We've been watching Life on Discovery*. It's been great family time. It has, however, opened a door we weren't prepared to go through. The show talks a lot about mating. A lot. Two weeks ago, we were all cozied up on the couch watching the episode about birds when Oprah (she narrates) said the word seks and Tyler screwed up his face.

"Ewww!"

Me: "What's ewww?"

"She said, 'ES-E-X'." [how does he know how to spell it?!]

"What do you know about seks?" 

"It's gross."

"Why is it gross?"

Phil is looking at me over Tyler's head and his eyes kept getting bigger and more deer in headlights-y.

Kinda like this female Dawson's Burrowing Bee.

"Because there's all that kissing. That's gross."

"Actually, kissing is kissing. Seks is how babies are made."

Phil had a heart attack. 

Tyler didn't say anything to that. After the show, we sent him to get ready for bed.

Phil: "Why did you tell him that?!"

"I didn't want him on the playground yelling at some girl, 'stop trying to have seks with me!' He needs to know the difference."

"I'm not ready for this, he's only 7!" 

"Me neither, but kids are doing some scary stuff, we're going to have to talk about it eventually."

"Yes, but he's only 7!!"

We told my mom the story when she was here last week. She, of course, thought it was hysterical. My parents didn't have The Talk with me. I'm sure with my brother it was, "do not, under any circumstances, bring home a pregnant girlfriend." 

I've been wondering when the topics of seks would come up. I figured we'd wait until Tyler brought it up and answer age appropriately. When he was a toddler, we told him the proper names for body parts and that he used to drink milk from my breasts. I think we've done a good job giving him the information he needs and answering his questions honestly. 

Now that he's brought it up, I guess it's time to think more in depth about how we'll answer the actual how-to questions. I'm sure it will be up to me, given Phil's reaction to this little incident. 

How old were your kids when you had The Talk? What did you say?

*Life is such a good show. Very similar to the Planet Earth series. I wasn't asked to write about it, we just really enjoy it and have had fun watching together. Photo from the Life/Discovery website.

Losing My Mom of the Year Award

I made Tyler cry yesterday. Granted, I've done it before, but this time it was accidental. Yesterday's weather was below southern California standards. It wasn't nice enough for the pool, beach or park (don't hate) so we decided to go see How To Train Your Dragon.
Tyler was outside playing. I called him in and told him to change into jeans and get his shoes on.

Before I get to the part where I made him cry, let me explain a little bit about Tyler. He makes it virtually impossible to surprise him or treat him to something. Whenever I ask him to get ready so we can leave, he starts in with 20 Questions.

Are we going somewhere?
Where are we going?
Is it the park?
Which park are we going to?
Is it the squishy one* or the one with the sand?
It's not the park?
Is it Chuck e Cheese?
Will there be food there?
Will my cousin be there?
Is it the skate park?
Can I bring my scooter?
Why is the sky blue in the daytime but not at night?

If I don't answer, he just keeps going. I've told him before that sometimes, part of the excitement of going somewhere is the anticipation and element of surprise. He needs to just sit back and enjoy the ride every once in awhile. We're still working on it.

Back to the story.

I can see that he's about to launch into 20 Questions. We need to get moving since we decided to go at the last minute and wanted to catch the next showing (leaving us about 25 minutes to get there) so we could go to dinner afterwards. We didn't have time to play his game.

"We're going to the movies and we need to get a move on."

"What movie are we seeing?"

I get easily frustrated that, when asked to do something, Tyler doesn't always just do it because we're his parents and we asked him to. He has to question everything. I'm sure this is a trait I'll admire later. Now? Not so much. Which is probably what led to me saying:

"You're not seeing a movie, Daddy and I are seeing a grown up one and you're waiting in the car."

Phil laughed a little and said, "we're going to see How To Train Your Dragon and we need to hurry."

Fast forward to after the movie.** We're walking back to the car asking each other what we thought when Tyler says to me, "you know, Mom, you made me cry earlier."

"What do you mean?"

"Before, when I asked where we were going."

"You mean, when I said you were going to be waiting in the car?'

"Yes. I was crying in the back seat on the way here. I used Dad's sweatshirt to wipe my tears."

Yes, he actually said 'wipe my tears.' I felt about thisbig. He didn't hear Phil when he said the name of the movie. My poor kid thought he'd be sitting in the car alone! Obviously, my sarcasm didn't quite come through. I've apologized profusely, but think I'm going to have to pull something really special out of my ass to make up for this one.

Please tell me I'm not the only one to inadvertently reduce their kid to tears?

*We have a park nearby with that bouncy, rubber tire-like stuff under the play structure. We started calling it the squishy park, to differentiate it from the sand park, and the where-we-used-to-live park.
**We all loved the movie. It's really cute. We saw it in IMAX 3D. The dragons aren't super scary, except for the giant bad-guy one. I wouldn't take kids under 5.