So Kaylie (who is six and is in kindergarten) brings home her library book today. The book is called Birth and Growth. This should be interesting right...It starts out okay with the first section being called "Where do you come from?". It talks about cells, bones and skin...still okay...and then it says "but you started life as just two tiny cells-an egg and a sperm"...hmm where is this going to lead!!?
Uh mommy what is sperm??? I don't think Kaylie has actually read this book (and she can read) but I'm sure this would be her first question and not one that I was quite ready to discuss with any of my children yet!!
It gets better...here are some of my favorite parts:
"A baby is made from an egg cell from its mother and a sperm cell from its father"
"Eggs are stored in a woman's ovaries. Once a month an egg travels down a tube, called the fallopian tube, toward her uterus. Sperm are made in a man's testes. They travel along a tube and out through his penis."
"Sperm look a little bit like tadpoles. Each sperm has a head and a long, thin tail. The tail helps the sperm to swim forward"
"A man's testes make about 500 million sperm a day"
"Sperm from the father swim up through the mother's uterus and into the fallopian tubes"
"The muscles of the uterus squeeze to push the fetus out through the mother's vagina"
"The hormones in boys make hair grow on their face and body, and their testes begin to make sperm"
"Her hips get wider"
"Periods happen about once a month. The bleeding only lasts for about four to seven days. It is a normal part of growing up"
"You still might grow fatter if you eat too much and don't exercise enough!"
"Many people stoop when they get older"
So now that I have so graciously read this wonderful book, I am wondering to myself what is the appropriate age to discuss these things with your children. I can totally see my very social and outspoken children raising their hands in class and saying "A man's testes make about 500 million sperm a day". Or going around on the playground and gathering all of the children to teach them about the normal parts of growing up.
As my friend Jenny and I are reading through this very educational book that was on the kindergartner's shelf for my 6 year old daughter to pick up...we recalled our own very wonderful educational experiences on these matters...
*we learned about sperm by watching the beginning of the movie Look Who's Talking where we were told that they were tadpoles
*we learned that boys have hormones that cause them to get hair in places that we didn't. Like a certain boy in fourth grade who changed much faster than any other boy our age
*we learned on our way up to camp that sometimes you have to wear mini diapers as a girl because you bleed once a month out of your vagina!
*we later learned again at camp a couple of years later how to insert and remove tampons so that we did not have to wear mini diapers!
*we learned that during that horrible time of month, you should not wear white pants...or leotards!!
*the theme here is that we learned very quickly that the whole period thing is not NORMAL!! It is horrible!!
*we learned from the movie Cocktail that boys and girls can have a lot of fun together in a bed
Those are a few of our favorite life lesson stories...please feel free to share yours in the comments section of this post. Also feel free to give advise on #1 what age to have these conversations with your children and #2 how to politely tell the school that they should maybe put this book on another shelf!
I laughed so hard I cried!!!
ReplyDeleteThis is what I sent to the school:
ReplyDeleteHello,
I want you to know that I am laughing about this but wanted to bring this to your attention. I was just wondering since the girls are to be bringing in their favorite books to be read to the class this week if it would be okay for them to bring in their library book that they brought home today called “Birth and Growth” and has some of the following lines:
“A baby is made from an egg cell from its mother and a sperm cell from its father"
"Eggs are stored in a woman's ovaries. Once a month an egg travels down a tube, called the fallopian tube, toward her uterus. Sperm are made in a man's testes. They travel along a tube and out through his penis."
"Sperm look a little bit like tadpoles. Each sperm has a head and a long, thin tail. The tail helps the sperm to swim forward"
"A man's testes make about 500 million sperm a day"
"Sperm from the father swim up through the mother's uterus and into the fallopian tubes"
"The muscles of the uterus squeeze to push the fetus out through the mother's vagina"
"The hormones in boys make hair grow on their face and body, and their testes begin to make sperm"
"Her hips get wider"
"Periods happen about once a month. The bleeding only lasts for about four to seven days. It is a normal part of growing up"
"You still might grow fatter if you eat too much and don't exercise enough!"
"Many people stoop when they get older"
Those of course are just my favorite parts of the book. Anyway, I’ll be sending this book back to the school and hoping that it can be placed on a shelf that is not for kindergartener’s.
My mother told me that babies are made "when a girl and a boy love each other so much, that their love makes a baby". well, for the good part of my elementary years, I was terrified that my grandfather and I were going to have a baby!!! So, no matter what you decide to tell them, make sure that you explain that this does not include family members. Also, "The musclues of the uterus squeeze to push the fetus out through the mother's vagina"...that line alone terrifies ME. And I am 28 years old. That is not something children should be told. The stork story is so much nicer.
ReplyDeleteGood luck wih this adventure in parenting!!! xoxo
So the girls had read the book already... I sat down with both of the girls and the book so that I could see how much they had retained and understood. They were completely clueless to all of it and it was going over their heads. They were mostly interested in the section that talked about twins and the section about X and Y chromosomes. They didn't understand it but that's what they were talking about. We did talk about it taking a part of mommy and a part of daddy to make a baby. We used the analogy of playdough-one blue and one yellow and when you mix the two together it makes green. They understood this concept and didn't think far enough ahead to want to know how you get the mommy part and daddy part to mix.
ReplyDeleteSo that was that. Kaylie was definitely embarrassed about it at first b/c she felt like she was bad for getting the book. But once we started talking and she saw that I would talk to her about it, they were both fine. So talk #1 done...more to follow!
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