Dancing About the Birds and the Bees
Posted: Tuesday, May 01, 2007
by Mary Fagan
Motherwise
It’s inevitable that questions about the birds and the bees will pop up. When my son asked what “doing the nasty" was, thanks to the kids on the bus, we had to visit this sweet mystery of life. Fighting the temptation to tell him it was a new dance craze, I realized it really is a dance.
Whether prompted by the dogs in the yard, monkeys coupling at the zoo or 90% of prime time TV shows, parents find it difficult to take the lead when children drop questions like “What is sex?" or “How does a baby get inside a mommy?"
Flowers illustrate the basics. I keep an artificial Easter lily handy from age 6 on, but a real tulip or lily is required in the later stages. Get familiar with the stigma, tube and ovary full of seeds (female) and the stamen with pollen (male) by dissecting a few in private, as you need to appear experienced later on.
Love. Babies are the fruit of love between a man and a woman. We will make parallels between the flower, fruit and fertilization. If you stress that babies are the “fruit“ of love with a really bright child, this might turn a light bulb on without the need to draw pictures. The rest of us should have a pencil and paper ready.
Observation is the powerful tool you will use with your delicate flower. For questions limited to anatomy, go directly to your flower’s stamen with pollen and the stigma, tube and ovary and make the necessary correlations. Those going all the way to fertilization can proceed to the “Example," step noting the following caution:
Waiting. Sex education is a developmental process. Children assimilate new information in stages. Are they really ready for the whole story? Often nervous parents misinterpret a simple question and prematurely provide too much information. A child asking “What is sex?" might just want to know that it means boy/girl or male/female.
Example. Open up the ovary and expose the seeds inside. Slice the pollen tube to show the pollen’s path to the seeds. Explain that once fertilized with pollen, the seeds inside grow into fruit. No fertilization, no fruit, and it takes two to tango.
You can let this information settle or show drawings of the corresponding human body parts. Check to see how your little scientist is doing before going to term.
This next step, the dance of the bees, is hard labor. If kids thought their parents’ body parts were as beautiful as the lilies of the field, it would be easier. Things as they are, explain that pollen rubs off onto the bees who carry it to other flowers. The pollen gets on the stigma, goes down the tube, fertilizes seeds, and they grow into fruit.
Fathers shouldn’t hum anything at this point. Hopefully, your child will begin to put two and two together. If not, you need to be more direct. Take short deep breaths, then translate the flower parts to body parts and get it over with. Have a couple of aspirin for your headache. A sure sign of comprehension follows.
Revulsion. It’s only natural. Many children jump to the conclusion that parents tiptoe around the tulips only as many times as the number of children that they have. This misconception will pass after the next bus ride or slumber party.
Caution kids to keep this to themselves so other parents can share it in a special way with their own children. It’s only fair that they should have to dance too.
I no longer fear explaining about the birds and bees. Wondering where the birds come in? If things get too uncomfortable, you can resort to the stork story. Chicken.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Mary, Your writing is a riot! That's a compliment. You explain parental concepts in such a lighthearted manner. I never tried the flower thing. I wonder how my kids would have taken to it. Well, they are married and have babies of their own so they must have learned something! Nice work.Thank you - and I took it as a compliment! I learned the flower thing in elementary school from Sister Imelda (No relation to Ms. Marcos). She had us cutting up, touching pistols and pollen, removing eggs - it was fascinating until we realized where she was headed and, suddenly things got real quiet. I never forgot it. But I didn't make it to the convent and had three children. I figured the least I could do was pass on her wonderful lesson about reproduction. God Bless!
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