The Birds and The Bees

The CHF wanted to watch a movie the other day, Dan was in the process of watching a program and I was working on my laptop so I’d requested that she bring Monkey’s laptop to me so that she could watch her movie that way. As the dinosaur of a laptop was starting up, I tried to keep the CHF calm and remind her that Monkey’s computer was old and took a while to start up. As it chugged along and the screen began to flicker I watched the screen as Internet Explorer came up immediately with a website loaded: sexgames.com was right there on the screen for everyone to view. As I started to minimize the application, try to distract the CHF and call for Dan, my mind began to race with various questions:

1. When did this start?
2. Is he really only going to be 9 next month
3. When was the last time I’d checked his internet history?
4. How did he go from legos.com to sexgames.com?


A quick search through his history gave me answers to questions 1 and 3 above but obviously 2 and 4 could not be answered by looking at data on a screen. He was staying the night at my Girlie Consultant’s (GC=The woman who I turn to when I need to look feminine but don’t quite know how) house so I quickly picked up the phone to get his inquisitive little butt home ASAP. GC told me she was just about to make the kids breakfast and seeing I didn’t have a real plan in place in terms of punishment and lecture I thought it just as well that he remain at her house until Dan and I came up with a plan for how to tackle this subject.

As Dan and I were talking about it GC called to let me know that certain events in her home led her to believe that there was some discussion between Monkey, her son (who I’ll refer to as T who is almost 12) and another neighborhood kid (Biscuit who is 14) about this particular topic and sharing of information on New Year’s Eve when they were all together. T claimed that Monkey was the one who brought up the topic. GC stated she didn’t believe it because he was the youngest of the group. Knowing my son the way I do, I didn’t for a split second think it was ludicrous that Monkey would be the one to broach the topic in order to:
a. Look cool in front of the older boys
b. Try to get more information about a topic that he’s desperate to know more about but too embarrassed to ask his parents about.

Dan and I discussed it and decided that Dan would take him to talk about how the topic came up, how certain information on the internet would be avoided, how he would no longer be permitted to be on the internet without supervision, and finishing with the logistics of sex; the reasons for it, the logistics, the emotional components etc.

Monkey expressed a bit of horror when Dan took him to a public coffee shop to have this discussion. After Dan assured him that no one could hear their conversation they talked for a while about everything. These are my favorite parts of the conversation that were shared with me:

Dan: (After discussing the events of New Year’s Eve) Was this the first time you visited a website like that?

Monkey: No
Dan: When and what prompted you to search for something like that on the internet?
Monkey: During the summer I met a kid at the aquatic park who told me about a scene in a movie that got me thinking about everything.
Dan: So what did you do?
Monkey: I did a Google search on “Naked Kissing”

I had a hard time concentrating on the pieces of the conversation that Dan shared with me after that because I was laughing about the words that he chose for the Google search which were slightly different than T’s search “Hot Sexy Naked Women”, so it left me realizing that Monkey still has a touch of innocence (or had up until the search results were revealed).

Dan and Monkey met The CHF and I at a store after this big discussion and Monkey decided to drive back home with me. During the drive home my conversation with Monkey went a little something like this:

Mom: Monkey, was the information that Daddy provided to you all new or did you already know some of the information?
Monkey: Well, I kinda knew some of the stuff but it was bumpy. Daddy was like a steamroller that came through and smoothed everything out for me.
Mom: (trying not to laugh out loud), Monkey have you heard someone else use that analogy?
Monkey: What’s an analogy?
Mom: What you just did with “bumpy and steamroller” when describing what it was like for you in your head.
Monkey: Nope, those were my words.

Overall it ended well, with an eventual confession (the next day after telling him that there was some inconsistencies in his and T’s story) from Monkey that it was indeed he that brought the subject up first on New Year’s Eve with the other boys. I then had to have a discussion with Biscuit’s mom about how I wasn’t angry but that he should be reminded that despite Monkey’s extensive vocabulary and confidence, he’s still only in 3rd grade while Biscuit just started high school. There are some things that Monkey should be exposed to when he’s just a wee bit older.

I knew this day would arrive quickly when standing at TCBY with Monkey as an 18 month old watching him literally stop dead in his tracks when he saw a really cute teenage girl and then watching him perform for her. I’m glad to have discovered that I can sometimes rely on my intuition and take comfort in the tiny fact that I do have pretty good insight to my son, even if sometimes I don’t enjoy what my intuition is telling me.

I was thinking that discovering these things about your kids wasn’t the most rewarding part of the job but, after some thought I’ve decided I was wrong, this is terribly rewarding and exactly what I signed up for; learning, teaching, worry and plenty of laughter.

I think this picture of Monkey trying to be cool while standing next to Alvin sums up exactly where he is in his life right now.