates, another 10 year old at the time, told Miguel and two other boys in their class that he had a girlfriend, they’d had sex, and he could hook up Miguel and his friends with her so they could “hump together.”

“I knew he was lying,” Miguel said at the time. But I had to review the finer details of sex and reproduction with him because of the boy's fabrications. After we went over how a man and women get pregnant, Miguel looked at me as if to say, “I didn’t really need to know that, dad. Again.”

A few weeks ago, Miguel and I were outside with one of our neighbors, Rich, who was going in for a vasectomy that weekend. Rich casually mentioned having to go back in a few months to have his seminal fluid tested. On our way back inside the house, Miguel asked, “How does the man get the stuff out of his penis?”

Oh great, I thought, here comes the masturbation discussion. Miguel looked at me incredulously after I answered him.

Even though he said he all the Sex Ed. was creepy, Miguel wanted to test me last week before he went to bed.

“What is the thing inside the body that regulates it?” he asked.

“Biological clock?” I answered.

“No, it has to do with growth,” he said.

“Pituitary gland,” I said.

“Correct. What does the woman use to block her menstruation?”

Yes, he really asked me that. I said, “Tampon.”

“Correct.”

So I gathered that Family Life wasn’t as creepy as Miguel had said. At the very least, he was learning and happy to share his knowledge with us. As long as he doesn’t end up sucking on a bottle of Woolite curbside, as Gene Wilder did in Woody Allen’s Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask, I think we’re OK.

OK, more than OK.