I don’t have any kids, but every time I see one of these erectile dysfunction ads, which can seemingly appear on just about any network at just about any time, I wonder how folks with little kids deal with such things (also including dialogue on certain shows and movies). “What is an erection, mommy?” is a question every parent fears I’m sure.
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard the word “erection” in such an ad. Nor have my kids ever asked about the ads. If they did, I’d say, “In order to have sex, the man’s penis needs to get hard. Sometimes it doesn’t, and this medicine helps his penis get and stay hard so he can have sex when he and his partner want to.”
Oddly enough, the other day pretty much out of the blue, my 14 year old boy said, “Jeez! The guys at school are so ignorant about sex! Can you believe they didn’t even know erectile dysfunction can be caused by high blood pressure?!”
Um…I have no idea what they’re discussing in the school yard, but it doesn’t sound like the sex talks we used to have!
Enzyte doesn’t mention it - especially since it’s a supplement unevaluated by the FDA - but either the Cialis or Levitra commercial does when it says something like, “If you experience an erection lasting more than 4 hours, call your doctor.”
(I don’t have kids, so no need to explain anything here.)
Well, son, when you’re a little older, your pee pee will grow realll big sometimes and when you want to make a baby, you have to put your pee pee in your woman’s hoo hoo. For some big boys, they’re pee pee is broken so they take this little blue pill and it helps them keep their pee pee hard. OK? :rolleyes:
No kids here, either, but considering some of the commericals they’ve had in the past I’d probably say something like “it helps quarterbacks accurately pass the football and Senators run for President.”
“It’s when they vote for parliament in Japan.” 
Dude! You justified my annual $7.98 with a one-liner. 
you. monitor. soda.
Colibri is why I joined the Dope.
On topic; I don’t see anything wrong with explaining what Cialis is for to a kid, given they’re going to find out one day anyway. Just say explain briefly how things have to work and sometimes, they don’t. Cialis is a fix for that. No explicit detail but enough basis for kids to process what’s going on.
My daughter is 21, so if she asked me this now, I’d say “Talk to your father…”
Actually, when she was little, I took advantage of such teaching moments to make sure she knew what’s what. My mom was really embarrassed when we had The Talk (bear in mind, this happened in the 60s and my mom was pretty naive) and I was woefully ignorant for a long time. I was determined that my daughter would know the facts as well as I could present them, tailored to her age, of course.
It is my dream that someday we can turn on the TV and not have to see pixellated :rolleyes: penises on horses and dogs because we accept them as a fact of life. Who knows, maybe eventually we’ll stop getting all spun up at the sight of a female nipple.
Slightly off-topic:
Last Saturday morning, I was visiting a friend. While other people were eating breakfast, I was reading an article about Pope Benedict saying that there is “hope” for children who were not baptized to get into heaven. I read large chunks of the article aloud, and the adults discussed it for a bit.
I must admit that I opted not to read the paragraphs which included the word “abortion”. There were two children present, young enough that I don’t know if they know what the word means, and I just wasn’t comfortable introducing the topic if they didn’t know it.
Why? It’s a normal part of life and nothing to be embarrassed about. I have no problem with ads for Cialis/Viagra/Levitra. They are medicines to treat a legitimate medical problem.
I for one never taught my children cute names for their genitals. We’d play the “Where’s your nose? Where’s your ear? Where’s your chin? Where’s your elbow? Where’s your penis? Where’s your toe? Where’s your shoulder?” game with no particular emphasis on one body part. After all, we don’t have euphemisms for knees, why would we have one for genitalia?
Sorry, I’ll get off my soapbox now.
I love my parents, but they had serious hang-ups about discussing anything sexual, ever. At some point when I was a kid (probably 9 or so, in the late 1970s), I have no idea what was on (standard, network) TV, but the word “erection” was used and not in the construction-related fashion either. I innocently asked my parents what that meant, and their clammed-up, embarassed reaction was enough for me to think I’d done something wrong, and babbled out a backpedaling attempt of something like “Never mind, it doesn’t matter, I don’t care, I just wanna go play.” They didn’t even explain it after they composed themselves, and I was left with this lingering feeling that I’d been bad somehow.
Well good, 'cause there’s barely room for both of us up here!
(Although I did have a bit of a flustered moment the other day when my daughter, aged 2, wanted to help wipe her friend (almost 3) as I was changing his diaper. After all, they wipe each other’s faces and hands…why not his penis? Somehow I just couldn’t see that going over well with the boy’s mom if he went home and told her how WhyBaby wiped his penis. I decided to skirt the issue and asked her to wipe his elbow instead while I finished diapering him.)
Now “blowjob” and “oral sex” was a fun one when that appeared on the nightly news. Not so much because I didn’t know how to explain it, but because of the look of horror on my kid’s face when I said, “Sometimes a grown up will kiss and lick a man’s penis because it feels good.” :eek:
I think that whole thing is seriously messed up.
My parents used “birdie” and “flower,” and one day when out camping there was the inevitable pee-pee parade, and my older brother made reference to his “flower” during the operation. Apparently, my father got really upset and yelled at him, “You don’t have a flower, you have a birdie,” causing a lot of toddler angst and confusion.
Jesus, don’t introduce a bizarre level of abstraction to a simple thing and then freak out when a kid gets confused. :rolleyes:
I do have a funny story when Ivygirl was a toddler. A neighbor was babysitting her and the neighbor’s mother was visiting, and offered to help out by giving Ivygirl her bath. My neighbor was in stitches, because while she was being cleaned up, Ivygirl apparently said quite indignantly, “Don’t touch my vagina!”
Apparently Grandma was quite shocked, but my neighbor couldn’t stop laughing. So, she not only knew the proper word, she knew not to let a stranger touch her there.
Well, you could use that as a lesson in “privacy,” and that certain parts of people’s bodies are off limits. That’s a delicate one, because you don’t want to confuse her, but she should learn that some parts of boys’ bodies and girls’ bodies should not be touched (I’m sure if it were up to her father, those parts would be off limits until she’s 35. )
That’s a good idea. I was basically stalling for time, since I’d rather give a thoughtful response than a knee-jerk one, and I know it’s going to come up again. Thanks for the tip!
I have to echo the question… why is “what is an erection” considered to be a question that “every parent fears”? We explained sex to my son when he was about 7. He’s 11 now and I recently had to explain what oral sex was to him because I didn’t want him repeating the jokes he had heard at school without understanding what the terms meant. I didn’t have a problem with either of these conversations. I didn’t dread them and neither of us was particularly embarrassed about them. Sex is part of life…what is there to get all freaked out over?
Considering my sons have been having erections since they were born, I don’t particularly worry about having to explain it to them. Yeah, they’re going to ask about sex some day, but the thing is, a lot of parents get hung up on thinking they have to do this big hairy sex-ed thing all at once. Keep it simple and do it a little bit at a time as they’re ready for more information.