FTR: I’m fine w spiders in my bathroom. And pretty much everywhere else. Although I did have the exterminator take care of a massive brown recluse infestation in my basement once. I was fine with them until he showed up and told me what species they were. He wasn’t fine with them at all. Not one little bit.
It’s evident (to me at least) that the OP’s wife is squeamish about sex, or about her relationship with her neighbors via her/their kids. She is trying hard, perhaps desperately hard, to avoid dealing with their growing boy and everything related to sex.
I was trying to come up with a stereotypical example of a squeamish wife unable to deal with a common but distasteful household chore, so the man is obligated to gird his loins and get it done. I picked spiders in bathrooms, a room where certain women feel especially vulnerable, being often naked and all.
Mindful of course of the dangers of reinforcing silly gendered stereotypes.
I don’t know that my effort contributed much to the thread, but that’s what I was thinking.
Me three (and I’m a guy). I don’t recall my first ejaculation. Then again, I was sexually molested at a very young age, so I was “sexualized” (and began masturbating) at like 7 or 8, so I’m an outlier.
Can you give an example? I’m struggling to think of some issue that parents had sexually that they could appropriately share with their kids. It seems to me that some things might be shareable once kid gets married themselves (e.g. talking about the ebb and flow of marital relations and how it can be important to keep the spice alive), but in terms of healthy youth development, I’m thinking that kids don’t need adult companions.
In fact, there are lots of examples of bad outcomes for irresponsible sexually active teenagers (ranging from embarrassment and shame to unwanted pregnancy and venereal disease) which I think would resonate better.
I think that the notion of “the Talk” is inherently flawed. Children shouldn’t get one singular Talk. They should be getting information from the course of many, many different talks over the course of their lives, as the subject comes up and becomes relevant, and at the level appropriate to their understanding and development.
Sure! “When I was in high school, back when mammoths roamed the plains, there was this girl I had dated a couple times and then my friend Larry invited her to prom. I got so mad at both of them, I said some thing that pretty much ruined my relationship with both of them. So one problem with romantic feelings is that they can be so strong that the fear of having them taken away makes people hurt folks that they care about. And that’s something to keep in mind when someday when you’re older you fall in love, that when their behavior seems weird and hurtful, it’s often because they’re afraid and acting out of fear”.
Don’t make it some Huge Thing that stands out. Talk about it as a normal part of life. Bodies are a normal part of life. Physical anatomy and responses are a normal part of life. Relationships are a normal part of life.
(I would add, ditto for misuse-of-drugs discussions. Talk about ingesting unknown substances, and when appropriate specific known ones, like you’d talk about not running out into the street in front of a truck, and how to properly cross streets. And starting with really young kids who need to learn not to take other people’s meds in the same fashion in which they need to learn not to grab a hot pan barehanded.)
I feel (as a non-parent) a little out of my depth suggesting what a parent should or should not do, so I’m only speaking to my personal experience as a young adult. I think that a lot of it should be tailored to the particular -child-. I was something of a late bloomer apparently by the standards of the thread, and wasn’t really interested in sexuality prior to around 12 (which may, May, MAY be similar to the female parent in the OP and affecting their judgement). But, I did get basic sex ed in school at 11 (5th grade) and probably 6ish months prior to that my parents had gotten me both an explicit yet cartoony book on sex including the physicallity (yes it was cartoony, but accurate) as well as a much longer book on the nitty gritty details of human sexual maturity and changes for both men and women.
(I was and very much still am a nerdy book lover who would rather read a ream of material rather than sit through a boring, titter filled class with a bunch of my “peers”)
Touching on another good (IMHO) point in this thread, they repeatedly followed up over the next couple of years asking if I had questions, if my friends/schoolmates were getting good information or bad (and then sharing it with me) and, as it was the mid 80s, explicitly saying that if wanted to start experimenting with a partner that they wouldn’t question it, but demanded the use of a condom which they would happily buy for me rather than deal with the alternative.
My folks have their own flaws and issues, but this was NOT one of them as far as I was concerned.
As suggested above, I’m surprised parents would feel the need for a single “talk.” I found gardening one of the most educational things to share with my kids when they were young, and gardens are all about sex. And if you establish the practice of honestly answering any questions your kids ask, you’ll have covered things pretty well.
I remember one time, one of my kids - probably aged 5-8 - asked something like “Where do babies come from?” So I proceeded to answer in considerable detail. By the time I was well past penises and vaginas and getting down to x and y chromosomes, my eldest said something like “Dad, we just wanted to confirm that they grew inside the mommy!”
Nobody’s arguing that no young children have seen dogs mating; or even that none of them associated that behavior with human sex. But many other children have never seen dogs mating; and not all those who have associate dogs on top of each other with human bodies. Especially if their parents are telling them ‘the dogs are just playing’ and playing dogs do get on top of each other in various ways.
And even for those kids who have seen dogs mating, and figured out what was happening – that is not sufficient sex education for a human child!
“See kid, that’s one style we use. Got any more questions, you be sure to hit up your ole’ Uncle here. Now go get me another beer.”
This is totally not what I thought you were referring to.
Sure, when discussing relationships, it can be natural to mention the parents’ experiences and how they had to work through them. But I thought you were referring to sex itself (like “the angle of your dad’s penis made doggy uncomfortable for him. That’s why it’s important to have good communication with your partner.”)
As I mentioned upthread, my initial discussion with my four year old son was about chickens fucking - “Daddy, why is that chicken jumping on the other chickens back?”
It need not be dogs, or chickens or tortoises, but nature happens. Kids see. Or hear. Cats are no match for tortoises in the “we are having sex loudly” game but cats are everywhere, and they have sex to ensure that status continues.
Unless you live in a place with no natural or domestic animals at all, which would be bizarre.
Sex is never just sex. If it were, it would not need to be a subject for much of any kind of talk. As others have said upthread, it’s about consent, and appetite, and pregnancy and reproduction, and promise-making, and honesty and self-awareness and a whole slew of other things.
But nevertheless it can be about sex itself.
I didn’t mean to imply that sex per se was not among the things where parental experience is worth passing on, for instance: “There’s a lot of social attention on performance. What me and your Dad figured out after a lot of trial and error is that the best performances usually happen when you’re not thinking at all about performance and instead you’re giggling and having fun, or being naughty and teasing each other. People who focus on technique and concentrate on doing this thing exactly just so and that thing to perfection are usually not having much fun, and it shows, and people who worry about doing everything just so are too busy worrying to laugh and nuzzle noses and have fun with it”.
Moriarty, is this an “ick factor” kind of thing that you’re driving at? If that’s relevant, then yeah, parents (or other similarly-situated adults) giving this later variant on “the talk” do not need to make it personal in a way that has the kid going “eww, brain bleach, please shut up!”, but it’s still passing on information that comes from personal experience if you see what I mean.
That is one aspect that a lot of traditional explanations about the mechanics of puberty and sex tend to leave out. I still laugh when I think about a sleepover I had with two close friends when I was about 9 years old. They were a brother and sister who were close, and thus their knowledge and world view overlapped a lot.
Anyway, we got to talking about how people “did it,” and the siblings had more knowledge than I did (fairly accurate, mechanically speaking, as I recall). They explained how PIV sex worked, but I was doubtful - after all, who would want to do THAT? At best it would be boring and probably uncomfortable (what if you had to pee?).
The siblings agreed that it did sound pretty far-fetched. We talked about it more, and came to the conclusion that if you really, reallyreally REALLY wanted to have a baby, and you really, reallyreally REALLY loved the other person, maybe you could stand to do it … once.
I was careful to educate my son a bit more realistically. I told him from the start that sex is (or should be, and there is something wrong if it isn’t) pleasurable.
Yes, of course you can use that for a lead in to questions about sex. (Though chickens aren’t going to answer any question about human, or even mammalian, genitalia.)
I have lived with cats all my life. I don’t think I ever saw cats having sex until I was in middle age. Most of the cats of my childhood were neutered, and the cats of my early adulthood had to escape the house to get laid (which some of them did; but they didn’t do it in my sight.)
Cats yelling at each other in the middle of the night outside aren’t used by all parents as a takeoff point for sex instruction. Some parents just say ‘the cats are fighting, go back to sleep.’
And again – cats are a bad source to use for human sex ed, other than as a takeoff point and a general ‘mammals do this, and yes male cats have a penis even though you can’t see one’. Cats don’t menstruate or have inconvenient erections, humans don’t go in and out of heat, most (though not all) female cats will take on all comers including however many toms can get to them and including their brothers and fathers, feline sex is very often preceded by physical battles between/among tomcats, and cats absolutely do not judge.
I lived out in the country and saw multiple species of animals and I had no idea until I was at least 7 or 8 that humans came with more than one type of genitalia. And I have some indication from my memory that some little boys must not have known that either.
Do not, do not, do not assume that a child has learned on their own any particular piece of information. Let alone that whatever information they do have is either accurate or complete enough to serve the purpose.
Yes, this, a thousand times this. I went for years knowing how babies were made but with no acquaintance with the notion that there was an appetite for it and that it feels good and that it’s fun. So when I started having certain feelings, I had no idea they had anything to do with that.