Number one with a Bullet

[as previously posted on Good Vibrations Sexy Mama Blog]

True Story.  This is how it all started:

I'm in the bathroom one morning brushing my teeth. In walks my eight-year-old Marcia. She is bored because she's already ready for school and she's looking for something to pass the time. She absentmindedly opens a drawer where the hairbrushes are and sees my bullet vibrator.

(I always clean my toys and I just didn't have a chance to put this one away where it belonged..)  It's red and shiny and looks really cool so she picks it up and says, "Mom.  What's this?"

me:  (mouthful of toothpaste)  "It's nothing.  Put it away."

her:  (fiddling with it in her hands)  "No. What is it??"

Now, this is the moment I've been waiting for as a parent and as a student of sexology. I spit out my toothpaste and say,

me:  (big sigh)  "It's a vibrator."

her:  (not missing a beat)  "What's it for?"    By this time she now has figured out how to turn it ON...

me:  "It's for your private parts."

And now not only does she have it ON, but she is running the little bullet along her nose, over her eyebrows, and along her forehead, a little "d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d" noise from the bullet as it goes.   She says,

her:  "It tickles."

I say:  "Imagine what it feels like on your private parts."

She neatly turns it off, puts it back in the drawer, closes the drawer, and walks out of the bathroom.

I have to laugh at that whole interaction. It was brief. It was accurate. I could have made up some story about what it was but, I look at it this way: Kids figure out at a very early age that adults are full of **it. When a parent says "don't run or you'll fall!" and the kid runs anyway and doesn't fall there's a little message they get from that.  Add to that the numerous times a parent makes up stories and the kid figures out it was a lie.  I once read the more warnings you give a kid that don't turn out to be true, the more likely your kid is to ignore your advice because you obviously don't know what you are talking about.  See?  Parents can be seen as lousy sources.  So why not be truthful?

Some dads (yes, dads. not any moms yet) that I've explained this story to get sort of uppity about my telling her the truth. They ask "aren't you afraid of her going off and trying to find it again and use it on herself?"  No, not really. She showed me her interest when she turned it off and put it away.  (I did put it away where it belonged after that.  Kind of wished I had one of these ToiBocks instead).  I am also certain that she got a very clear message from me that I was going to tell her the truth whether it was embarrassing or not.

I think this set a really great precedent for our level of communication... stay tuned.

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And away we go!

[as previously posted on Good Vibrations Sexy Mama Blog]

So this is it. I'm blogging some of the crazy, hilarious, poignant and precocious conversations that I've been having with my eight- and six-year-old daughters and other parents, mostly mothers. Some of these conversations have been awkward, but all of them have been learning opportunities. Teaching moments if you will.

To give you a little bit of background, I am a mom... but before becoming a mom, I lived another life. Many years ago when I was in undergrad, I studied psychology and women's studies, and decided I wanted to be a sex therapist. Well, I didn't want to go back right away to grad school and, as it usually happens, life had a different plan for me. I started a career that I liked, married my college sweetheart, bought a house, moved to New York City, and then relocated to Germany where we started a family.

When both girls were babies I noticed that the Europeans approached sexuality much differently than Americans.  The Germans, for example, call the conversation with children about sex "Aufklaerung" which means The Enlightenment.  I love that!  Seeing and experiencing this first hand as a parent while while living overseas brought me back to my original career goal.  I think things happen for a reason and, despite the slight detour in my initial life plan, I've come full circle; I enrolled in The Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality and I'm back to my plan of being a Clinical Sexologist... only this time a focus of mine will be to help parents talk with their kids about sex.

This parenting thing has given me the opportunity to practice what I preach on the topic of sex education. It's more than practice though. I strongly believe my behavior and my approach toward sexuality with my girls is going to be one that will benefit them and hopefully help them grow up to be sexually healthy adults. The way I hope to approach this is through giving them open, honest, accurate information. I don't know about you but I would much rather have my children come to me instead of going to YouTube or Google or some porn website to get information.

Most parents refer to the conversation about puberty or sex to be "The Talk".  When I hear that I think of a single conversation.  Personally, it's something that I take the opportunity to discuss with them whenever it pops up, for example, a TV show, an advertisement on the street, even a joke they hear.   I've been continually surprised at how much my oldest daughter understands exactly what is going on.  I hope this blog will also show that kids are incredibly curious and ask really good questions when this first starts to become a topic of interest for them.

I don't profess to be perfect in any way. I'm probably going to freak some of you out by the conversations that we have. I'll probably frustrate others that I'm saying anything about the topic. I do believe, however, that if I give my girls all of the information they need about sex and the associated feelings (most importantly feelings!!) that they will then in time make good, healthy decisions about what they choose to do, with whom, and when.

Enjoy! And if you have any comments please feel free to leave them here. Thank you!