Let's Talk About Sex, Plainly

Talking about sex with your kids is a lot more complicated these days, thanks to the internet, but it's more important than ever

Every once in a while, my 8-year-old will complain that his penis is sticking up. I explain, calmly and as accurately as possible, that he’s got the devil in him and must repent.

Just kidding. I tell him it’s normal, throw out some mumbo-jumbo about blood flow, and reassure him that it will eventually subside. He’s a few years away from needing to know much more than that, but I’m glad he uses the proper terminology and doesn’t say pee-pee or something like that. That’s because Mom and Buried and I try to be honest and real and as nonchalant as possible about those topics.

(I’m sure my kids are going to have plenty of parent-induced hang-ups, but we’re doing our best to prevent any shame or embarrassment around body image or gender expression or normal sexual thoughts/activity from being among them.)

Obviously, my 13-year-old is far less likely to tell me when he has a similar issue, largely because his body’s motivations are becoming increasingly more complicated. But I would talk to him about it if he asked, and there are plenty of other sensitive topics his mom and I have made sure to broach with him as he enters puberty.

We’ve all had to learn about the birds and the bees, whether through a talk with our parents, raunchy and ill-informed playground gossip with peers, or shamefully inadequate lessons at school. It’s a rite of passage! But these days things are a little more complex than typical baseline discussions about anatomy, safe sex, and pregnancy. This is largely thanks primarily to the internet.

When I was a kid, if I had exposure to sex or even nudity, it was either purely accidental (I never walked in on my parents, everybody relax) or the result of a lot of elbow grease, subterfuge, and hard work! Maybe an older brother or a schoolmate had a magazine or—gasp!—a video tape (ONE WIFE TO GIVE springs to mind); maybe your cable service had a channel you had access to, or a blocked one on which you could hopefully glimpse a bit of full-frontal through the swirly haze after your parents went to bed (guilty as charged).

Decades later, times have changed, and kids today have nearly unfettered access to all manner of sexual imagery, most of which offers, at best, unrealistic expectations of sexual encounters and/or damaging and misogynistic depictions of gender roles.

It’s normal for kids to be curious and enticed by pornography, but the ability to go from zero to 60 (or 160, really) that the internet allows simply didn’t exist back in the day, and it presents all sorts of problems. It’s essential for parents and other role models to ensure that our children have a solid foundation and a decent set of values so their minds aren’t curdled by this stuff.

My wife and I have had a handful of chats with our 13-year-old about sex and porn, and we try to be as frank as possible, regardless of the cringe factor—for both sides. In 2024, these discussions go far beyond the typical touchstones of biology and logistics and consequences and, as dad to two boys, spread to the relatively modern topics of consent, toxic masculinity, and gender identity. (This isn’t to say that those ideas were any less valid in the 80s, or 60s, or 20s, or ever, but they got a lot less play back then. Thankfully, social mores are changing. Except on Twitter.)

There’s a lot more to talk about these days. And that’s okay; contrary to conventional wisdom, I actually enjoy talking to my son about these things! I can’t say the same for him, and “enjoy” may be too strong a word, but I’m here for it. And I’m here for him.

Sleep training and potty training and Little League and dealing with bullies and managing homework and exploring your dad’s Spotify playlists are all important, and have varying degrees of difficulty, but talking about the birds and the bees? This is the stuff real parenting is made of. This is the Show.

I knew it was coming, and I’m ready for it. I have to be. We all do. We can’t be scared to discuss these things with our kids, because if we are, they’ll get their information elsewhere, and in 2024, there are many sources of problematic garbage. Garbage that impressionable kids could internalize and that might inform the way they view sex and relationships for the rest of their or lives. So no pressure!

We know Detective Munch has already encountered, and in some cases sought out, racy material—parental controls be damned—and while he’s surely embarrassed to be found out, he’s been receptive to conversations about it. At the very least, he accepts that this is one subject that his mom and dad have more experience in.

So far, we’ve stressed how important consent is, how essential respect is, how normal masturbation is, and how insidious people like Andrew Tate and others who push retrograde, hateful, and dangerous ideas about sexual and interpersonal dynamics. I’ve also made pains to warn him about the dangers of YouTube and other seemingly safe corners of the internet, where going down what looks like an innocuous rabbit hole can introduce problematic ideas and toxic misinformation that many young boys become infatuated by. Such content, often Trojan horsed into things that seem—or start off— entirely unrelated, can prime a young, unformed, curious mind to accept, and explore, dubious, dangerous, and harmful ideas.

Protecting them from that kind of information is a lot harder said than done (god knows there are plenty of adults who fall prey to it), and it’s one of the reasons Mom and Buried have partnered with places like SCREEN Hate, which provides parents with tools for discussing such topics with their kids.

None of this is easy, or even particularly fun, but it is crucial. When it comes to parenting my kids, I am awful at many, many things, but I like to think that by keeping an open door, a non-judgmental attitude, and willingness to be honest and frank, I’m taking the right approach.

Hopefully, it will work.

Social Media Round-up

Mea culpa:

At least they’re playing together?

A birthday tribute to The Hammer, from Mom and Buried

author

Mom and Buried on Instagram

January 17, 2024

Speaking of…

The Hammer had his 8th birthday over the weekend.

On Friday, his best friends slept over and they played video games, watched movies, wreaked havoc, and had birthday cake. On Saturday, he opened gifts, got a Happy Meal, played Madden with his dad (he likes to play on the same team, which I’d never done in 30 years of playing the game!), and spent the rest of his day Saturday building an enormous - and enormously expensive! - LEGO ship. On Sunday, we took him to the American Museum of Natural History to see the dinosaurs, and he capped it all off watching BARBIE. Again. My man loves BARBIE!

When the weekend of celebration was all over we asked him if he’d had a good birthday, and if there was anything missing. His immediate response? A stufty. (Yes, we call them stufties, because they are stuffED animals, not stuff animals, and it makes more sense! Get off me.)

My man has dozens of stufties. TOO MANY stufties. (Mostly snakes and sharks, the future metalhead!) But he wanted another, and after seeing a documentary about blue whales at the museum, and lying under the awesome blue whale sculpture in the center of the oceanic section, he knew what he wanted: an enormous plush blue whale. It’s expensive and big and yet another for his ridiculous collection, but it’s also soft as hell and totally awesome! Check it out here, and I’ll be sure to share a photo or two of The Hammer with his new favorite stufty on my Instagram page soon!

While you’re on Amazon, please pre-order my book! I don’t get into the birds and bees - or the teen years - but if you help it sell I’ll be sure to tackle that in my next one!