When To Tell Kids About Sex

I'll never forget this day when I was eleven years old for as long as I live. The memory is locked in my head because it has lots of unique circumstances surrounding the time and it's the first time I came into contact with the notion of personal mortality. Our family had just moved from the Hemlock house, a house I loved more than anything in the whole wide world because it had a huge front yard and my best friend Tara lived right around the corner. The added pleasure of living in this house was that, the street was flat and long which meant our Mother could see us from one end of the street to the other end. There was nothing more frustrating for me as a kid than to live somewhere with low visibility but on Hemlock my brother and I could ride our bikes or simply walk up and down the street. But all that freedom came to a halt when we moved to Green Road.
Green Road was and still is public housing which meant two things. One it was a townhouse or what I referred to as an over-sized apartment because the walls seemed paper thin and I hated the sound of other people's lives echoing within our house. Luckily we were on the end, so only one neighbor to contend with and who ever designed the place made it nearly sound proof by aligning everything on the opposite side of the attached wall. Looking back I can appreciate the shear brilliance of the architect, whoever the person was. And Green Road had a playground right in front of our house but the place was slightly hilly. It was located on a main road and riding our bikes on that sidewalk made our mother nervous so there would be no bike riding unless we snuck out and did it when our Mother was at work which did happen time and time again.
The blessing and curse of being a latchkey kid is that you took care of yourself after school but when things went wrong you had to fend for yourself and let's be for real as a kid when disaster struck I was more scared than anything and thinking about solutions was the last thing on my mind even if it meant I was going to get in trouble when my mother returned home. But then there was this day when disaster struck, not the normal kid stuff but what I thought was the end of my life.
I went to go to the bathroom and there were spots of blood on the seat of my panties. It was the moment of truth for me because blood meant only one thing, at least according to television it meant death. Looking down at the stains which could of only come from my body, I thought I was dying. Surprisingly I took it fairly well and didn't panic. In fact, I went to great lengths to hide the panties and kept the information to myself. I guess I was okay with dying because I knew I hadn't been the most obedient child in the world and I didn't want my mom to know because I didn't want to disappoint her. Actually I didn't want her to think that my being bad was her fault, so I would throw away each pair of reddened underwear.
I kept waiting for death but the day was taking longer than I expected and then a small miracle happened. My aunt Janice was over to the house one day and I guess I had run out of the bathroom so fast I forgot to flush the toilet. This habit of forgetting to flush the toilet would rear its head every now and then in my adult life. I was probably in a hurry to play outside and considering the low number of days I had to live, well I had to play as much as possible before dying. I was having a good time outside when my aunt called me inside. She and my mother were sitting in the living room when she asked me if I was having my period. I didn't know what a period was and must of looked really confused because I witnessed a slight chuckle from my aunt. Her controlled laughter was a good sign because it meant that the situation wasn't as serious as it seemed. I mean never was I called into the house to talk to two adults in the same living room that was off limits to us kids.
I would learn that day what a period was and it would also explain why I wasn't allowed to be in the room when the teacher talked about human reproduction and sexual health. My mother had signed a note indicating she did not want me to be in the classroom but what was most important about that discussion where my aunt did all the talking and my mother just sat there in quiet terror, was that I learned I wasn't dying. The speckles of blood that covered my panties were part of life, a part of womanhood and can be dealt with accordingly. I would come to love my aunt Janice more than anything else because in essence she saved my life, she talked to me like a human being and she took away night full of terror that I would not awake but be dead in the morning.
So when should parents talk about reproductive health and sex? I would say it needs to be a constant conversation from the time they start to talk because an eleven year old child shouldn't look down at her underwear one day and discover blood but then have to translate the irregular event. My translation was death and as a kid I shouldn't have had to do that work of trying to figure it out myself. And nothing was more embarrassing than sitting outside of my classroom for several hours for several days in a row while all and I do mean all of the other kids were being educated about reproductive health. I find it interesting that my mother didn't want to talk to me about it but then wouldn't allow me to learn what I needed to know from other adults. Had my aunt not been persistent and had she not stumbled upon the residue of blood in the toilet, lord knows where I would be today.
I didn't learn everything about sex that day, sex was only hinted at but I was forcibly told that because of my period I could now have a baby which seemed odd since I still liked playing with my dolls. However, I was given options for how to handle my monthly visitor. I refer to the event as red rivers flowing, I guess it connects me to water in my Aquarian nature. The odd thing was that I had no cramps, had I had cramps, I might of had a different experience but who knows, this is only speculative in hind sight. The sad part is that I wouldn't really learn about sex from my mother until I was pregnant which is to say that she told when it was too late.
As a mother I guess I over compensated with the whole sex thing and was verbal about it from the time my children could talk, I didn't want them to experience a sense of dying and I didn't want my daughter pregnant at a young age like me. I had help with discussing baby making with my twins when they were four because that's when I became pregnant again. My mother was appalled when she learned I had told the kids about sex and where babies come from, she felt my children were too young. I didn't go into lots of detail but I conjured up some four-year-old language to explain as best I could without reeling the kids into adulthood too fast. I was creative and if I've learned anything in life, that is to be creative with my parenting. Kids live in a different world than the one I grew up in and I had to honor and respect that but it was nice to go to the bookstore and discover books that told kids about their genitalia. So, I bought books, coloring books and consulted with my friends and came up with the talk. I shared different things about the subject over time. My kids were inquisitive and once I broach a subject they would question me to death, they would force the subject beyond the basics and I felt if they were bright enough to ask, they deserved an answer.
My daughter would get her greatest lesson about baby making the day I went into labor. She was home with me along with her brother but he was frightened with all of my screaming in pain. My daughter wanted to comfort me, what is it in the genetic material of women, that warrants their need to comfort even at the age of four? I digress but she decided she would hold my hand and tell me to breathe. Her tender face, her small hands made me realize how precious life could be but when the pain struck, I did the only thing I knew to do. I squeezed her hand really tightly in an effort to transfer the pain, it was reactionary and not intentional but I remember the look of terror on her face when the pain subsided and I recall her looking at her hand. Her hand had gone limp from my applying way too much pressure but in the spirit of love, she shook her hand and put back within mine. I would learn later that I had scared her a bit. She would tell me that if what she felt in her hand was remotely similar to what I was experiencing just before having a baby, well she would probably not have a baby.
At four years old, my daughter learned that having babies was painful and I'm not so sure that's the image I wanted her to be left with because although at the time I wasn't thinking about grand children, I secretly hoped she would not be deterred from having children. She's twenty one know and she's career focused. I tell her what I told her then, it only hurts for a short while and then it's over. Baby making is phenomenal in that way, you're in some of the worst pain of your life but then when that baby arrives, the contractions are instantly a distant memory.
My children tell me way too much about their sex lives but I guess that has come as a result of my openness about the subject. I do appreciate their commitment to safety and I'm humbled to be the person they can share this information with because they know I will not judge them. I love that open communication and information has proven to be the thing that has made them responsible around their sexual health and wellness. I'm more than confident that they are who they are because I told them the truth, I gave them information and mostly importantly, I let them know that sex is a part of life like everything else. I wanted them to know the joy of sex, the importance it will play in their lives as it pertains to bringing forth offspring as well as providing them with occasional physical pleasure.
There is this fear that information means we are condoning or we are inspiring our kids to have sex. First and foremost, we don't have to say a thing and our children will one day have sex, there's no if and ands or buts about this fact. What I love about telling my kids about sex is that I could also tell them about the bad sex and the sex I had irresponsibly. In those moments my children understood my humanness as well as my ability to make mistakes but their father, their absent father was the greatest educator. I used his absence to hone in a point about sex and the importance of making sure, the importance of waiting before having sex with someone until they were pretty certain about the love because I told them that there is nothing worse in life than a broken heart. When you talk honestly about a broken heart, it transcends everything, it connects you to your children in ways incomprehensible. I told them the best gift from that love affair was their birth but I told them our lives would be different had I ensured over time their fathers ability to be committed. But I tell them always, there are no mistakes just miracles and they are my miracles.
In the words of Audre Lorde, "your silence won't protect you." Our kids deserve to be talked to openly and honestly. Our children deserve to get all the information so that they can make informed decisions but more than that our children need to hear from us our success as well as our short comings. People don't learn from perfection, they learn from mistakes, they learn that if they should fall because you may not fall but if you do, here is an example of how someone else got back up, how someone else gathered the strength to move on and do better. I love my children enough to know they will do their best and in the end that's good enough for me because it is their life and I want them to live in the fullness of their destiny, whatever divine plan God has in store for them.
I am perfect and I am whole and I am complete. I LOVE ME!