Naked, Zygote, and Sex! Oh My!

A few weeks ago, my son came home with a "behavior notification." All the third grade students had been given dictionaries. He had gotten into trouble for looking up the word "naked" and pointing it out to a nearby friend. Evidently, some of the other boys started looking up what his teacher referred to as
"other ugly words." All those boys' dictionaries were taken away from them. I won't get into my and my husband's feelings over this. Suffice it to say, we don't think "naked" is an "ugly word," so we both disagreed for the action our son's teacher took against him. And that's all I will say about that. Maybe in another blog post I'll rattle out my frustration. Or perhaps I'll work it out in some journaling that I will never publish. Maybe I should throw my fists into a few pillows. Grrr.

Sorry. Anyway...

A few days later, I was in Barnes and Noble, and I found Webster's Dictionary for Students . I showed it to my husband, Mark, and he jokingly asked if it had the word "naked" in it. I had already checked for that, and I assured him it was in there; it was right in between "naive" and "name." Mark said, "Good! Let's give it to him."



I adore that man :)



I brought it home to Nicholas, and I as I gave it to him, I said, "This is YOUR dictionary, and you can ask your dad or me about ANY word in this book, any time you want to." He grinned. I basked in the glow of that proud, parental moment. He found a pen and wrote his name in the cover (that's MY baby!). And he sat down the next day reading it like it was from the Magic Tree House series (that's also MY baby). He hasn't read the whole thing cover to cover, and I doubt he ever will. But I love that he loves it, and I know he will use it a lot over the coming years.

Then what did the boy do? He brought the dictionary to me and said, "Mom, the definition of the very last word is interesting. Look at this." I couldn't wait to see what he thought was so interesting. When a child shows you what is intriguing to him, it is a peek inside his brain -- his world. I feasted my eyes on the last word and beheld the word "zygote."

Zygote?


(sigh)


Yep. ZYGOTE.


zy-gote n : the new cell produced when a sperm cell joins with an egg


My husband and I looked at each other, both of us speaking with our eyes..."REALLY? We're gonna go *there* now? NOW?! That's just great...we've made our bed, and now we've gotta lie in it..."


Mercy.


Nicholas asked what that definition meant. Mark told Nicholas that that's how he got here. And I said that puppies, goats, whales, and all other animals and humans got here that way too. These answers satisfied our own little "zygote," and that was the end of that.




Or so I thought.



A week or so later, we were sitting in the living room. My beloved third grader looked at me and mentioned, casually, that a fellow student said something about "s-e-x." Trying to seem unaffected, I said, "Sex? What did he have to say about it?" Nicholas told me not much, mainly that the said student declared that (male sew-n-sew) had "done it" with (female sew-n-sew).


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We now had Mark's attention. I suggested we turn off the television so we could talk. Then I, now clearly affected, asked my eight year old offspring what he thought "did it" meant. He said, "Mom, you don't want to know."






I die.






A very long, delicate, compassionate conversation ensued. I won't go into too many gory details. Mark and I did the best we could. And so did Nicholas. I'm so proud of him. I'm proud of the three of us. We sat down together and had a calm, honest discussion about the things Nicholas had been hearing at school, and what he thought of all that. Given, he didn't say too much -- he felt too embarrassed to voice certain things at this point. And we didn't force him to do so. But we did assure him that A) Most of what he's going to hear from kids his age about sex is most likely untrue, and B) He can come to us at ANY time and ask us ANYTHING about sex, and that he will never be in trouble with us for doing that. We promised to always be honest with him. We told him that sex is not a bad thing; that sex is what brought him to us. I cannot say that any of this was easy, but we handled it.

Is there some part of parenting that is easy? Because if there is some easy part I can look forward to, I wish someone would tell me all about it.

I know there will be more conversations about sex when Nicholas is ready.
I hope he will come to his father and me when he has questions. And I really think he will.