Monday, March 16, 2009

"THE" talk....

Well the bad thing about that statement is it's not "THAT" talk, its another "THE" talk.

When we were growing up our parents talk consisted of.......don't get pregnant.



But how do you get pregnant?



Just don't!!



Now a days its a little more complicated than that.



I have had the "birds and the bees" talk, can anyone explain to me where the saying the "birds and the bees" came from.

Because I don't know about you all, but where I was growing up I never saw a bird or a bee doing anything.

Now my neighbors dogs, now that was another thing.



I can promise you if they would of said you see those dogs??

Now don't get pregnant!!

I probably would of turned into a nun that day!



But anyway, back to the "birds and the bees".



Yes I have had that talk with my oldest son and my younger son. My older son's talk has been reintroduced every 6 months or so, or every time Oprah and Dr. Oz have some more valuable information for me :)

With Alex every time I talk with him, I can see his body language is a little bit more relaxed than the time before. I find that talking with him in the car just the 2 of us, really is good. He doesn't have to look right at me and he can't see me holding in my smirks or swallowing my vomit.....



So lets see we've had the kissing talk, the body talk, the smirk sex talk, the smirk smirk and close your eyes when your saying it oral sex talk. After I had these talks with my son, I drank heavily feel a lot better and really felt like we could talk about ANYTHING.

And then came a little thing called Sexting.....text messaging people, either sex talk things or worse, picture of body parts or I just threw up a little bit in my mouth videos of KIDS having sex.

My son does not have a phone but one day he will.
He does have an email account and he and his friends forward silly emails back and forth to each other.

The whole moral issue is obviously the first thing that we as parents think of.
But more than that, some of these young kids that get involved with this and have been caught, have been prosecuted.

So say little Pauly's is 17 and his girlfriend little Debby is 16 and she decides she is going to take a picture of her body parts, because she has no life and needs a hobby is bored. She sends it to him either over the phone via text message or over the computer via email.
The next week little Pauly finds out that little Debby has been kissing little Johnny. So he says oh man I'm going to send all of our friends these pictures of her because she cheated on me. Well as soon as little Pauly sends those pictures he can be charged with child pornography. Because you know that some body's momma will see these pictures and then its all over after that.

Nothing happens to little Debby for showing her ho ho's and nutty bars but because little Pauly now distributed those pictures, he can go to PRISON! And kids have. The child porn laws have not caught up to the technology of today. It's sad but true.

So last week as I was driving my son to one of his practices, I try to work text messaging and pictures and ho ho's into our conversation.

We talked about the importance of ALWAYS using your self respect. And if someone sends you something like this through your email or one day through your cell phone, to tell me or his father immediately.

He told me a story about someone who went around and told people he took a picture under a girls skirt with his phone. Someone over heard this ding dong kid and reported it to the office. He was EXPELLED. There was no 3 strikes, it was you have a problem and you need some help.

I asked Alex what he thought about that kid.

He said with a disgusted look on his face, mom that kid must of had something wrong with him.
Then he said and that kid also had a sister.
How would he of liked it, if that was his sister??
(He really does listen....HALLELUJAH!!

We went over, just for old time sake.....all the other things again.

I am not even going to sit here and say that talking about these things with my 13 year old is easy.

But if we think that just teaching them the "birds and the bees" is enough, we are sadly mistaken....

Think about this, how often do we have to UPGRADE our computers, our phones, our lives to keep up with the world around us?

You have to UPGRADE your relationship with kids 15 times more!

I know that my kids will make mistakes along the way, I'm just hoping that talking with them about all of the things in the world today, will help them make these mistakes when they are 90 much much older.

OH THE JOYS OF PARENTING..........

4 comments:

Carey-Life in the Carpool Lane said...

Oh, my...I hadn't really thought about this yet. My boys are 2 and barely 4 so I guess I've got a bit of time to start thinking about how to approach his topic.

Love what you said about upgrading your relationship...

Mel said...

Wow. I feel like I live in a bubble or under a rock. I have never heard of sexting?! Can you just start taking notes now for me or can I just send Emily and Jack to you when they need talks?

I'm just me... said...

I sooo commend you for having the type of relationship with your kids where you can have these talks with them. I could have never discussed any of these topics with my parents. I want to have this open, honest realtionship with Tink so when the time comes we can discuss these things and she can have all the information she needs.

Elizabeth said...

This is brilliant.

Send it to Parenting magazine. (seriously!)

Upgrading your relationship, that is absolutely dead on.