I was hesitant to write about this here for fear that someday Jacob will read this and be mortified, but I feel like I'd be doing a disservice to my parenting experience if I left this out. It appears we're getting to the point of parenthood/tweenhood where we have to confront everyone's least favorite topic: S-E-X.
Uuugggghhhh...I'm seriously not ready for this. I know he's getting the "official" school sex ed sometime between now and the end of the school year, which is fine--I'm okay with him knowing the basic facts. He should know how it works, what body parts are going to do what, and that sort of thing. I still remember learning it in fifth grade myself--mortifying as it was. We watched some awkward video, or maybe even had a filmstrip? Either way, it was bad. I was still a good 2-3 years away from most of puberty at that point, but other girls certainly weren't so I suppose it was important. My most vivid memory was the mad dash back into the classroom to hide our maxipad sample in our bookbags before the boys could see them. Awkward.
The thing is, we've already gone through some of the puberty/sex stuff with him--just as things came up. Whether it was about how babies were made, or that girls have periods, stuff has just come up and we've tried to handle it as much as we could without getting into graphic detail--partly because I'm not sure what he can mentally process and be okay with it, and partly because I didn't want inappropriate fodder for the lunch table. I mean, if you tell a kid that a girl can bleed for a week, I can see that going really badly if the boys tell each other and decide to gang up on a girl who may or may not actually be menstruating. Even insinuating it could be disastrous for that girl. Boys are stupid at this age, and when things are happening to girls before they happen to them, let's just say that the empathy may not be there just yet. No need to add fuel to the fire or give him any extra ammunition.
But last week Jacob was sort of hinting that he had come into some new information on the topic, and miraculously he shared a bit with me on the way to basketball practice. I won't get into detail, but essentially it sounds like at least one or two of his friends have significant (read: all the way) experience with the topic. He shared a couple details he learned that were accurate--as well as one that made me laugh as it was essentially true but very much a 5th grade take on it. Regardless, I pretty much wanted to crawl into a hole and die at the mere thought of fifth graders getting it on. I mean, WHY? Being naked in front of a boy at that age would have been my biggest nightmare, not something to shoot for. The parts can't all be that attractive or functional at this stage, can they? I mean, puberty takes a few years to do its thing, and even if they started last year (which I think would have mostly been a girl thing as they go first), it seems like it would all be a bit premature.
Being that I was much older before this was a thing in my world, I have so many questions of my own. Do condoms even fit right? What kid that age has the nerve to go buy extra smalls at the store? And if they do, who took them there? And where the heck do these kids find the time to do it alone? I would have to think positioning would be awkward without a few years of random sex scenes in TV and movies as a guide (because I know I hadn't seen many, if any, at that age), but I guess YouTube or a single Google search probably takes care of that these days, eh? #losingbattle ðŸ˜
And look, I know this is probably way more common than I want to believe and there are probably pregnant tweens everywhere (or so a friend of mine who works in a city school insinuated on Facebook), but I just can't figure out why any 10 or 11-year-old thinks this is a good idea. Hormones should not be pumping that hard yet, right? Part of me wants to hope these kids are embellishing a bit, or are just insinuating that they've done things to get attention, but I know that's probably wishful thinking. I just find the whole thing distressing and sad. To me that just seems to set the stage for an all-around unhealthy relationship with sex--too many partners over time, going too far before understanding the full consequences (mental, emotional, physical), overemphasizing the role of sex in a true relationship, or even how sexualizing a tween body could impact sexual fantasies/deviancy as a grown adult.
Jacob and I talked a bit about condoms, as he correctly knew they were important, and he was shocked to hear that his father and I have actually used them. I don't know why he was surprised, but there have certainly been times where we didn't want a baby and the pill was not a valid option (mostly related to antibiotic use, which negates the effects of the pill, or when I was off the pill to get pregnant but we needed to stop trying for a while to strategically avoid the Disney trip that ended up getting scrapped anyway). Now he really wants to see one, and I'm tempted to just show him so he can get that out of his system now. In fact, we currently have bananas in the house, so I could even give him the stereotypical school lesson on use (for reference, watch the movie "Never Been Kissed"). Hahaha...but we'll see. But we also talked a bunch about pregnancy and how condoms aren't 100% effective. He wondered what would happen if a 10-year-old had a baby, and I proceeded to explain how many lives it would negatively impact. Of course, he's the boy so truth be told it would probably impact him way less, but I tried to emphasize the burden it puts on families and how awkward it would be to have a dependent, half-grown child when you're just getting out on your own yourself as a young adult. The conversation mercifully ended as we got to practice, and we've only revisited it briefly a few times since.
I've surmised that it's not like he wants to do anything imminently, which is good, but he does still want a girlfriend. It sounds like it's more because everyone else has a significant other (and who am I kidding, so did I at that age), and it seems like he just wants that special friendship. At least, he got this disgusted, "no way" look on his face when I insinuated it might have something to do with what his friends are doing, so I'm hoping that was genuine. His friend did tell him it was "fun" so I definitely have some damage control to do. We haven't really gotten into STDs or the emotional toll or even really the religious aspect of it, so all of those things will need to be discussed at some point. For the record, while the religious thing should be important, I also feel like it's the easiest point to disregard when hormones are pumping, so I'm leaning a bit more heavily on the practical reasons why it's a bad idea. I hope to work in that God intended it for a committed relationship like marriage, and that's really where it works best and is of the highest quality. If I can communicate all that and keep Craig's and my respective histories out of the picture (it's not really any of his business, and who really wants to know that kind of info about their parents, anyway? Talk about fodder for future therapy.), I think it will be a win.
Due to a scheduling snafu, I was able to have some extended one-on-one time with Jacob's therapist to discuss all of this. I figured the professional perspective might be helpful. Even she seemed a bit surprised with how early this was popping up, but she said that everything I'm doing so far sounds just right. She seemed very pleased with how he was responding and said to keep it up. That was validating, at least, but I still feel like I'm feeling my way through a very dark, very cluttered room every time it comes up. There seems to be an infinite number of things to trip me up while blindly navigating this new realm.
The thing is, I want to keep those lines of communication open. I'd rather he talk to me than his friends. Or he could talk to Craig, for that matter, but he seems less willing to do that for some reason. I want to be as honest as I can without going beyond what he needs at this point. I need him to trust me, and hopefully through that I can gauge where he's at and be there when the temptations and decisions start coming. I doubt it will work out that way because tweenhood and teenagerhood suck, but I'll try for a decent foundation, at least.
But it still blows my mind that he has friends doing this stuff...and yet I know it's only going to get worse. Kids just don't understand that they're not invincible, and that these seemingly small decisions can have some major consequences they're not expecting. Not just babies or diseases, but real emotional and mental consequences that can impact their relationships forever. As tempting as it is to value your current happiness over anything else, kids tend to forget they have a long life ahead and the things they do now can have a ripple effect on all of it. Their decision-making skills aren't great at this age, and "you don't know what you don't know", so making what is actually a major life decision without all of the details can be problematic. Jacob tends to think he's basically an adult (ugh) so I have no doubt he'll think he's equipped to make big decisions long before he actually is. He'll learn his fair share of lessons on his own (although learning from his mistakes is not his strong suit), but the stakes are high on this one so I feel like a little extra guidance wouldn't be the worst thing. But I'll be walking on eggshells with every single conversation, and just praying I say the right thing at the right time.
My co-worker's kid tried to bite someone today, and as she told me the story, I realized I've officially hit the stage where the big kid problems make the "huge" little kid problems seem like child's play (pun intended). And this is just the beginning.
Hold on tight, folks...it's gonna be a bumpy ride.
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