Letters to the Editor
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Drug Talks are worse than Sex Talks
Actually, I have been rather surprised by how few questions I got. Mind you, the sex-ed program in the local school system hereabouts is truly excellent. Unlike, say, the drug-ed curriculuum, where I basically had to tell my kids that what they were being taught was total crap, and here is the truth. And in some ways I found this more uncomfortable than talking about sex, because I wanted to be honest, which meant revealing rather more than I wanted to about my own personal experience.
But with the sex, it wasn't so much of an issue. I did suggest to my son soon after he took up with his first serious girlfriend that it might be a good idea to have some condoms on hand, just in case-- he blinked at me. A couple of days later in conversation at dinner, he mentioned that he had seem someone at the local drugstore, then turned bright red and practically bolted from the table, with the spousal unit and I trying really hard not to smirk.
Incidentally, giving a detailed full description of a blow job to a small child strikes me as rather inappropriate. They don't want to know that much, all they have to be told is that it is a sex thing grownups do, and that would be enough. Maureen Lyon is dead wrong, you should not be talking to your kids about sex from the moment they can talk. You shouldn't be hiding it, but you should be providing information appropriately to their understanding and interest, and not ever forcing it down their throats (um, bad joke not intended). My mom did that to me, sat me down in early adolescence and told me a bunch of stuff I already in fact knew; it was excruciating.