The Birds and The Bees

Well I think I may have misspoke a few weeks ago when I recapped my conversation with Anna about how babies are made. If memory serves me correctly I believe I commented on Ryan's apparent lack of interest in subjects such as this.

We received a phone call this week from the teacher at school who had confiscated a "racy book" that Ryan had on the bus. Another child had tattled that "Ryan has a book with dirty pictures in it." Of course what immediately comes to mind is something Playboyish in nature or maybe worse, right? Well (at least as far as I am aware) we do not have books or magazines in our house of this nature so I was baffled as to what book he had. It turns out he had a book titled "It's Perfectly Normal." This is a book designed for parents to use with their kids to discuss the changes their bodies will go through, etc. This book and a partner book that details how a baby is conceived, etc. are I believe very good tools for parents but they have a controversial reputation from what I can tell.

I got these books by way of my old job at Realityworks where our focus was life skills education for teens and pre-teens. The author of these books contacted me and sent samples of the books in the hopes we might offer them for sale. We decided not to but she encouraged me to keep the books for my children. I thought they would be very helpful some day so tucked them away.

The weekend after Thanksgiving I went on a mad cleaning spree in our basement unearthing a bunch of books. These books were in the pile and unbeknown to me Ryan claimed "It's Perfectly Normal" for his own. The story we got from the teacher was that he had the book on the bus and was showing the pictures to others. The pictures are actually illustrations geared toward a kid but are graphic none the less.

So on Monday night after receiving this call (and me communicating via email with the teacher to hopefully save some face!) we sat down with Ryan to have a talk. We stressed that we weren't mad but wanted to hear his side of the story. It took quite a bit of coaxing but he did confess and claimed the title "interested" him because it was so different. We were pretty frank with him about the book and its purpose and of course then had to ask if he had questions or was curious about things with his body. He claimed no, but interestingly enough after I told Ryan he was more than welcome to read the book once we got it back from school, his interest seemed to pick up and he was very receptive to that.

I also had to chuckle a bit because I later overheard Bill telling Ryan that girl's private areas are OFF LIMITS. :-)

Later Bill asked me if I thought Ryan was telling the whole truth and I said, "absolutely not, do you?" Bill said "no but I remember being 10 and being curious." Big sigh. And so it begins I guess.

This is just another example of why my gray hairs continue to multiply . . .