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The drive to school is about 5 minutes give or take depending on traffic lights. Most mornings that time is spent telling people to stop squabbling or lecturing them about the unwisdom of making me ask 20 times for them to do something that has to be done every single morning. But every so often I find myself having one of those conversations that come out of nowhere and make me sorry the trip is so short.
Today is Grandparents Day at school and for some reason David was speculating on what it would be like if your grandparents were very young. I asked how young he thought it was possible for a grandparent to be, he guessed 20-something, and before I knew it I was discussing teen pregnancy and pointing out that it was perfectly possible for someone to become a grandparent by the time they were 30. At which point I said I'd prefer to be heading for 50 before I became a grandparent and that if they wanted to have sex they didn't have to tell me anything but please use contraception. They all laughed, apparently I'm amusing when I talk about sex.
As they were getting out of the car I was saying "Always use a condom and Caitlin - go on the pill! Seriously guys, if you need to go to the doctors or the chemists, just tell me, I won't ask questions! Have a good day and be good for Grandma!"
David's farewell was "You're funny Mum, love you!"
A Year in Sunsets
3 hours ago
8 comments:
Mine are a bit on the young side for the contraception talk yet, except in a low level sort of way, but I will be following exactly this approach i.e. please, let me help you to get your contraception right.
Heh - oh I hope some other parents over heard the "Caitlin - go on the pill!" declaration. That's awesome. :)
you are a cool Mum Mim :)
I had a similar thought to Ariane wondering if some other parents overheard you tell "Caitlin - go on the pill". Children never cease to amaze me what comes out of their mouths. Nick made a comment the other day about my parents being old - but they are actually a lot younger than my grandparents were when I was the same age as him!
Don't wanna scare you Mimsey, but I think the number might be lower than 30, statistically speaking.
But I love that you're realistic. After all my preaching to wonderful chaste son and daughter, I was informed that the pill was of utmost importance around daughter's 15th year. Dear Jesus! But she's been responsible taking it, and that's all we should legitimately hope for.
I totally love this post. And to this line: "But every so often I find myself having one of those conversations that come out of nowhere and make me sorry the trip is so short." I say.... roger that!
Sadly I have to admit that we were all still inside the car when the "go on the pill" line was delivered so no, no-one would have overheard. On the other hand several mums from the school read my blog or would have seen this pop up on Facebook... *waves* hello there!
@Alix, even I have limits on the ideas I actively introduce to the kids! I told them the age of consent was 16 and then fudged the figures slightly from that ;-)
Mine are still too young for that detailed of a conversation.
Our daycare provider's teenage son has a 9 month old son and our daycare provider is the primary caregiver most of the time. One of my closest Mommy friends was a young mom who turned her life around because of her pregnancy.
Both are situations where the families have made the best of a hard situation. But both are also resources that I can turn to when the time comes.
For now, Teagan is so freaked out that a baby could come out of a vagina that I don't think we'll get to how the baby gets in there in the first place for a while.
Just managed to lose all my lengthy comment -argh! As a school mummy, I wanted to say that I have discussed contraception with Reuben a few times over the past few years, but not for a while, just when it has come up. When RU486 was on the news a lot a couple of years ago, we had quite a lengthy discussion about that, and discussed condoms before that (because he saw one and wanted to know what they were). More recently we have discussed tampons (because he wanted to know what I was putting on the supermarket checkout) and pornography (because of an article I read in the Australian (at my in-laws) by Melinda Tankard Reist. However what springs to mind in reading your blog is the quite detailed discussion I had with my five year old recently about where babies come from (right down to the tiny seed from the daddy which originates in his testicles getting into the mummy's tummy to join with the tiny egg and the way in which this happens is by the daddy putting his penis inside the mummy's vagina). HE didn't seem fussed in the slightest!! I read a book when pregnant with Reuben called "How and when to teach your kids about sex" which I found very helpful. Somehow, I have a sneaking suspicion you mightn't like it quite as much as I did (prescriptive, Christian...) but the basic idea was to answer your children's questions in age-appropriate language and probably with a little more detail than they might be expecting. The time may well come (so I've been told) when they may not be that interested in turning to mum and dad for answers, so seize the opportunity to present the facts clearly before they turn to the (mis)information in the high school yard.
juliette
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