Sex Ed at Six: Is There an App for That?

I declared Sunday a Pajama Day. It was pouring rain, we didn’t need groceries, so we stayed in. And while cuddled together on the couch under a blanket in our pajamas, my six year old and I played on my husband’s iphone. He has an app on there that is something like Boggle. A random collection of letters are displayed on a grid and the player taps connected letters to make as many words as they can in a limited amount of time. He’s as good as I am: Dog. God. Wet. Stew. Scold. Cold. Weep. Pew. We kept making words and racking up the points. A fun innocent use of a Sunday afternoon, no?

During one particular round, he found a word first. He tapped out three connected letters:

S…E…X.

…..!!!!!

Insert my garbled, surprised laugh here.

“Um hon, do you even know what that means???”

He just giggled back at me. And kept punching out words.

And what did this very brilliant, oh so intuitive mother do? Nothing. I kept on playing too. And I stuck to a favorite parenting standby: ignore the obvious and maybe it will go away.

But of course I haven’t stopped thinking about it. He knows the word “sex”.

Granted, knowing the word and understanding the word are two different things. But he’s SIX! How does he know this word!?

What, was I born on the moon? He can read. Sex and the word sex is woven into our mainstream culture everywhere we go. And my kid happens to have one of those steel trap minds for words. He read very early, he aces spelling tests, he has always soaked in much more around him than he lets on.

I would bet if I asked him to spell the word tampon he’d get it right.

But would he know what it is? …Would he???

I’m thinking.

I don’t know. They’re sitting right there in my bathroom. They come with instructions after all…

Oh dear Lord. I am not ready for this. He’s SIX!

There is a part of me that wants to say something. You know, something very cool and collected like “If you ever want to know what the word sex means, let me know and we can talk about it.”

Ugh, no. NO! He’s six! Just because he knows this word, doesn’t mean he wants to understand its intricacies or all of its “ins and outs”. So to speak. He’s too young still. He just knew the word, that’s all. I mean I know we’re supposed to talk to our kids about sex early and – don’t get me wrong – I WOULD talk to him about it if he asked. I just feel like… he’s a wee innocent boy. He really isn’t ready for this, no more than I am.

*wringing my hands*

Yep. I’ll leave it be. For now. Just a couple more years. We’ll revisit this topic no later than eight. Yeah that’s about when you should kind of sort of know where a baby comes from right? That’s about when kids should have more than a vague idea that “mommies and daddies make them”. …I think.

(Cue flashback sequence: I was eight years old and over at a friend’s house. She and I were innocently playing Barbies on her bedroom floor when her older sister pranced in. Her sister had just started menstruating and, deeming herself a new expert on all topics below the belt, she decided to tell us allll about it. Later that afternoon, I remember walking home in stupefied haze, kicking stones, shaking my head the whole way. Of course I had to come face to face with those guilty of such deeds: my parents. So when I sat at dinner and they passed me the peas, what was my reaction? I let them have it. I spat at them “How could you??? How could you do… that???? That’s just… DISGUSTING!” Granted, I’m still not entirely convinced that they actually did do that. The stork was most likely involved with my brother and I – just in this one instance. But I digress.)

The lesson learned here is that these six year old eyes and ears are absorbing the world around them. (A shocking realization, I know.) And we can’t take for granted what they are sifting out or what they deem as “must know information” vs. “stuff grown ups worry about”. We can’t expect them to make that distinction. I have to be ready and I have to do what I can to introduce this crazy world at an appropriate speed.

That sounds responsible and about what a parent should do, right?

Now to actually apply that practically. To make sure my kid learns and sees and hears just about what he can handle without being cut off from the world or without protecting him too much…

Um. Yeah.

Is there an app for that?