The birds and the bees...

[Aliantha]

So the other day my oldest sons' mate was sitting on our front verandah and I wandered out to say hello and how was school. All was going well up to the point where mate said, 'I had a good day. Me and Gabby (mate's g/f) got a bit more physical today'.

Me thinks WTF??? 'What do you mean by that mate?'

Mate says, 'We kissed...on the lips'.

You could have knocked me down with a feather. Not so much that they'd kissed, which was probably very harmless, but the way he described it to me quite openly.

It was at this point that I decided it was time to have a talk with my son about the facts of life. I didn't think I'd really need to do this for another couple of years since he's only 10, but it seems the circle he's travelling in are reasonably advanced as far as intimate relationships go.

So last night, son and I sit down in his room and have a talk about sex and the purpose of it, the pitfalls and dangers etc. I've always been open with him if he's asked questions, and we've always had pets, so he's familiar with the whole concept of where babies come from etc, but I don't think he'd made the actual connection about how it all starts with a kiss and goes on from there (as far as people are concerned anyway).

Anyway, we covered everything from erections and ejaculation to how it makes you feel (which was a tough one) and then we talked about the bad things that can happen, such as unplanned pregnancy, stds and just the general stigma attached to being too free with your affections.

At the end of the talk he was looking fairly squirmy so I asked him what he was thinking. Did he feel uncomfortable talking about this stuff. He said it was 'icky'. So I asked him if the kids at school talk about sex and stuff and he said that he thinks it's icky when they do it too. I suggested to him that if it's icky to discuss it with people, he probably needs a bit more growing up before he starts thinking about going through with any of these things, cause he definitely needs to be able to discuss it with his potential liasons without feeling icky about it.

The thing that scared me the most was that he had no idea what a condom was. I'm positive that at that age I knew exactly what a condom was and what it was for (or at least what the kids at school said they were for). Anyway, now he says he'll never use the word raincoat again without thinking about condoms.

Anyway, I think it was a good talk and hopefully it's opened the door to more open communication about the subject in future.

How did you go about these types of discussions with your kids? When I was about that age, the school had a family program after hours that my parents took us to. It was good because it gave me a good understanding of how human bodies work etc, but didn't really cover any social issues.