"The Talk"...part one

I knew this day was coming. I have thought about it for quite some time. So you would think that I would have been more prepared. But nothing prepares you for when your FIRST grader hops in the car from school and this is the conversation:
Mom-Hey guys, how was school?
McKell - Fine. Mom, I have a question. I heard a word today at school that I am concerned about and I don't know what it means.
Mom-What word?
Cayden - I know. She told me. It is C-E-X.
McKell - Not CEX, Cayden, S-E-X! So what does that word mean, Mom?
(Mom begins to panic at this point.)

Apparently, McKell overheard some third graders in the bathroom talking and one of the girls had a dictionary and was giggling because the word "sex" was in the dictionary. When McKell asked her what it meant, she told McKell, "It's gross. You don't want to know." Well, this is the last thing you ever tell McKell - the inquistive one. I bought myself some time by telling them that I wanted to talk to them about it when Daddy was home. They weren't happy, but said okay. I immediately called Rob upon getting home and told him to brush up on his best Fatherhood Sex Ed talk. (Keep in mind, my parents never had "the talk" with me and Rob learned about it from a book called, "You Were Once Smaller than a Dot". So, neither of us had a whole lot of experience of how to talk to your kids about sex to draw from.)

So we decided to make it a very casual conversation. We did not want it to be a weird and formal thing, because we felt it would make everyone uncomfortable. So, as we were eating dinner, I just brought it up.

One thing that was in our favor was that we have used the real anatomically correct words for body parts, so we didn't have to start from square one and explain all of that. We also spent a lot of time explaining that this was something that we discussed as a family, and not something they should talk about with their friends or anyone at school. Not because it is bad, but because it is something that kids should talk to their parents about, not other kids. They seemed fine with that. (We'll see...I'm waiting for the phone to ring from the school!)

It also didn't hurt that I am pregnant so they had a very real model of what was going on in our family. That is mostly the angle we took. We talked about how a baby grows in a Mommy's tummy and that S-E-X is how the baby got there. They had SO many questions just about how the baby grows, eats, etc. that it kind of sidetracked the main subject. But we wanted them to ask the questions that they had and make sure they got answered. So of course, the next question was, how does the baby get out of Mommy's tummy? We explained this to them, very clinically and matter-of-factly. I firmly believe that if the parents act uncomfortable and squeemish about it, then the kids automatically pick up on it and do the same thing. They were a little shocked about that, but actually did fine with that concept. (Although, Cayden's comment was classic when we told him where the baby comes out. "Oh, come on! You have GOT to be kidding me!" I had to crack up at that one!)

At this point, it was WAY past bedtime and they really needed to get to bed. Ironically, we had discussed so many different things, that we ran out of time. But of course, we couldn't get off that easily. As we tucked them in bed, McKell and Cayden both asked, "One more question, how does the baby actually get IN to Mommy?"

Hence the title of this post..."The talk...Part ONE"...looks like we have another interesting family dinner discussion tonight. Wish us luck!