cantdog
Waybac machine
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2004
- Posts
- 10,791
Wow, there have been a lot of strong opinions in this thread along with a vast majority who never had one or never had to give one, or both.
I started getting mine as needed from at least five. If I had heard a joke using a new word-- whorehouse, for instance-- I at first would go to the fount of such wisdom, my parents. They infallibly told me. If my curiousity persisted they told me more, as I showed and interest. When it looked like I was bored they quit, until the next time.
When I got systematic at about seven, I suppose it would have been, Dad referred me to a short list of reliable, if dry, references. But my parents were still available as needed. Some subjects they were hostile to, so, noticing that hostility, I shied away from them and relied more on the references and on others as I found them. By the time I was in third grade, the other kids knew that I was the man with all the answers. Answers, moreover, which checked out when they tested them against other sources of their own.
But the process was accomplished with no talk, just honest answers to honest questions.
There was none of this "too young" jive. If I was asking, I was clearly ready for-- that is, I clearly felt I had some use for-- the information, if only to understand the puzzling joke about the whorehouse.
They did emphasize that I was still too young to put these things into actual practice, but they held nothing back.
I did get a "talk" from my mother on the occasion of my first girlfriend, at twelve or so. It was clearly a silly affair, but we were kissing and holding hands from time to time. She, my mother, wanted to paint the roadlines as to what having a girlfriend meant and what it did not mean. I can remember a lot of it verbatim. I never had a son, so the memory of that talk has been less valuable than it might otherwise have been, but I still have it. I hope one day to give it to my grandson, if I live so long.
Raising my daughter, I had very much the same policy of truth on demand to the present capacity and interest of the child. She was never wondering for long, nor did she attach undue glamor to the mysterious workings of sex, since it was always in the realm of fact, not mystery. Menses I left to her mother to acquaint her with, since she was the expert. Her mother didn't have the same facility with the sex explanations as I did, so she didn't get asked as often as I did.
My daughter reports she was a resource for her contemporaries, as well.
cantdog
I started getting mine as needed from at least five. If I had heard a joke using a new word-- whorehouse, for instance-- I at first would go to the fount of such wisdom, my parents. They infallibly told me. If my curiousity persisted they told me more, as I showed and interest. When it looked like I was bored they quit, until the next time.
When I got systematic at about seven, I suppose it would have been, Dad referred me to a short list of reliable, if dry, references. But my parents were still available as needed. Some subjects they were hostile to, so, noticing that hostility, I shied away from them and relied more on the references and on others as I found them. By the time I was in third grade, the other kids knew that I was the man with all the answers. Answers, moreover, which checked out when they tested them against other sources of their own.
But the process was accomplished with no talk, just honest answers to honest questions.
There was none of this "too young" jive. If I was asking, I was clearly ready for-- that is, I clearly felt I had some use for-- the information, if only to understand the puzzling joke about the whorehouse.
They did emphasize that I was still too young to put these things into actual practice, but they held nothing back.
I did get a "talk" from my mother on the occasion of my first girlfriend, at twelve or so. It was clearly a silly affair, but we were kissing and holding hands from time to time. She, my mother, wanted to paint the roadlines as to what having a girlfriend meant and what it did not mean. I can remember a lot of it verbatim. I never had a son, so the memory of that talk has been less valuable than it might otherwise have been, but I still have it. I hope one day to give it to my grandson, if I live so long.
Raising my daughter, I had very much the same policy of truth on demand to the present capacity and interest of the child. She was never wondering for long, nor did she attach undue glamor to the mysterious workings of sex, since it was always in the realm of fact, not mystery. Menses I left to her mother to acquaint her with, since she was the expert. Her mother didn't have the same facility with the sex explanations as I did, so she didn't get asked as often as I did.
My daughter reports she was a resource for her contemporaries, as well.
cantdog
