Just getting started...
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: Titanic, Norma Rae
Topic: THE "sex talk"
Ever since the movie Titanic prompted the dreaded "sex talk" with my son when he was the ripe old age of eight, I've sought out movies and TV programs to use as a springboard for other "talks" we need to have.
I know, if you were going to use Titanic as a teaching tool the history of the event or the examples of class differentiation are more obvious choices. You could even use it to talk about fashions, engineering or ethics? There aren't enough lifeboats to hold all the passengers???? What's up with that? But for us, it brought up the "sex talk."
Like most everyone, the sex talks my mom had with me were awkward and embarrassing! Even though I never knew what there was to be embarrassed about, I never did get the whole story!
Anyway, I read a LOT of parenting advice and I remember reading the best way to talk about sex with kids is to answer their questions simply and honestly when they ask. Answer the exact question they are asking and don't provide extra information.
Soooo, I'm sure everyone remembers the sexy scene in the backseat of the car. My son started squirming and looked at me and asked "Are they doing it?"
Doing it?
Did he ask me if they are doing it? Does he know what doing it means? He's only in second grade!
I squirmed through the rest of the movie!
So in the car I asked him, "Do you know what doing it means?"
"Kissing and stuff?" he replied.
I could have left it at that, but when he knew that wasn't the whole answer and he asked,
"So what is sex?"
I took a deep breath and jumped in with both feet. I told him simply?I didn't use slang words?in fairly graphic detail what "sex" was and how grown-ups do it.
Thank goodness he was grossed out! It was a brief conversation, maybe ten minutes, but it got the first conversation out of the way AND it opened the door for him to ask additional questions as they came up when he got older. Which he did!
He's a teenager now and even though it has become an embarrassing topic, he still will ask specific questions when he hears something new and he wants the real story.
After our titanic conversation I told him very specifically this is information kids should hear from their parents. I said if anyone at school started talking about sex and had "other ideas" of what it meant, he could tell them that wasn't right, but they needed to ask their parents about it. It wasn't his job to tell all his friends "where babies come from." I also touched base with several parents so they would be on the alert in case they got any questions from their kids. I told him when he got "older," maybe 7th or 8th grade it might be OK to "correct" friends if they didn't know what they were talking about when it came to sex.
I'd forgotten about that until he was heading off to middle school (6th grade) and asked,
"If someone doesn't know what sex is can I tell them now?"
I think I told him not yet, but when he asked again at the beginning of seventh grade I said OK. I told him to let me know if it came up so I could answer parents if anyone called me about it. Over the next few years he has shared a few conversations with me that came from friends and I was pleased with the way he respected the information and continued to come to me or his dad with specific questions when new information came his way.

So here I'm going to try to put into writing some of the conversations we've had about ethics, integrity, honesty, racism, class struggles, historical events and more. Sometimes a movie will come on TV and I'm not prepared to answer all his questions about the history of the event or the reasons behind the behavior of the characters on the screen, so I'm also going to collect resources and links to information that can help me and other parents be more informed when the time is right to talk about something without lecturing.

Some of the "must see" movies on our list are To Kill a Mockingbird, Twelve Angry Men, Wait Until Dark, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and the list goes on.

I'll confirm it's frequently not easy to get him to sit down and watch with me. I'll turn the movie on and we'll go about doing other things but at key scenes I'll get him up to speed and make him watch. He might wander in and out but by the time the movie ends he always has handful of questions about it.

Last night he dozed off during the first half of Norma Rae but I made sure his eyes were open for some key scenes and told him about how impoverished the community was and how unhealthy the working conditions were. With 45 minutes left he asked "When will this be over?"
By the time the movie ended he was full of questions about unions and working conditions and brown lung and "How can they just take her to jail for disagreeing?" he wanted to know. I shrugged and he replied

"But isn't that against the constitution?"

That's the kind of feedback I'm looking for. He asked deeper and more intelligent questions than I expected last night so I'll be on the lookout for websites, articles and other movies with additional information about working conditions and unions.

I won't post to this daily, just as time allows and subjects some up. I'd like to hear from other parents about "must see" programing they've used to open discussion on critical subjects. We used 7th Heaven a lot when he was younger, but not so much lately. I also try to keep up on what he's studying at school. When he read Anne Frank in English we rented The Pianist. It was an excellent supplement to what he learned in school.

That's all for now.