Birds and Bees Fail

Master 11 is learning ‘positive puberty’ in school at the moment. Apparently he and his classmates love it.

I’m not sure what they are doing differently these days but I seem to remember it all being a bit cringe-worthy.

This is good right? It’s good to talk about these things openly and, equally, when he comes home from school and I ask him what he learnt in puberty that day, he’s only too happy to tell me. We have a bit of a laugh about it all actually. That’s how I want things to be in my family, rather than have my children too embarrassed to come to me about things. We’re not exactly hippies, walking around naked in front of each other – far from it – but we’re not prudish about talking about certain subjects either.

All this puberty talk made me realise it was probably time for the old birds and bees chat with the twins (nearly nine). So I got my hands on the Where Did I Come From? Book mum used with us kids back in the 80s and sat down one evening to ‘research’ what was ahead.

Pages one, two and three were all right: “We asked some boys and girls your age where they thought they had come from – Here’s what some of them said: ‘The cat brought me in one night’, ‘Dad found me in his beer’ or ‘Mum found me at hospital’.”

I turned the page: A picture of a nude man and lady in the bath playing with a little boat. Not sure what the boat was about but I knew the twins would have a giggle at the nudity.

I turned a few more pages – more naked pictures and text about breasts or ‘titties or boobs’ being like a mobile milk bar, various names for other body parts and then … how the baby is made.

I was cringing.

I wasn’t sure my ‘babies’ were ready for this but I decided it was better they learn it from me than in the playground. The following day I called them upstairs.

While many parents back in the day just left this book with their child and skedaddled, I decided to take a school teacher approach. They sat sheepishly on the couch, clearly dreading the talk they knew was coming.

As predicted, they dissolved into pink-cheeked giggling with Master Eight pulling faces and looking away, while his sister hid her face down her school jumper. As I turned each page, she would emerge from her sweatshirt, only to burrow back down upon sighting the illustration while her brother convulsed with hilarity, unsure where to look.

Finally, the image of the bare-bummed man and lady hugging in bed with love hearts coming out from the covers tipped them over the edge and they ran from the room. I didn’t mind - I had reached the part about how babies were made and gauged from their reaction that my ‘babies’ just weren’t ready to have their innocence corrupted with this knowledge and neither was I.

If they’re happy believing the cat brought them in one night or they were found in their Daddy’s beer, then so be-it for now.