Condoms for the young and restless

In My Humble Opinion
1

A good friend of mine was lamenting the fact that her grandson has recently had his thirteenth birthday. On his birthday, he was caught making out with a thirteen year old girl. My friend suggested to her daughter that she and her husband should maybe have “the talk” with her grandson; she was horrified to learn that the talk had already taken place and that the boy had been provided with condoms. She maintains the boy is much too young for “all that.” I think the boy’s mother, whom I know, has shown much more common sense than I would have credited her having. I approve of what she and her husband did.

But I’d like other opinions, too.

2

I got the following email this morning:

A girl asks her boyfriend to come over Friday night to meet, and have dinner
with her parents. Since this is such a big event, the girl announces to her
boyfriend that after dinner, she would like to go out and make love for the first
time.

The boy is ecstatic, but he has never had sex before, so he takes a trip to
the pharmacist to get some condoms. He tells the pharmacist it’s his first
time and the pharmacist helps the boy for about an hour.

He tells the boy everything there is to know about condoms and sex.

At the register, the pharmacist asks the boy how many condoms he’d like to
buy, a 3-pack, 10-pack, or family pack.

The boy insists on the family pack because he thinks he will be rather busy,
it being his first time and all.

That night, the boy shows up at the girl’s parents house and meets his
girlfriend at the door. “Oh, I’m so excited for you to meet my parents,
come on in!”

The boy goes inside and is taken to the dinner table where the girl’s
parents are seated. The boy quickly offers to say grace and bows his head.

A minute passes, and the boy is still deep in prayer, with his head down.
10 minutes pass, and still no movement from the boy.

Finally, after 20 minutes with his head down, the girlfriend leans over and
whispers to the boyfriend, “I had no idea you were this religious.”

The boy turns, and whispers back, “I had no idea your father was a
pharmacist.”

3

wow, thats a great joke, absolutely hilarious. I can almost feel his pain.

LouisB, I think that is great common sense on the part of the boys parents. They should be applauded for being so wise.

Fry

4

Yep. You can’t learn early enough how to not get pregnant. Well, make someone pregnant in this case, but the principle is much the same.

5

It’s not too young for having the talk, but I wouldn’t provide my thirteen year old with condoms.

6

Yeah, I think they’re smart. First of all, I don’t think there should be one “The Talk”. How awkward is that? Most kids just can’t absorb it all in one go, and most parents can’t come up with a complete lesson plan including plumbing, logistics and emotional ramifications all at once. I prefer to do it in bits and pieces, as the subject comes up. A 2 year old with a pregnant mother doesn’t need a condom lesson, but he can sure learn that “Mommy’s got a baby growing inside her, and when it comes out, you’ll be a big brother!” Zip, end of “Talk”. Most kids are quite a bit older before they think to ask how the baby got in there.

I think my son was about 9 when we were walking along the street and saw a (used) condom. He said, “Yuck, that balloon looks gross!” and I said, “Actually, it’s a condom. Men put it over their penis if they want to have sex and not make a baby or get a disease. But yeah, yuck! Why is it here, do you think?” and from there the conversation naturally drifted to abandoned shoes on the side of the road.

Year 10 was the year of female mysteries. I initiated that one simply by asking him to retrieve me a pad and mentioning I had my period and wasn’t it a relief to have this handy alert system once a month to know I wasn’t pregnant. Asked him if he’d learned about it in school, corrected a few errors in his education, and that was that.

Somewhere around 11 we had A Talk about emotional complications brought on by sex. I said something like, “Relationships are so hard even before you bring sex into it. Some people think sex will make someone love them, some people actually fall out of love once they have it - it’s all just so complicated. I really recommend practicing relationships before making them even harder with sex.”

At 13, I let him know where the condoms are kept, and that while I still thought he was young for it, I’d rather he was physically and financially safe if that’s what he chose to do. I also pointed them out in the drugstore, and also mentioned the water based lubricants that are safe for condom use (and that vaseline isn’t.) While I didn’t exactly hand him a box, I want to make sure he has the information he needs to be responsible.

At 14, I remind him once in a while that I was only 3 years older than he when I conceived him. That grosses him out well and good! :smiley:

7

it often amazes me the amount of stupidity and ignorance in this world. I’m not a parent (thanks in part to MY parents not being afraid to have these talks with me, starting in about 5th grade) so I can’t see it in the same light as parents, but I see absolutely no reason to shield your children from this information. It’s part of what makes so many people grow up to see sexual behavior as something bad, and makes them feel ashamed or embarrassed to buy condoms at all. I had friends back in high school and college (and some even now post-school!) who are having unprotected sex simply because they couldn’t deal with the humiliation of going to the drug store and buying protection. Wouldn’t it be just as humiliating to buy medicine for your sore throat, or buying shaving/waxing equipment? Or even buying soap, since it’d be admitting to the total stranger behind the counter that you smell bad sometimes! I mean jeez, condoms are something to PREVENT diseases. As long as people are young and horny, they’re going to fool around. While the best option is teaching them to be responsible with their decisions, even if they are spur of the moment, it’s better to give them the OPTION of having condoms rather than saying “have sex, and you’re on your own”. I had condoms in my room for about 2 years before I ever had the chance to use them, so trust me, giving your kids condoms isn’t going to make them run out and have sex immediately!

8

I think all kids should be given condoms at 12 or 13. Specifically because they’re too young for sex at that age, so it’s still somewhat abstract (although there are certainly 13 year olds having sex). It gets a lot weirder when the kids get older and have boy/girlfriends, at which point I expect most parents would have a harder time spontaneously handing over a pack of condoms.

Any parent who thinks that providing their kid with birth control is going to make them have sex when they wouldn’t have otherwise needs to look at the teen sex and pregnancy statistics sometime.

9

I think they did good.

First of all, there’s no such thing as “The Talk”, or at least there shouldn’t be. There has to be an ongoing dialogue. If sex is something that can only be discussed in hushed tones, how is your kid ever going to feel comfortable asking you questions? And you want them to get their info from YOU, right?

My daughter has known where I keep the condoms since she was old enough to ask what they were, and a couple of years ago I showed her how to use them. After all, there’s no point to handing a condom to a kid without showing him or her how to put it on and take it off.

10

My son is 13. We’ve had many talks. Sex is one of the only things on his mind, it seems. This past weekend he used the term (jokingly) “friend with benefits”.

11

Heh. I prefer to think of it as bragging. “Yep, I’m getting laid tonight! Yes siree! Better get the 12 pack, it’s a long weekend!” :smiley:

12

I’ll admit it-- I despise the attitude towards Casual Sex that many people take today. And I hate the scorn many people show towards abstinence and programs designed to promote abstinence.

But on the other hand, my practical side thinks that because Casual Sex is ubiquitous in our society, we need to teach everyone how to practice safe sex. How to avoid disease and pregnancy. The consequences of ignorance are tremendous.

Persons who choose NOT to have sex are not harmed by having knowledge about where to obtain birth control, and related topics.

13 strikes me as young, but there is some definite merit to taking a combined aproach–hand out the condoms, talk about it, and limit alone time with the girlfriend.

And by all means, encourage your child to wait–talk about the risks that condoms will fail, the emotional consequences of sex, the likelihood that some of the friends who are bragging haven’t done as much as they say they have, etc.

13

13 seems about right to me. I plan on taking my daughter to the gyno to talk about birth control at that age, and giving my son condoms would go along with that (funny, I hadn’t much thought about that part). I don’t expect them to be having sex at that age; that’s the whole point. I want it to seem completely normal, so that when the situation does finally occur they don’t even have to think twice about it. It’s already in place, it’s done. I hope they both wait until they are 20 to have sex, but if they don’t I want to be a certain as possible there are no pregnancies or diseases (and if there are I want them to know they can come to me about that too).

All this shame and fear that surrounds sex causes nothing but problems.

14

Another vote for having “the talk” before age 13.

Here in Egypt, the local culture is quite conservative, sexually and in many other ways. And yet even here, the media recently quoted a respected sociologist/sexologist who said you really need to talk to your children about sex by the time they are 10. That’s pretty amazing.

My son is 9, and far more interested in the pure biology than the – er – social aspects of sex. In addition to the biological facts, I try to make sure he understands two things: (1) the reason people get so interested in the subject of sex is, IT FEELS GOOD. (This is the dimension that was missing from my sex education many years ago.) (2) There are three super-important rules to remember if you engage in sex: avoid unwanted pregnancy; avoid disease; and do you best not to hurt people’s feelings.

All in all, pretty simple messages. I try to get them across by cheerful repetition at appropriate moments, rather than harping/serious special lectures.

Sounds to me like the parents described in the OP have a similarly sensible approach, but for a 13 rather than a 9 year old. Good for them.

15

I don’t think that very many people feel scorn for abstinence, or even for programs designed to promote abstinence. Speaking for myself, I only scorn programs that refuse to acknowledge that some people *won’t * choose abstinence, and educate them accordingly.

I’ve always told my daughter that she’s better off waiting to have sex, for a million physical and emotional reasons. What I will *not * tell my daughter, and will smack anyone else for telling my daughter, is that having sex, in any amount, diminishes her worth as a human being.

16

Thanks for the replies. I’m glad so many of you think the kid’s mother did well. The grandmother and I have been very good friends for more than thirty years so I’ve witnessed a lot of the daughter’s growing up. As I said, I wouldn’t have credited her with having so much common sense regarding her son but I’m very glad she did.

17

In 1996 I spent the summer working in a convenience store. We sold condoms, but they were kept behind the counter so customers had to request them.
I was trained by a woman in her mid 20’s. She told me that the store’s official rule was that you weren’t supposed to sell condoms to anyone under 18yrs old.
:eek:
She also told me that in her opinion, anyone under 18 who was bold enough to ask for them certainly deserved to be sold some and that the policy was stupid. I agreed.

If anyone asked me if 13yrs old is too young to require birth control, I’d simply tell them about the 13yr old mother in my 7th grade class. It happens.

18

When I was in 6th grade, there was a scandal when one of the high school guys got a 7th grade girl (13 y.o.) pregnant. They dropped out of school and got married. That summer, one of my deeply religious classmates got pregnant at 12. Abstinence is fine, but you have to teach kids what they’re abstaining from. To often, abstinence seems to be about keeping people ignorant about sex, to the point where they don’t realize when they **are **having sex. 13 is not too young, either for The Talk or condoms, and especially how unexpected pregnancy can totally change your life.

19

If my mom tried some of this stuff on me I would have locked myself in my room with my fingers in my ears. There’s something to be said for assuming the kid is smart enough to know condoms are a good thing.

20

And I’d like to assume my 3yr old is smart enough to know not to play with matches. The fact is it’s not a safe assumption, and the ramifications of unprotected sex are too high to worry about potential embarrassment.