Yesterday’s topic was murder, all that’s left to discuss today is: sex.
Get your minds out of your porno mag, that’s not where I’m going with this blog post. Today’s sex topic focuses on an innocent young boy who went to school one morning to return in the afternoon, eyes wide open.
While I was sick last week and my husband was out of town, the kids thankfully went to school. When our nine year old fourth grader came home from school that afternoon, his eyes were opened wide and he looked troubled. Concerned, I asked if something bad happened at school today. He responded, “I saw some very disturbing things.” My first thought was that another kid barfed on their desk or something similar. He told me that today they learned about Human Development. Suddenly, the paperwork I signed and sent back flashed before my eyes – TODAY was SEX ED Day – and I forgot to warn him, or at least soften the blow.
Our son told me the fourth grade boys went into one room with a woman teacher, and the fourth grade boys went into another classroom with a male teacher to watch “gender appropriate” (he said this using quotation hand signals) videos on what horrors puberty will cast on their lives. He explained that puberty starts when you’re around 11 and can last until you’re 20. He told me that his older sister and brother are definitely in puberty.
I stifled my natural reaction to laugh at his stories, expressions, and recollections of his disturbing day. The faces he was making were classic! What threw me over the edge was when he said that he could see the signs of puberty starting already. I nearly spit out the tea I was drinking. “What?!?” My sweet boy is no where near puberty, I couldn’t wait to hear his response.
“Look at my arm and leg,” he said, “I’m getting hairier.” “Oh, yes, furry arms and legs, that’s a sure sign,” I responded while biting my lip to not laugh at him. “You were born looking like a fuzzy white peach though, I think you’re just naturally fuzzy,” I pointed out. He wasn’t buying it and is convinced he’s getting gorilla man hair. He added, “well, I am girl crazy and that is part of puberty too.” “Agreed, but you have to wait until the dating years,” I said referring back to our conversation a month ago where he said that middle school is when you can start dating, randomly, and his older brother is lucky to be in the dating years.
We talked more and I gave the analogy of a butterfly metamorphosis as the process he’ll go through when in puberty. Unfortunately, I used his dad as the butterfly example. “You don’t look all manly like Dad, right? But you will, like a butterfly starts as a caterpillar (you’re the caterpillar), then you’ll go through puberty and end up looking like Dad, a butterfly.” He looked at me in disbelief. “Dad is the butterfly in this story?” he asked. “I’m just trying to explain that the processes is a big transformation, like when a caterpillar changes into butterfly.” “Great,” he said while rolling his eyes.
At that moment, his older brother cruised into the room, just home from seventh grade. The fourth grader asks the seventh grader if HE saw the human development videos. “Nope,” he said. Oh yeah, California stopped sex education in elementary school. Perfect, my fourth grader is more informed than my seventh grader.
I did the only thing I could do, I called my husband and told him he’d have to have “the talk” with our seventh grader. I’m pretty certain I have to supervise this pending discussion. I’ve seen that butterfly in action.
multi-hyphenated-me 