Nobody said you couldn’t have an opinion about it. My point is, parenting is more nuanced than learning that my job is to talk to my children about life. It’s just not that black and white. Of course you’re entitled to opine that a parent is supposed to decide ahead of time whether they really should have become a parent if they don’t want to discuss certain topics with their children. Of course you’re entitled to have opinions on whether what the administration is doing in Iraq is right or wrong.
By the same token, I think it’s reasonable for a parent to see your advice as extremely superficial. I’m supposed to talk to my children about life? Gee, what an insight. Once you become a parent (theoretically), you’ll discover that all of the well-established plans you had about how you would raise your kids and how you’d handle every situation can be so much more complex than you ever dreamed. Similarly, while I can think my nation’s leaders are a bunch of boobs at times, I’m certain the real situation is much more complex than what gets filtered down to me, the general public.
Which is why I didn’t attack you for having your opinion; I just wrote that it made me chuckle in a “wait 'til she sees what it’s really like” sort of way.
I always go with the TMI approach. My kids and I had a long, very detailed discussion when the oldest was 5 or 6 and the youngest was 2 or 3. It obviously didn’t give much info to the younger, but it at least set him up to learn the words and know they were ok to be used and asked about. My biggest mistake was not teaching boundaries of when such things were inappropriate (example: do not ask the lady in front of you at the checkout if she has a vulva).
So now when the Viagra commercial comes on I don’t have to go into the whole how and why, I can give minimal info (it helps men that have trouble getting their penises up for sex) because I’ve given background and I can go back to the game.
I also got the very special chuckle moment of seeing it dawn on my son’s face when he put together what we had talked about and realizing that to have had children his mother must have had sex. And with more than one person (two marriages = two baby daddies).
As for the discomfort, here’s the thing: when stuff like that comes on I don’t bat an eye if it’s in front of my kids. Neither do they. If I were with my dad, though, I would be extremely uncomfortable because my parents absolutely did not talk like that when I was growing up. That is why I always suggest “more info is better” - because that feeling of discomfort is really bothersome and I’m happy that I don’t have to deal with that right now.
I am sure the teenage years will make me cringe a bit though…
bows Thank you, much. The scary part is that while this may be a more extreme example, this kind of conversation is essentially par for course in the Orange Household. I should have Mudshark tell his “the first time I went to Orange Skinner’s house” story sometime…
From what I can remember, they sort of exchanged the “what is wrong with our child” look, and then my mom said, “Yes, you could…but why would you want to?”
He thought about it for a few seconds and said, “It seems like a good place to put it.”
I think this was either one of the first questions he asked or one of the last, and in either case, he was trying to ease the “I’m going to get The Talk/I have just sat through The Talk” atmosphere with humor. Either that or, even at that tender young age, he knew there was some creamstick double entendre somewhere in that equation to be had, just wasn’t sure quite how to tease it out. And of course, there’s me, in the other room, thinking about the yeast infection implications and resisting the urge to add that caveat onto my mom’s reply, and mourning the waste of a perfectly good hypothetical doughnut.
I was more worried by the monkey question, myself, though. That one seemed to be a bit more of a…legitimate query.
I’m a little more embarrassed about the ads showing the drugs you can take if you’re a man of a certain age and you have to pee all the time because of your enlarged prostate. Mainly because the younger one asked if her grandmother could take them. “She has to go all the time and it’s really annoying,” Miss Sunshine added. I don’t remember exactly what I said but I’m not sure it sank in.
You are not kidding. We’re flipping between football and the baseball playoffs here and I actually wondered aloud which one was cramming in more commercials for it.
This might not be helpful for you, since I don’t have kids, but I think I would say something like “ED is a medical problem guys get, but some of them are embarassed to talk about it because it has to do with their private parts.” I think that’s about as detailed as you’d need to get for a very small child and s/he would get the concept of the general area being discussed, and why it’s making the guy nervous, but not specifically what it’s for. You could also maybe explain that while women don’t get this specific issue, we have doctors that specialize in our private parts so we’re luckier than men in that regard; that way she won’t be needlessly worried about it for some reason.
