I have been thinking a lot lately about how to approach the subject of sex with my 10 year old daughter. I have asked her about what she knows about sex, but she claims she knows very little. We have discussed the reproductive system and how and why woman menstruate etc but we have not yet discussed the “nitty griddy” of the actual act.
I must admit, I have been very nervous about the discussion, as I am sure most parents are. I started to ask myself, why am I so nervous? I have a pretty liberal view of sex and sexuality myself. My childhood is full, too full actually, of sexual memories. I think that my experience and early exposure to sex as a child has made me even more cautious about the subject than perhaps even some parents. Making sure I expose my children to sex and the method in which I do that has always weighed heavily on my mind.
Since my daughter has now turned 10, I keep getting this nagging feeling like should be doing something about this and soon. It’s funny how things come to you when they are supposed to. Recently I watched a very inspiring speaker on a Ted series that discussed how we as a society focus very much on the act of sex and not so much on our sexuality as human beings. I found this line of thinking to be very freeing to my inner turmoil about speaking about sex with my daughter. This speaker helped me realize that this “big talk” should not actually be a big talk at all, but a series of “little talks” and not just about the actual act of sex but the importance of sexuality in our lives. That very slight change in how we think about sex changed everything for me. But most important, it took the pressure off of my daughter and me to know that we didn’t have to sit down and feel all squirmy and weird about explaining “this is a penis and this is a vagina…” I am sure that graphic details will have to be made at some point when she is ready. I am glad I realized I don’t have to put that on her in one big “embarrassing moment in our lives”.
Oddly enough, another “ah ha moment” I had recently was watching a very seemingly odd movie “Don Jon” starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Scarlett Johansson. The movie is about a young man in his early twenties who is addicted to pornography. It turns out these pornographic images that he has been pleasuring himself to over and over again make it impossible to connect with all of the many actual women he is also sleeping with. He then meets an older woman, played by Julianne Moore, who helps him realize that the reason he cannot connect with all of these real live woman but he is able to loose himself in pornography is because he is looking at sex as “sex” and not sexuality. He is not looking at it as an experience with another person. He starts to realize that everything sexual he has been exposed to his entire life is just sex, not the connecting that makes sex so amazing and freeing. For me, seeing this affirmed my recent thoughts that when it came to explaining sex to my daughter I had been thinking about this all wrong. This made me even more sure that I need to teach my kids about the relationship of sex not just the simple act of sex.
Sex is simple, Sexuality is not. Sexuality is about relationships both with ourselves and with others. Discussing sexuality as opposed to discussing just sex opens a huge chasm of topics and opportunities to discuss sex every day in our lives. What our kids see tv and hear on the radio, when they see those teenagers kissing or those dogs embarrassing their owners in the dog park.
The song makes so much more sense now!
Let’s talk about sex, baby Let’s talk about you and me Let’s talk about all the good things And the bad things that may be…
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