Butterfly Mind

Tag: we talked to our kids about

We talked to our kids about values

February 2nd, 2015

Last summer, I had big plans on one of our family camping trips. A friend had told me that as she struggled with raising her teen son, she realized she had never talked to him about values. She demonstrates her values to him through her actions, but a lot of times it’s the things we don’t do that demonstrate a value — not throwing cigarette butts on the ground, not taking frustration out on wait staff — and a decision not to do something is often a silent one; it is not always seen or heard, and so there’s no knowing that a guiding principle motivated non-action.

My friend decided to verbalize her values with her son. To discuss them out loud so he knew there were silent judgment calls going on behind the scenes, and that the choices his mom made were not arbitrary but were motivated by a set of fundamental beliefs. I thought this was a brilliant idea, and I couldn’t wait to talk to our kids about it on our next camping trip.

Sometimes I’m not great at these things.

Tiny mushrooms on a wet morning in Appalachia

Caterpillar

Humid Forest, Breaks Interstate Park, Virginia

It was a hot, humid June day and we were at Breaks Interstate Park in the southwest corner of Virginia, where the state butts up against Kentucky. We weren’t impressed with our campground or the park — both were littered with candy wrappers and plastic bottle caps that we griped about and cleaned up — and it was hot enough to wear shorts even at our early morning start. We dripped sweat while we waded through poison ivy our entire 6-hour hike. At some point, we took a wrong turn on the mountain and stirred a nest of sand bees, whose swarm we had to coax our children around to get back on the trail.

We saw all sorts of moisture-loving creatures on the hike, but other than the millipede and fungus highlights, the hike was miserable. It seemed everything was out to get us, and we talked endlessly of poison ivy — how long it takes to start itching, whether the kids will be allergic, can we wash it off, how long do you have before the oils seep into your skin, how much longer is the hike, will there be this much poison ivy the whole way? I wanted off the mountain as much as our kids did: I could handle the poison ivy, the heat, the bees, but I could not handle the incessant questions.

Millipede

Newt on a humid day

Millipede

Snail, Breaks Interstate Park, Virginia

When we got back to the campsite, showered to wash the poison ivy oils away, and were all sitting around in the doldrums of the afternoon — when everyone was too hot and tired to do anything, but was also bored just staring at each other around a not-yet-lit campfire, I thought, aha! Now would be a good time for our talk.

I grabbed my notebook and said, “I know what we can do. I’ve been wanting to talk to y’all about our family values. Do you know what values are?”

My husband is often pained by my cheesy “talks” like this. He tried hard not to roll his eyes. Our 10-year-old son shrugged, and our 8-year-old daughter, ever the pleaser, scrunched her face while she thought, trying to find the answer that would most likely earn her praise. “Things we spend money on?” she finally said.

“Close,” I told her. “Values are the things in our lives that we — value. Things that add depth and richness to our lives. For instance, I value beauty,” I said.

“Me too!” our daughter said.

“I value the beauty in nature and music and literature, and appreciate when people put thought into the aesthetics of a creation, whether a painting or a plate of food.”

I surveyed my family, and while our daughter was eager, my husband and son wondered at the point of this exercise. They are both show-ers, not say-ers.

“So let’s go around the circle and name the things we value,” I said. I looked at our son. He scratched his shin.

“I value pants,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. “Ha. Ha. I’m talking about things that add meaning to our lives. Things we wouldn’t want to live without.”

“I wouldn’t want to live without pants,” my husband said. I sighed.

“Okay,” my son said, and grinned. “Donuts. Donuts add meaning to my life.”

I live in a family of smart asses.

I wrote down donuts on our son’s list, and our daughter said, “Art!”

I scribbled “art.”

“Family,” I said.

“Salt,” said our son.

And on we went, our son finally getting serious about it, as we made our list of values.

Badgley Family Values:

nature
caterpillars
inchworms
calmness
animals
friendship
love
anti-itch cream
Bun Bun
art
swimming
music
beauty
good food
laughter
health
quiet time
respect
hard work
kindness

donuts
pants
being liked
salt
camping
swimming pools
soccer
intelligence
wit
patience
books
romance
pleasure
integrity
honesty
fun
solitude
humor
gentleness
equality

health, fitness
creativity
open-mindedness
quality
cleanliness
an inviting home
intimacy
depth, meaning
compassion
happiness
stability
tolerance
wisdom
trust
reliability
caring
travel
harmony
fairness
feeling loved

My husband was quiet, and when I ran out of paper without a peep from him, I asked, “What about you?”

He thought a minute. “Pretty much everything everyone else has already mentioned,” he said. “And charity.”

I squeezed “charity” into a small open space on the paper.

“When we get home I’ll post these on the fridge,” I said. “And when we’re bored and can’t think of what to do, or if we need help in making a tough decision, we can check in with this list.” They scratched their ankles.

“Thanks for doing that with me, even if it was painful for you,” I said. I closed my notebook and promptly forgot the whole thing. I never posted the list on the fridge.

Apparently, our children forgot about it too. As I finished writing this post, and wondered how to end it, I asked them, “Do y’all remember that time we talked about values?”

They sat in the living room, their faces blank as they turned their eyes from their books to my face. There were no sparks of recognition. “You know,” I said, “we were camping?”

“Oh yeah,” our son giggled. “I said I valued donuts.” He’s still proud of that response.

“Do you ever think about that talk? Did it have any impact on you?”

Both kids shrugged, “Not really,” and stuck their noses back in books.

As I look back on the year since we had our talk, I realize the kids’ behavior didn’t change after verbalizing our values. The actions they take, and the actions they don’t, have always been consistent: they wear pants, they eat donuts, they are gentle and witty, loving and kind.

As hard as it is for me to believe as a talker, it turns out that some things need not be discussed.
We talked to our kids about souls

December 20th, 2014

Swinging Bridge at Babcock State Park, West Virginia

“Hey Mom, are trees living things or living beings?”

Our nine year old son looked into the forest then up at me as we hiked side by side along a gurgling brook. His dad and sister walked a few steps ahead of us. Upstream was the Glade Creek Grist Mill in West Virginia, a rustic wooden building with a pitched roof. Today its wet planks were framed by yellowing autumn trees.

Glade Creek Grist Mill, Babcock State Park, WV October 2013

Glade Creek Grist Mill, Babcock State Park, WV autumn 2013

Glade Creek Grist Mill, Babcock State Park, West Virginia October 2013

Stream with rocks and autumn leaves, Babcock State Park, WV October 2013

“I guess that depends on what you mean by living being,” I said. “I think of a being as — ” I tried to think of words that would be familiar to him. I failed. “As a sentient being — something that has a soul.” The path was littered in gold, red, and toast brown leaves, and I kicked at a drift with my leather hiking shoe.

“Personally, I think of trees as living beings,” I told him, “but I think a lot of people probably think of them as living things.” Our son looked up the mountain into the dripping forest.

“What’s a soul?” he asked.

I sucked in a big breath. “Oh boy,” I said. Up ahead, our daughter twirled a red maple leaf between her thumb and pointer finger. “Your soul, if you believe in souls, is…” I struggled to find words. “It’s the part of you that makes you you.”

“You mean like your personality?” he asked.

“No, the spirit part. The part that is left after you die,” I said, then immediately knew what was going to come next.

“So like a ghost then!” our daughter said.

This was difficult.

“Not quite.” I searched my brain, trying to find language to describe souls to a seven and a nine year old.

“Your soul is the parts of you that aren’t physical,” my husband told them. “Your feelings, memories, friendships. The emotions you feel. Love.”

Our son tilted his head. “But isn’t all that stuff just your brain?”

I looked up to the trees again, hoping for some help. There was no wind; the trees were not talking.

“Yes, that’s one way to look at it,” I said. We like to give our kids a suite of options when it comes to spirituality and religion, to let them know that there is no hard and fast answer. No agreed upon truth that works for everyone all at the same time, and that they get to choose what they believe. “Some people believe that what Dad and I are describing as spiritual — feelings, intuition, love — is purely physical. A series of chemical reactions in our brains, nothing more.”

He kicked at leaves, thinking. I was still stuck on the soul thing. I wasn’t satisfied that we’d explained what a soul is.

“Remember when we talked about reincarnation?” I asked. The kids had asked about religion several months prior, and I told them I thought there are as many paths to God as there are people on earth. Then, in typical over-informative fashion, I gave them synopses of several religions of the world: Christianity and Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism, Wicca, and Islam. The concepts of reincarnation and karma resonated with them more than the idea of heaven and hell did.

Our son’s ambition: to be a bug

“Yeah.” He looked up at me. He remembered the reincarnation talk. “Like I could come back as a bug!” This excited him, the idea of coming back as a bug.

“Remember how I said that when you die some people believe you go to heaven or hell, or in the case of reincarnation, you might come back as something else – another person, or maybe a bug?” I said. “The soul is the part of you that would go from one life to the next, that would go into that bug after your body died. It’s the part that would carry everything you learned in each incarnation.” I gestured uselessly to my heart. “The spirit part.”

My brain hurt from the effort of describing this. Soul, sentient, spirit. How do you explain these things? “But reincarnation is just one idea. Brain chemistry is another.”

“So nobody knows the real answer,” our son said. “What happens when we die, whether our feelings are just our brain or part of our soul.”

“Nope. It all depends on what you believe,” I said. “Nobody knows for sure.”

The leaves in the trees rustled a little. Not much, but enough to remind me of our son’s original question.

Green, red, yellow leaves Babcock state park, WV, October 2013

Appalachian Valley in early autumn, Babcock State Park, WV October 2013

Autumn leaves on grassy hill, Babcock State Park, WV October 2013

Golden tree (beech?) in sunbeam, autumn, Appalachia

“I think mostly people think humans have souls, and maybe animals have souls, but I don’t know that a lot of people think of plants as having souls. So most people would probably call trees living things.” I looked up at the green and orange and yellow and red leaves, and the strong trunks with rough or papery or chunky bark, and I saw how all those trees were nestled together as a community on the mountainside, gathering sunlight, being beautiful. I thought about the times that I have felt one with the whispering forest, when there was no doubt in my heart, or mind, or soul that trees are part of the same absolute that I am a part of, that we are kindred.

“Do you ever feel a connection to nature?” I asked our son. “Like, in your heart, a feeling that doesn’t have words, you just feel it when you’re out in the woods or by a stream or something?” It was my last hope, in this “thing” versus “being” discussion, that he would know what I was talking about.

“Yes.” He said this without hesitation, and I knew he would get it now.

“Me too,” I said. “Sometimes when a breeze blows through and the trees sway and their leaves rustle, I feel like they are talking. I don’t know what they are saying, but they are saying something.” I looked up to the forest again. “In their tree language.” Our son giggled. “I feel connected to them somehow, like they have spirits, or souls, or whatever you want to call it.”

“So when I think of trees,” I said, “I think of them as living beings and not just living things.”

Our son’s eyes flared with understanding as he looked up at me. “Yes,” he said. His body relaxed with the contentment of a seeker who has found the answer he sought. “I think you’re exactly right, Mom.”

Yellow is autumn trees to me. Originally published October 17, 2013.
We talked to our kids about charity

January 6th, 2014

Our kids’ charity jars

“Alright, kiddos, we’re changing the structure of your allowances.” I leaned forward on the couch with my elbows on my knees. My hands were clasped, and I opened them to say, “You get a raise with the new year” – our children bounced and clapped their hands – “BUT with the condition that you put a portion away for long term savings, and you put a portion aside for charity.”

—-

My husband and I discussed the kid’s allowance for weeks as we worked on our own budget. After ten years of supporting a family of four on one income (an income which consisted of student loans, part time graduate teaching assistantships, and when we hit the big time, a post-doctoral stipend), we are behind on savings: retirement savings, college savings, orthodontic savings. Emergency savings for car repairs and those surprise bills that always seem to arrive when you finally think you’ve got your finances under control.

Over the past year and a half we have worked to catch up on paying off debts, and now its time to start carving money out of my husband’s checks to build up a savings buffer. And though every cent of our income was already accounted for – groceries, gas, clothing, sports – we wanted to build charitable giving in as well. Using our new budgeting software*, You Need a Budget (YNAB), we cut a little here, arranged a little there, reduced our family entertainment budget, and created a little pile for charities we feel strongly about supporting.

“Most of the financial stuff I read recommends setting aside 10% of your income for long term savings,” my husband told me. He dunked his tea bag as he ran numbers in his head. “We’re doing well with that through the University’s retirement plan.”

“Okay,” I said, “we can set that same goal for the kids: 10% of their allowance towards long term savings – savings they can’t touch til they are 16 or something.” I remembered my savings account, the one my Grandmother encouraged by matching contributions to it. I adored getting my statement in the mail and seeing tens of dollars turn to hundreds. I don’t remember what I ultimately used the money for, but I loved the safe feeling that savings account gave me.

“That’s going to suck for them to watch their allowance go down,” my husband said. His eyebrows worked together, wrinkling his forehead as he worried for the kids. “It’s already hard enough for them to save up for something they want.”

“Well, that’s pretty much how it works for us too,” I said. “We think we have all this money, then we budget it out and there’s barely enough to go to a movie.”

“But they get so little.” Our son saved allowance for ten months to buy a Wii U. His resolve to save was inspiring; he opted every allowance cycle to put money in his bank account instead of getting paid in cash. For almost an entire year. It seemed wrong to shrink his income when it already took so long to save for short term purchases.

“What about charity?” I asked. “What are the recommendations for that?”

“It’s kind of all over the place,” my husband said. Suggestions range anywhere from 2.5% of income to 10% of income or 1% of net worth, whichever is greater.

“How about we suggest 5% to the kids?” I ran calculations in my head and realized even at that rate their total annual contribution would be less than $10. I sighed. “Anything less and it will barely be pennies,” I said.

“I don’t know. This could be a hard sell.”

Our previous allowance model gave them the option of $5 in cash or $6 in their bank account to encourage saving. “Well, I’ve budgeted their allowance at $6 apiece,” I said. “We could up their allowance to $6 so it won’t be such a hard transition for them. Their pocket money would end up being the same.”

“That works for softening the blow to their wallets, but it doesn’t leave much for their savings accounts or donations,” my husband said. We both worked numbers in our head and realized that at this savings rate, by the time our son turns 16, he will have only saved about $200. That won’t do much for buying a car. My husband sighed. “I guess the point is to get them in the habit.”

“Maybe we can offer matching like my Grandma did for me. If someone gifts them money, we could match whatever portion they choose to put into savings.” Now my forehead was the wrinkled one as I tried to figure out where that money would come from.

—–

“What’s charity?” our daughter asked. She’s eight.

“Well, it’s when you donate some of your money to someone in need, or to a place that isn’t in the business of making money, but is in the business of providing a service that isn’t focused on profiting but on spreading awareness, or culture, or sharing art.” Our ten-year-old son cocked his head at me. He didn’t know what I meant.

“You know that radio station Daddy and I always listen to? The one with the funny Car Talk guys?” They both nodded. “That’s called public radio; they don’t sell advertising, and the only way they can provide their service is if people donate money to them.”

“Oooooh,” our son said.

“So that’s one of the places Daddy and I donate money.” I stood up and told them to hang on a second. I trotted downstairs to the storage shelves in the basement and pulled two Ball jars off the wooden slat. I cut a rectangle of paper to a length and width that would wrap around the jar and carried the three components upstairs.

I set the jars on the coffee table and asked the kids, “Is there anything you feel really strongly about donating money to? There are a million causes you could support: libraries, the arts, giving books to people who don’t have access to them, animals -”

“OOOHH! Animals!” Our daughter jumped up and down. I gave her the rectangle of paper as a template to cut a label for her charity jar.

“You can decorate it however you want, and when you get your allowance, you will put your 5% for charity in the jar,” I said. I turned to our son. “What about you, buddy?” He didn’t seem moved by additional suggestions I gave. “Do you have anything you feel strongly about supporting?” He looked at the floor and didn’t answer.

“Oh, I have an idea,” I said. “Daddy is giving some of his personal allowance money to help keep the Appalachian Trail maintained and protected. Do you think you’d like to support that too?” Besides soccer, our son’s favorite activity is hiking. He loves nature and waxes philosophical when we are out on the trail.

His eyes got big and he shook his head up and down and smiled. He grabbed his jar and ran upstairs. “Wait! Your change!” I counted out quarters and nickels from the rolls my husband picked up at the bank and jogged them up to our kids’ rooms.

A few minutes later both kids trampled down the stairs to show me their jars.

“But these have dollar bills in them,” I said. “I only gave you change.”

“I know,” our son said. “I wanted to give some more.”

“Me too,” said our daughter. “For the animals.”

This is my entry for the Weekly Photo Challenge: Beginning.
We talked to our kids about money

July 16th, 2013

“Hey Dad, how much money do you make?” Our 9 year old son stood in the doorway to the kitchen, his fingers tented. Calculating. My husband paused, the milk jug in mid-pour, and looked at our son. He set the plastic gallon down.

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable talking about that, buddy.” He turned his back to the kitchen counter and leaned on it, his ankles crossed, while he sipped milk. Our parents didn’t talk to us about how much money they made and how much things cost until we were adults, when we were making our own money and our own way in the world. We had no precedent for how to talk to our young kids about these things.

“My parents never talked to me about that when I was growing up, so I’m not sure yet how I feel about talking to you and your sister about it,” my husband said. I finished unloading the dishwasher, dried my hands, and leaned against the opposite counter. Our son waited in the doorway for more explanation. “How much we earn is not something you should be talking about with your friends, for one thing. It’s a private matter within a family, and comparing incomes can make some kids feel less than or jealous, and it can make others feel superior and powerful. So no matter what we decide to tell you, our family finances are our own business, not to be discussed outside of our family.”

“Okay,” our son said. He got that.

“The other thing is that telling you how much money Dad makes is only a fraction of the story,” I told him. “The more important part is where all that money goes.” I remember overhearing the salary of a teacher when I was in elementary school. It was maybe $25,000 at the time. $25,000! The things I could do at 9 with $25,000! I was awestruck by the possibilities of that much money. I imagined my teacher diving into piles of greenbacks like Scrooge McDuck. She was rich. Rich!

Our son agreed. His eyes lit up at the thought of $25,000. “I could buy every LEGO set there is with that much money!” He grinned, “And a WiiU.”

We laughed. “Unfortunately, $25,000 wouldn’t actually go very far if you had to pay to live, like you do when you’re an adult,” my husband said. “There are rent and electricity, clothes and groceries.”

“Car repairs, gas,” I said.

“Vacation, camping, soccer, swimming.”

“Health insurance, doctor bills, taxes,” I said. “It’s not like your allowance where you can spend it on whatever you want.” I remembered the carefree days of my money being all mine – birthday money, pocket change for small chores, paychecks from summer jobs. Every penny in my piggy bank could be spent on Barbies or books, clothes or cassette tapes, posters, candy. Whatever I wanted, no strings attached. Mom and Dad took care of the necessities, I didn’t need to worry myself about those.

I looked at my husband. “I don’t know babe, maybe we should think about talking to the kids about this. It was a pretty rude awakening to me when I got into the real world and started making money, but the money wasn’t ‘mine’ anymore.” Watching that paycheck shrink to almost nothing before I could buy something for myself was a hard lesson in growing up.

“How’s this, buddy,” I turned to our son. “I’m going to be working on our budget over the next couple of weeks. Do you know what a budget is?”

Our son shook his head. “Not really.”

“Well, it’s when we look at how much money we bring in – our income – and plan out how much everything in our life costs – our expenses. All those bills Dad and I were just talking about – food, rent, clothes, cars, that kind of stuff.”

He nodded.

“Once we get our budget figured out, maybe we could sit down with you and answer your original question about how much money Dad makes. We could show you how much his paychecks are, and where the money from those paychecks goes each month.” I looked at my husband to check that this was okay with him. We were in new territory here as parents. He nodded.

“Money is tricky,” my husband said. “Your mom and I have been trying to figure out how to be smart about it the entire time we’ve been married.”

I laughed. “Yeah, and we’re still trying to figure it out, fifteen years later.” Maybe this could be really good for our kids, to teach them early.

I walked over to our son and put my arm around him. “Would that be okay with you? If we waited until we could give you the full story?”

“Yeah,” he said, and hugged me back. He looked at the floor, thinking about the precious dollars in his savings account, the allowance he’s been putting away for months now to save for a WiiU. Then, still hugging me, he looked up and said, “But I don’t want to be a grown-up.”

To make sure we’re not making a huge mistake in discussing details with our kids, I found a couple of resources to help get us started. How are you teaching your kids about money? Any tips or recommendations? Thanks!

Dos And Don’ts For Talking To Kids About Money On this NPR Talk of the Nation (TOTN) segment, host Jennifer Luddon, her guests, and callers discuss when to start teaching kids about money; starting the kids paying the household bills in high school so they see how much things cost (using Mom and Dad’s money); prioritizing spending; stressing the importance of planning and achieving an education without debt, etc.

How to Talk to Your Kids about Money This comprehensive list covers why you should talk to your kids about money, when to start discussions, dos and don’ts of teaching them, and how to get them involved in saving money.
Do you know the “F” word?

June 4th, 2013

One morning, when the kids were 5 and 7, and I was standing at the chopping block cutting crusts off sandwiches, I heard our son say to his little sister, “Do you know the ‘D’ word?”

He and our daughter slurped cereal at the kitchen table a few feet behind me. I paused imperceptibly, remained facing forward, and wrestled gently with a plastic sandwich bag, taming it into quiet, unrustling submission. Where was he going with this? I tried to remain silent so I could hear our daughter’s response.

“D-U-M?” She said.

I relaxed, smiled to myself, and stuffed the bagged sandwiches into lunch boxes. I pulled the rinsed strawberries towards me from the far corner of the board and patted them dry.

“What about the ’S’ word?” he asked. I stiffened.

“Umm. S-T-U-P-I-D.”

My shoulders softened. How precious that she was spelling the “bad words” out instead of saying them. I sliced berries and pretended I wasn’t listening.

Our son was quiet a moment, probably chewing his mini-wheats. I dared not look lest I give myself away. “What about the ‘H’ word?” he asked.

“H-A-T-E.”

Oh my goodness, be still my heart. Did I teach them this, that “hate” is a bad word? If so, major mom kudos to me. I tucked the strawberries next to the sandwiches and smiled smugly to myself about my parenting skills. Our son asked, just as I was about to zip up a lunch box, “Do you know the ‘F’ word?” I busied myself with wiping the board instead of securing the noisy zipper.

“F-A-T?” our daughter asked.

“Nooooo…”

“F-A-R-T?”

I could feel our son smiling. I chuckled, too. “Nooooo…”

Wait. What could it be if not “fat” or “fart?” Well, obviously you and I know what it could be, but if the kids didn’t know the “D,” “S,” or “H” words, how on earth would they know the “F” word?

“I don’t know,” our daughter said. “What is it?”

“F-U-K,” our 7 year old son said.

Oh my God. He knows. He knows! How does he know this?!

Okay, act casual. I folded my cloth, picked up a lunch box, and took a deep breath.

“Hey baby,” I said, turning my body toward them at last, nonchalantly sealing the lunch box, not freaking out. Not correcting his spelling. “Where did you hear that word?” We don’t say that word around the kids. Maybe he heard it on the bus. There were fifth graders on the bus, and he was only in second grade. The big kids must have talked about it. That’s how he knew it was a bad word. Surely second graders weren’t talking about it. Surely.

His sister lost interest and cleaned up her bowl. He shrugged and said, “I dunno.”

This conversation could go anywhere. Why it’s a bad word, why kids shouldn’t say it, who is offended by it, why some people use it, whether their dad and I ever use it. How much do I say? I decided: as little as possible. “You know not to use that word, right?”

“I know,” he said, and slurped the last spoonful of cereal milk. “I don’t even know what it means.”

Well, that’s good. “Okay, if you have any questions, you can ask me. For now I’ll just tell you it’s a word that is very offensive to a lot of people, and children should not use it, especially since you don’t know what it means.”

“Okay Mom.” He got up and brought his bowl to the sink.

“Here’s your lunch box, buddy.” I kissed him on the top of his head, patted his back, and sent him off to brush his teeth. I collapsed in a kitchen chair and realized the baby years, which I’d thought were awfully trying, were hard in a physically demanding, bone exhausting, I’m-responsible-for-this-baby’s-every-need kind of way. But the elementary school years? Those are hard in a completely different way. They are demanding in an intellectual, emotional, I’m-responsible-for-helping-this-child-navigate-the-weirdness-of-life-and-become-a-decent-human-being kind of way.

With the kids’ births I thought, Now it begins. We navigated sleep deprivation and the endless repetition of diapering, feeding, clothing, cleaning. But after that morning’s dialogue – “Do you know the ‘F’ word?” – and facing the strain of trying to know the right thing to do, to react swiftly and intelligently, to be a responsible adult even when I thought the whole exchange was funny, I knew this stage of parenting was different than simply keeping our kids alive. As I’ve thought with countless turning points that came before (walking, talking) and will come after (puberty, rebelling), that morning after our “F-U-K” conversation, when I realized our kids would one day lose their innocence, I thought, Now this wild ride really begins.
We talked to our kids about sex

February 5th, 2013
When we lived in Minnesota, we enrolled our daughter in the state sponsored Early Childhood Family Education (ECFE) program. We paid a small fee, sent her to preschool two mornings per week, and twice a month I joined her in her classroom. On parent days, the moms would spend an hour with our kids, then we’d go to our own classroom, with coffee and snacks and our own teacher.

Midway through the year, we started building up to “safe touch” week. The kids were going to learn about safe touch in their classroom, and the parent educator helped us prepare ourselves and our children for that discussion. Naturally, we had lots of questions.

“So, how do we help our kids understand why some parts of their body are private? Why we always cover certain areas? Why it’s okay for someone to touch some places but not others? How these parts are private, but not something to be ashamed of?”

All of which led, of course, into sex talk, and that four is just as good an age as any to start talking about sex.

I was shocked. An equally stunned mom thought out loud, “I would have never thought to start talking this early about sex!”

She looked at the ceiling, still thinking. “But then again, by the time my parents wanted to talk to me, my hormones had already kicked in and I thought, ‘eeeewwww! I’m not talking to you about that!’”

Our resident expert mom, who had already been through the program three times with her other children, and who was my personal put-together-even-though-I-have-four-kids idol, pshawed us all and said, “Talking about sex is easy at this age! They’re not embarrassed. They’ll probably just ask for ice cream when you’re done.”

She added, “It’s easier than telling them about Santa.”

Our instructor suggested a book for us all, What’s the Big Secret, and I picked it up at the library that afternoon while the kids got their Magic Treehouse books (We hadn’t talked to our son about sex yet either. He was six at the time.) At home, I pre-read the book in the bathroom, the only room for privacy as any parent will know. I found it satisfactory, left it on the counter, and then went into the kitchen to start working on dinner.

When my husband came home from work, I was in full cooking mode, the oven fan running full blast, and I couldn’t hear a thing. He kissed me on the cheek and said, “Uhhhh, the kids are looking at this book…”

Crap! I hadn’t told him yet.

“Oh yeah,” I laughed nervously, “They must have found it in the bathroom. I was going to read it to them tonight.”

I poked my head into the living room where they were huddled together on the couch, giggling and pointing. I wiped my hands and asked my husband, “Maybe we should just do it now?”

My heart pounded faster than a hummingbird’s, and my palms were sweaty. I think my voice might have cracked when I said, “Hey kids, do you want to read that book together?”

“Yeah!”

Our son had asked me once how babies get out of their mom’s bellies, and without thinking, I said, “They come out through the mom’s vagina.” He and our daughter looked horrified. Then he laughed and pointed at his sister and said, “You’re going to have to do that one day!” I’m pretty sure that was the day she decided she wanted to be a boy.

It was obvious that I needed help in the tact department when it came to things like this, so I sat between them, wiped my hands on my jeans again, and started reading. I don’t remember a word of the book. I just remember the relief I felt as I turned each page, thinking, we’re doing this. We’re really doing it.

The kids giggled and pointed at the drawings of penises. Our daughter was fascinated by the diagram of a baby inside a mother’s womb. My husband and I answered any questions they had, but they didn’t have many.

When we were all finished, I asked, “Do y’all have any more questions?”

And our son said, “What’s for dinner?”

Alcohol for me, buddy. Spaghetti for you.

The expert mom was right. It really was easy. But we haven’t had the courage to tell them about Santa yet. I wonder if there’s a book for that…

That was three years ago, and our kids don’t remember any of it. But we’ve laid the groundwork and have gotten nerves out of the way. So when our daughter started asking questions the other night, I answered them as well as I could, reminded her of the book, and she said she wanted to look at it again. I ordered our own copy yesterday.

What’s the Big Secret? Talking about Sex with Girls and Boys by Laurie Krasny Brown, illustrated by Marc Brown