I was ten when I found out what “it” was…ie, intercourse.
A friend told me and then, my mom must’ve overheard us, because she rented a video. Not THAT kind of video, a Where Did I Come From video, a cartoon…it was VERY cheesy.
My reaction-EEEEWWWW!!! I’m never getting married!
Of course, later on, I began to rethink that…
Some misconceptions I had:
I didn’t think the penis actually went IN, I thought you just lined it up to the vagina…
I didn’t know it had to be “hard”
I thought that the man PEED…(very common reaction, actually)
I thought the man had to physically STUFF it in there…
I thought you just laid there like that for hours
At age four I said this in church: “But mama, I wanna hear about the SPERM!” in a voice only a child could use. VERY loud and while the priest was pausing in between incantations or whatever.
So yeah, I learned kinda young. And I’ve explained some things to friends (some older) . . . it’s kinda odd to tell someone who’ll be 20 in October about some of these things. But someone’s gotta.
I think I learned most of the biological facts when I was six or seven, from reading library books. I’d picked up a fair amount of info about birth control, AIDS, homosexuality et al. by the time I was ten – mostly from the newspaper. It’s a good thing I was a reader, because my parents told me nothing. My mom gave me a book about menstruation when I was ten – the same one I’d read much earlier – and bought me my first box of pads a year later (two years before I actually needed them, but it could just as easily have been months too late for anything she knew). No discussion, nada. I don’t ever recall her using the word “period” when she did talk about it – it was always “menstruation,” which sounded dreadful, and she never spoke above a whisper. The only information she gave me about birth control – a few days before I left for college – amounted to “Don’t get pregnant, and go to the Health Center if you need any pills.” I think she was very surprised when I told her I wasn’t going to have sex without a condom, in any case.
Needless to say, dorm life was a total shock; I had no idea that other girls talked casually about these things. I also realized for the first time that most of my hall-mates wore tampons, tried them for myself, and knew right away that I was NEVER going to touch another pad as long as I lived. I’m still bitter about the five years I endured those things.
The surprising part is that my mom never used anything but tampons herself. She was also a member of the first class of women to be admitted to Fordham University, a lifelong feminist, and a regular contributor to Planned Parenthood. I’ve never understood why she was so clueless in this matter. It goes without saying that if I have children, they will NOT be raised along the same principles I was; my mom’s approach worked OK for a bookish kid who had no social life 'til college anyway, but it might have been a total disaster with almost anyone else.
I don’t remember ever getting The Talk. Not once. Though, I also don’t remember a time when I didn’t know about sex. I looked at my dad’s Penthouse magazines a few times. I was also reading my grandmother’s romance novels by the time I was in 3rd grade, so I guess “the Talk” was never necessary. THough I do remember when I was about 4 or 5 I asked my mom “Why do people get naked when they have sex?”
She just said “I don’t know.”
But she’s always been pretty open about it. Though I remember the night she actually found out I was having sex. That’s a night, I NEVER EVER want to live through again. EVER.
I was about six and I asked my mom about something related. Somethink cute like ‘where do babies come from?’. She sat me down and gave me the physical lowdown. She also said that sex was not bad but that it is something that two people who love each other very much do. She did this to instill in me the value of sex and so that she knew I had the facts straight. She didn’t want me hearing about it from the wrong people, or worse, never really getting the truth until I had learned myself. I am really glad she did this.
I would say to any parent that when your kids first bring it up talk to them about it. Tell them what they need to know in words they can understand. Give them the beginnings of the values they need about sex so that they aren’t 13, or 14 and making the wrong choices.
I learned about reproduction when I was about 4. I can hardly remember the talk. It was pretty dry stuff about sperm and eggs, my mom didn’t let on that it was actually fun.
I picked up the fun part from my friends a few years later. It’s strange to me now to think of all of the dirty jokes and rhymes I knew as a kid (“I got a communication from the board of education, to do an operation on a girl…”).
I didn’t realize what orgasms were until I was about 10 or so. That’s when I think I really started to get a clue as to what sex and reproduction was all about.
Gotta put my vote in for talking to kids about it as soon as they can understand it or show curiousity about it. In many ways it’s bigger deal to the parent than it is to the kid (at least until they hit puberty). Yeah, it’ll make you a little red faced (“mommy and daddy did what?”), but learning about sex from loving parents won’t take any of their innocence away.
Drain, I think the parents should take a cue from his/her child. If a 5 year old asks how babies are made, you should give them a straight answer without making a big deal out of it. Of course, if they are 5 you go into far less technical detail (“a special place inside a mommy”) than you would an 8-year old simply because you don’t want to overload their brains with complicated concepts.
But I don’t think first grade is an unreasonable age to be ignorant of baby-making basics.
Personally, I learned the technical details in 7th grade. I would have much preferred being given a book that I could read in my own time in my own space. I just don’t think that learning is especially conducive to a classroom environment, where kids are mortified by EVERYTHING, let alone a schematic drawing of a penis.