You aren’t using all the Dad superpowers. Try **boredom through overexplanation **:
"Dad, what’s a virgin? "
" A virgin is someone who has never had sex. The term can also be used to describe anything that is clean or unstained, or something that has never been used. For example, virgin white snow is snow no one has walked in, while a virgin wilderness is an area where no one has explored, and a virgin forest would have had no logging. What do you think extra virgin olive oil means? "
“Um…the olives aren’t picked?”
“no, try again”
" The olives were from a forest that hadn’t been logged? "
“Good thought, but it turns out to mean that its the first olive oil that comes out of the olive press, the olive squashing machine. Funny thing about olives, you can’t just eat them off the tree…”
Conversation wanders off to horticulture. It’s helpful to take a deep breath at the beginning, so that there are no pauses.
Sorry, dude, but I don’t think the questions are going to get any easier than that one. Maybe you should look for a book for dads on how to talk to daughters about sex - I’m sure there is one.
Good on ya for manning up and doing what needs to be done. And I *totally *understand. My neices and nephews know I’ll answer any question, and seem to get major amusement out of the many shades of red I can get when embarressed.
Wait until you get to explain that Johnny isn’t marching home for the local PRIDE parade…
Assuming that school kids still sing When Johnny Comes Marching Home, as we did when I was that age.
Yeah, I agree. I don’t get when adults get so flustered/freaked out by questions of sex. If they’re young enough to ask they won’t get embarrassed if you just tell them that a virgin is a person who hasn’t had sex. And if they don’t know about sex–why not? Is it going to rock a five or seven year old’s mind to know that a man’s penis gets hard and he puts it into a woman’s vagina and that’s how they have sex?
I started menstruating when I was 10. My mother handed me a booklet about this event (which was thoughtfully supplied by a sanitary napkin company)(back in those days, we didn’t HAVE mini and maxi pads, we had napkins which we fastened to elastic belts) and told me to wrap my used napkins in newspapers, not in toilet tissue, because we were going to throw the newspapers away anyway. During middle school (grades 7 and 8) I got it into my head that if a boy or man touched me when I was having my period, I could get pregnant. I was very careful to avoid any male’s touch during those times, as I’d heard a lot about unwed mothers (all bad), and I didn’t want to become one.
You see, I’d read that the Virgin Mary had been “untouched by a man”, or something like that, and I thought that this meant a literal touch, not that she had not had sex.
Actually this thread reminded me that it was a Ramona book where I learned the word varlet.
As in ‘shut up varlet, yonder car approacheth, our noble mother cometh.’ At least I think that’s the line, it’s the only thing I could remember. I knew it was from a book I read as a kid but couldn’t think of what it was.
Apologies to the OP for the hijacking, but that had bugged me for years.
Anaamika, Cat Whisperer, & Freudian Slit, I’m glad that you are able to talk about sex with your kids without any embarassment or discomfort. I cannot. As I’ve said, I have and will answer their questions, but questions out of the blue (like those inspired by a religious Christmas carol) will still throw me for a few seconds. If my wife is around, I will still usually try to redirect the question to her, because (a) she isn’t embarrassed or uncomfortable, and (b) due to her being a nurse, I think she’s better equipped to answer such questions. Just like when my oldest was practicing her multiplication tables and discovered that (n+1)(n-1) = n[sup]2[/sup]-1 and asked my wife why, she punted that question right over to me.
