Despite her best efforts, comedian Julia Sweeney is forced to tell a little white lie when her 8-year-old begins learning about frog reproduction — and starts to ask some very smart questions.
Use the phrase “how it evolved” as often as possible.
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Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
Absolutely hilarious.
I have a 6 yo daughter and I say, “Things evolved that way” quite often. And to think my parents usually just copped out and said that god made us/it/them that way.
With my child I started with pollination (at about 4 or so). Then we moved to animals and mating.
Separately she learned that babies devolop in the mother’s uterus. We haven’t really gotten into the specifics of how the bits that make the baby get there.
She simply understands that sperm from the male and an egg from the female join to make an embryo (human, other animal or plant).
She’s starting to get the difference between mating and marriage. She doesn’t have a father, so the marriage thing is a bit foreign to her.
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She’s starting to get the difference between mating and marriage. She doesn’t have a father, so the marriage thing is a bit foreign to her.
Lynn, I suspect she does have a father. Perhaps you should review the movie one more time …
This story does remind me of another story.
A little girl has learned the basics of the birds and the bees. Suddenly, it dawns on her that her mother and father must have had sex for her to even exist. She asks her mother about this, and as we saw in the video, her mother says “yes, we did” and leaves it at that.
Just as the little girl’s mind is wandering on to another subject, she spies her little brother playing across the room. Something else suddenly dawns on her, and she turns to her mother with an incredulous look on her face.
“You did it TWICE?!”
I don’t know why parents lie to kids about sex. The idea of there being one talk seems to be predicated on the parent never talking about any subject directly related to human reproduction while in earshot of their child.
Then there is overtly sexual behavior and discussion witnessed by the child in public, in film or on television (okay, on British television at least). I think compartmentalising such an important subject might have been an option for my parents’ generation but it never seemed either desirable or viable to me.
Kids will always ask surprising and thought-provoking questions about sex, a subject of great fascination and much humor at the expense of adults. They don’t need their own parents going out of their way to make them ignorant.
Thanks for pointing that out Greg.
I see I need a bit more education–and to try to write better at night.
By the way, I do use the term “biological father” with her.
Greg Laden: Lynn, I suspect she does have a father. Perhaps you should review the movie one more time …
She almost certainly does have a sire; whether that’s the same thing as a father depends on which parts of the usual definition you’re considering important.
…Strength enough to build a home
Time enough to hold a child
Love enough to break a heart.
abb3w, i get the distinction!