You wanna know what’s more fun than approaching puberty with your hastily maturing 10 year old?…Approaching it with your open and talkative boy/girl 10 year old twins…that’s what. I can handle it. I’m proudly admitting that. Chris gets a little skeeved out occasionally, but we’re both keeping it together. I’m trying to maintain the mindset that…
1. There are no stupid questions. (Sometimes I’ve second guessed this statement, but then I’ve had a few questions of my own of which I believed could have been classified as “stupid” and I had to rethink my judgment on my initial disbelief of the statement.) In my own life, some questions have taken a level of bravery for me to ask and I want to respect that in my own children. I would rather them WANT to ask me and feel safe with what they believe my response will be than to be afraid to ask for fear that I would cause them to feel embarrassed or ashamed. Sometimes I think with this specific topic, my biggest fear is watching my kids discover something that could potentially strip away an innocence that is all I’ve ever known from them. I think sometimes I’m actually the one who’s afraid…of letting go.
2. I like to keep things as medical as possible but also throw in some light humor occasionally to keep things airy and comfortable while still conveying a heaviness, aware of my responsibility to properly communicate something deeply important. I was surprised that the puberty talk ended up bringing up unexpected topics like “If a man and a woman have sex to have babies then how come this kid in my class says he doesn’t have a dad?” Suddenly there is A LOT to cover.
My kids had a lot of knowledge on the topic prior to the talk that took place yesterday at school. Iris had a few months earlier expressed to me that she felt like she might have a bruise on her chest cause whenever she got hit in the chest it hurt. She has four brothers, having also grown up with four brothers I remember it well…wrestling around and getting hit in the chest. I was like, “Oh, wow. You’re growing breasts.” And we discussed more in depth a topic we’ve discussed at length one other time, cause now there was actually living proof of what was said to come. She was only slightly creeped out…just gave a mild, “Ugggggh, I don’t wanna grow boobs.” And once when Flynn seemed interested in a discussion after some hearsay that some other kids he knew were starting to “stumble upon” images that were less than savory on the internet we chose then to engage Flynn about the topic of sex and maturity. I think you would rather them know from you than from the internet.
Sadly the age of sexual awareness is occurring much sooner than it used to as the tech becomes more accessible to children…This is the #1 reason our kids don’t freely operate any screens in our house. I’m the screen nazi with the kids. Thankfully “screens” are expensive so we don’t have the option to have many around, but the few in the home are on tight lockdown. Coming from someone who has witnessed “screen wrath” from my children, (like when you disconnect them and it takes them a while to snap out of it and then they’re all miserable and can’t seem to figure out anything to do besides the thing that you just took away from them…so you start kindly suggesting the options of things that they may do that don’t include staring straight into an eventful abyss and none of your options are good enough and they have to go off by themselves and figure out that life goes on without this thing and the withdrawal isn’t fun…to witness or be the victim of.) We literally keep our TV in the basement and bring it up for the occasional movie night. There just isn’t room for it in our life. (Physically…I’m not devoting one whole corner/wall/room of our much overused living area into an altar to the television while they’re young. I need that space to hang their handicrafts! And figuratively…by the time four kids have completed their homework and helped with dinner and cleaned up from dinner and practiced piano and played with Max and gathered their dirty laundry and maybe even put away a load of their clean laundry and unloaded the dish washer and spent some time reading and taken a shower and had 2 papers signed by a parent and had a bedtime story and said goodnight…there is scarcely room for a minute of television.
!SMALL RABBIT TRAIL! Do you have a HUGE AMOUNT OF TIME YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE CONSUMED? Have a big family! The maintenance alone of 6 (lets be real, sometimes meeting the basic needs of even one other person can be taxing in todays’ society) or 5 or 4 people inside the same four walls can be overwhelming. We are getting closer and closer to having a system so that one is not doing the work of many (getting pregnant again helps with that…I’m becoming physically unable to bend down to pick up other peoples’ underwear off the bathroom floor, so I go the extra mile and rather than just bending over and grabbing them I opt instead to alert the owner to their underwear on the bathroom floor so they may remedy the situation. Pregnancy helps me to put selfcare higher on my priority list. I’ll be ‘better to me for my baby” kinda thing. There are certain things a pregnant woman bends over for…someone else’s dirty underwear it turns out, isn’t one of them. So what I’m saying is that I become a much better delegator while I’m pregnant and Chris really helps with this also by sensing my needs and prompting people who would otherwise be sprawled out on the floor reading Calvin and Hobbes, to go help their mom.
So yesterday I picked the 4 older kids up from school while my neighbor friend sat at home with napping Max. The moment that Iris’ butt hit the seat she informed me “We had the puberty talk today…they gave us a packet with pictures.” Owen (6) was already in the vehicle and Micah (8) was hopping in next. We looped back down to the street to avoid backing up traffic in front of the school while we waited for Flynn to emerge from the school doors. Iris was sitting forward in her seat, saying things like “When they said that your boobs would grow and they would feel sore and I was like “UUHHH…” and she made this face, where she turns the corners of her mouth as far down as humanly possible, think “extreme clown frown” on the cutest, hippest, prettiest, most creative little girl (I’m naturally biased)…her sense of humor is like no other. I nonchalantly said,
“Well, they told you how you have to put huge bandaids and ice packs on them, right?”
She flung herself back into the seat while her body took over with laughter. She was officially, “puberty-talk-giddy”. When Flynn hopped in the vehicle in was quiet for a moment, but the spirit was already in the air…barrier breached.
“Mom, they talked to us about puberty today.”
“I know, Iris told me…how’d it go?”
“It was weird, they told us our penises are going to grow…”
At this, the entire vehicle erupts with laughter. I knew it was pointless to have any kind of a serious conversation with Tweedle Dee (Micah) and Tweedle Dum (Owen) in the car with us.
Flynn spoke when the laughter stopped,
“They told us about how babies are made…why would they tell us about that during the puberty talk?”
He had a genuine look of confusion on his face. We’ve talked about how babies are made at our house. When you make them as often as we do, you have some explaining to do. Flynn wasn’t making the connection between going thru puberty and making babies.
“Well, making babies is the only reason we go thru puberty. Your body changes and the way you feel about a person changes because we are supposed to make babies with each other.” I was trying to keep everything G rated with the younger boys in tow. This is when Micah chimed in that there is a kid in his class who doesn’t have a dad, so how did he get made?
I took this as an opportunity to get a little deeper …even promote a little friendly abstinence…
“What that means is that someone wanted to have sex, because it feels good, but they didn’t want to do the really important job that often comes with having sex…which is being a parent.”
People were quiet while they thought about it…I continued…
“Basically, if you aren’t ready to be a mom or a dad, you shouldn’t be having sex. It’s a very important decision to make.”
I did not go on to tell them that Chris and I were in fact virgins on our wedding day. It was mostly by default. Turns out that being exceedingly afraid of your father can have positive effects on your abstinence success rate. Call it whatever you want…being terrified of maybe having to tell my dad that I was pregnant was 100% the reason that I “saved it” for my wedding day. I also knew that an occurrence that should be welcomed joyfully could, at the wrong time, be an actual life destroyer. I watched my parents struggle to no end to provide for myself and my four brothers, while dealing with legal troubles and substance and addiction. My childhood neighbors have told me they can recall me with a twin brother on each hip, contributing more than my share to help lighten the load on my mother who was left to find work at night at a gas station after my father was incarcerated for dealing marijuana. I don’t have this memory. I only remember life feeling heavy, worry forcing maturity before my time. Being the second oldest and the only female of my siblings, a lot of maternal responsibility was placed on my small frame. Looking back with the information that the past 12 years has afforded me, and recognizing not only my fertility but also my record for hatching multiples…Chris and I have discussed many times what premarital sex could have ended like for us. Twins at age 16. Thank you God, for my fear. Happily married with twins at age 22 was a wild enough ride…I don’t want to think about that amount of responsibility in any other scenario.
While continuing to steer us in the direction of the grocery store to pick up spaghetti and meatball ingredients, Iris kind of whispered in my direction…
“They gave us stuff to put in our underwear…”
Having given Iris panty liners (Ewe…I know…I despise the word “panty”) sometime last year, I know she is familiar with them and simply wanted to address the weirdness of discussing this among her peers, I responded the only way I knew how…
“Oh, you mean like crumbled up newspaper and leaves and stuff…?”
Again, she has lost control of her body while flailing with laughter. I am also deeply enjoying a laugh.
Puberty giddiness simmered down and I ran into the grocery store for a few things. (I don’t even want to know what conversation took place between them all while I was absent from the vehicle) Next, I dropped Iris and Micah off at piano practice and returned home to proceed with dinner preparations.
Owen and Max were pleasantly occupied with the wooden train set when Flynn entered the kitchen and asked,
“Can I help you with dinner?”
I was only slightly surprised, because frankly he is an extremely helpful and responsible boy.
“Sure, you wanna chop green pepper for the meat balls?”
He is pleased with this suggestion (he loves any excuse to use a knife) and gets right to work.
Naturally the previously abandoned conversation picks back up as I realize that Flynn hasn’t had all of his questions answered. I can’t recall exactly how it came back up but he round aboutly reopened the “SEX TALK” door and I made it a little more personal for him, which wasn’t hard as I stood there with my apron ill fitting over a 5 month pregnant belly.
“Obviously, your dad and I have sex…because we keep making babies. I love your dad very much and and I love the kids that we make and he loves me and that’s one of the most important parts of having sex. I hope that someday you meet someone that you love and enjoy and laugh with as much as I do with your dad…and maybe you will want to spend your life with that person and make a family with them.”
He digs deeper, looking up from the cutting board out the side of his eyes while he awkwardly asks,
“But mom, when do you and dad DO it?”
At this point I would like to point out a very endearing quality of Flynn’s…he’s just a practical guy. He’s literally thinking…”my parents are so busy, they rarely even sit down…they have five kids…they are constantly meeting our needs…when are they engaging in SEX?”(which he most likely believes to be some type of long, drawn out wrestling match)
I can’t help but laugh because I know he’s having trouble believing we have the time to fit this into our busy life.
“Are you looking for dates and times?!”
He is now laughing at his own question as well, and adds “Well, when you were pregnant with Max I just thought that you guys did it when you took us to AWANA…”
Now I’m laughing uncontrollably, this day just keeps getting better.
“Yeah Flynn, for two hours every Wednesday…we’re just having sex!”
Once I settled down I made some things clear to Flynn,
“You do know that we go to the same room and sleep in the same bed every night, right?”
“Yeh, but I just never knew…”
“It also doesn’t take THAT long…we fit it in.”
My only real victory in that parenting moment was keeping the door open for all future awkward topics to be welcomed and embraced. We continued our meatball mission and the conversation lightened up. I was impressed that Flynn stuck with me thru adding the eggs and the parsley and the parmesan cheese and the chopped garlic and all the seasonings to the burger. I often deal with kitchen helpers that lose interest and abandon their post leaving me to not only complete whatever I am in the middle of but then also to finish the job that they were doing. We put the first baking sheet of meatballs in the oven when Flynn came out with it…
“Can I have 3 bucks mom?”
“Ha! I might have known! What do you want with 3 bucks?”
“I want to send myself some candy-grams…” (A fun holiday extra that is offered at school… you can spend a little money to have candy canes or chocolate dipped marshmallows sent to friends.)
“Sure. You just earned your 3 dollars worth of candy-grams, but could you at least think about sending one to a friend instead of only sending them to yourself…?”
“Yea. I will.”
Flynn runs off to start his reading homework. Iris and Micah come through the front door with Chris who has retrieved them from piano lessons.
Chris, just like every evening, is stormed by the children. Max runs to greet him, his unignorable cuteness immediately producing an octave heightened change in Chris’ voice while he emits pure pleasure in the direction of our youngest blessing. Owen has cornered Chris, who is now holding Max, to insist he listen to him read aloud from a wildlife coloring book that he’s been obsessed with for about 3 days. (Owen is our strongest 1st grade reader yet, and we tell him all the time, so he is constantly keeping us aware of his progress.) Flynn and Micah have taken to “light wrestling” in the living room. I’m feeling the relief that comes every night when Chris walks through the door. I’ve said it before, I know, but I’ll say it again. Motherhood is an agreement, to enter into constant communication with your children. It is the most communication I have ever known, and it is usually coming from 5 directions. Often times I don’t even have time to respond to one question before the next one is asked. When Chris walks in the door, there becomes two receivers of the constantly transmitted sound waves of our children. It makes such a huge difference, mentally…to have one more person to field some of the wants, the needs, the stories, the complaints, the praise and the knock knock jokes that fly around a busy, full house. I am pouring spaghetti sauce in the pot to start warming it for dinner.
I feel her presence enter my otherwise empty kitchen. She has just had a little more than a 1 hour break from the “puberty talks”…I however have not. I have been in this kitchen continuing all puberty deliberations for the past hour with Flynn. It is silent only long enough for me to expect what is coming next…MORE. She wastes no time. No report from piano lessons, no snack request…she is plagued with the weight…
“They gave us a packet that had pictures, Mom…”
She mentioned this earlier but we never got to dissect it.
“Oh yea?” Lets just get on with it already!!
“There was this page that had a bunch of pictures of vaginas…” Her face is offering a look of complete disgust as she continues…
“First there was a little one…” she holds up her thumb and index finger to show me how small the picture was.
“Then next to that was one that was a little bit bigger and then one that was a little bit bigger and had a little hair on it and then there was this BIG ONE and it was all covered with HAIR!” Somehow her face has become even more disgusted looking.
I can’t help myself…
“Ewe! Like some kind of a little MONSTER or something!” She is losing her mind in hysterics again. If we can’t laugh our way thru this stage, then we actually might not make it thru at all.
I believe the reason that most of this seemed so comical to me is simply because most all of it has already been addressed with Flynn and Iris individually. They were actually only struggling with the level of openness with which it was spoken about among their peers. At one point on our earlier ride home, Iris was begging me…
“But WHY do they have to talk about it with us at SCHOOL!?”
I told her that every adult knows that this is going to happen to a healthy, developing young person. It is as natural as breathing. Imagine if a kid didn’t have a parent at home who wanted to talk about it with their child, or if they forgot to talk about it (I almost did, because your kids are always your “kids” and then one day signs and symptoms of their unavoidable maturity start presenting themselves and you just know what you have to do.) or God forbid, what if they don’t have someone close to them in their life to talk with them about it. I asked Iris,
“Wouldn’t it be a little scary if your body was changing and you didn’t know what was going on? What if you thought there was something wrong with you, or that you were sick.”
It seems a little funny at first, and then before you know it you’re a woman or a man and you are at home in your skin and BAM you have 5 kids! (The exception, not the rule…but my point is made.)
Who is ever ready for their baby (or babies!) to leave behind the childish innocence that is so evident in our underdeveloped pre-pubescent sweethearts? This past week has slapped me in the face with how brief our time with our babies actually is. They deserve to be informed and respected while they go thru the sacred and sometimes icky real life of maturity. We have so many awkward years ahead, but even those will speed past. I look forward to holidays surrounded by my adult children, and their children and I want to remember how much fun it actually was to help guide them to adulthood. I will always long for the days when their heads were bobbly melons on top of their stubby, inefficient little bodies. For now I get to watch them bound across basketball courts and glide down the alley on skateboards and strategically slide fingers over piano keys. I am thankful to be given the opportunity to handle with care and love, their passage to adulthood.
A BRIEF DISCLAIMER…if in the future we are to meet and I mention that the twins aren’t speaking to me, it will most likely be because they found and read this blog post and just haven’t forgiven me yet. I love you Flynn and Iris…our firsts…our dual practice round. MWAH!
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