Boys, bodies and babies

It is going to be one of those years, I can tell.

It is going to be a year of questions, those questions, the ones that demand decent answers, not the of course the tooth fairy will visit even though we are on holiday kind of answers.

Up until now IJ, aged six, has asked very few questions about the ways of the world, the birds and the bees, life after death or any of the big questions that make you sit up and think: Now this requires an half-decent attempt at an answer.

And then, on New year's Day (as if she had stored up a whole barrage of questions throughout 2009) she fired the following bullet points at me in rapid succession with no pause for breath whatsoever.

• Do I have to grow up?
• Can I be a child forever?
• What happened to your Granny?
• When I'm an adult do I have to have boobs?
• Do I have to have a baby in my tummy?
• If I shout at my tummy will the baby go away?
• Can I leave school and get a job?
• When I am an adult will I still have to wash?
• When you are 100 years old will you be dead?
• Will you look after me when I am an adult?
• Do I have to have a boyfriend?
• Will I still be beautiful when I'm an adult?
• Will I grow taller and taller until I am a giant?
• When I get older will I turn into a baby again?
• Is it Christmas yet?
• How did Santa get down are chimney
• Mummy why are you looking worried?

I was knocked sideways, to say the least.

I would have laughed at the Is it Christmas question but noticed that poor IJ was in tears. At nine o'clock at night, how do you console a hysterical child whose mind has clearly been working overtime?

No wonder she could not sleep.

So, there are questions to answer and explanations to be given. No doubt there will be more questions to come. Many more.

Liz over at Living with Kids wrote an interesting post recently in which asked if we, as parents, would be talking to our children about the subject of sex or if we would let them hear about it from someone else.

I plan to answer all of IJ's questions about sex, boys, bodies, growing up and anything else she wants to ask me.  I hope I do it in the most effective way. I doubt I will get it right every time but I will give it my best shot.

The good thing is that she is able to ask me. Now I have to be able to answer.

So I have some thinking to do.

It is going to be an interesting year.

Comments

[Liz (LivingwithKids)]

Good for you Rosie. I absolutely love answering kids' questions - sadly we're now at the stage where they know more than me!

[Metropolitan Mum]

Haha. Sorry to laugh, but I am just imagining what you could have answered to provoke the next question.
Your poor darling. Her head must be spinning.

[Armineh]

What lovely questions! I hope she wasn't too upset.

[geekymummy]

Fantastic questions, what a smartie! I'm with you, answer everything you can as soon as asked, age approriately of course. My own parents told me about everything very early, a barely remember not knowing the basics of where babies come from. I was desperate to start my periods as I had been prepped for it for so long! My husband is Danish, where talking about sex, contraception and VD at the dinner table is apparently the norm!

[Mwa]

That's such a difficult but such a beautiful time! Good luck with the answers!

[debbie]

In our family, there isn't anything we don't discuss - much to our kids' dismay:)

[TheMadHouse]

Ah, we have only had one of these type questions and it turns out I misinterpreted it. I always find a "What do you think happens" is a good start. We have also bought a set of children's encyclopedias from The Book People to help!!

[HelenLindop]

Gulp! My children are currently 5 and 20 months so I hope this is quite a way into the future for us as I'm totally unprepared. But I hope when the time comes I won't chicken out of giving completely honest answers.

[Tara@Sticky Fingers]

I'm OK with those sorts of questions but it's the 'why are bogies green', 'how big is god' and 'if I eat carrots and peas and sweetcorn, why is my poo always brown?' I struggle with.

[Erica]

Once you've figure it out let me know.

We've had few questions so far;

Can I marry Daddy? (a fairly simple one to answer - no, he's married to me)

Which was followed by;

Why can't he marry us both? (Because the police wouldn't like it!)

Can girls marry girls? (Yes, if they want to)

Will I marry a girl? (I don't know, it's up to you to decide when you're much much older)

Will I have to get my own house? (Yes, when you have enough money)

Can I come back to visit? (Yeah, come back whenever you want)

[Jo Beaufoix]

Well you know I'm experienced in the art of answering mad and difficult questions, (Miss M), but I KNOW you'll do great. Just be honest, and tell her what you think she'll cope with. She's a thinker is IJ. She's probably already storing up the next lot of questions, but she's also very good at processing stuff and coming up with her own solutions.

And, can I be a child forever??

[Mummy Mania]

ah, let the good times roll. How funny. When I was pregnant I was so concerned with the questions my future child might ask that I didn't have the answers to I went out and bought a rake of books called, Why do stars shine, and why is water blue etc. Needless to say they haven't asked any of those questions yet. Daisy's latest classic when she wasn't feeling well - "Mummy, can I get back inside your tummy?"

[Hot Cross Mum]

Wow - tough questions to answer! My 4 yr old was getting worried about having to grow up and be a daddy the other day. Yikes!

[Daisy]

Rosie - I'm loving your space! So glad I dropped in.

I find my 6 year old's questions are more along the lines of Tara's... and his humour also is all... boy humour. I'm afraid I likely would have dropped my jaw if he turned around and asked all those very difficult questions. He didn't ask the "is it xmas yet" since he now looks at a calendar and tells me exactly how many more months/days it is until the next special occasion!

Daisy

[Jennifer@alphamummy]

I LOVE all the strange and almost unanswerable questions. The last one that stumped me was "if you had a mummy and Nana had a mummy and she had a mummy and so on and so on, who was the first mummy?" Eve is the easy answer but not sure how I work in evolution there.

[Stigmum]

My boy spaces the questions apart which is lucky! He's asked some of IJ's and more recently like tara@stickyfingers child why his poo is brown when he eats carrots etc! Sex questions, so far it's about twice a year on average, as though it takes him that long to understand the answer to the previous one. It all started a long time ago, with:
"What's that?"
"It's called a tampon."
"What does it do?"
"Erm, mummy's use it when they have mummy tummy."
"What's mummy tummy?"
"It's something mummy's get once a month."
"Oh"

About six months later he picked up this conversation again and learnt about the 'egg', breaking off the conversation at the words "egg breaks", 6 months after that the 'blood' consequences.

He knows sperm from man meets egg from woman to 'make babies', and has been very quiet since discovering how....

In his own time, in his own time....!!