November 4, 2011
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Chocolate?!
After school plans fell through yesterday, so I brought my 12 year old to the office with me. He got a soda from the basement and then poked around my office.
"Tea? Why do you have a basket of tea in your office?" he asked.
On the radio cabinet in my office, next to my little conference table where I meet with clients, I have a basket of condoms. These are not your usual condoms. These are flavored and colored and they are well packaged. I work with the Nebraska AIDS Project and they hook me up with the best condom selection in town. I keep the basket in my office and I have been pleased at how many of my clients take a few. Usually they have a reaction like my son. "Is that candy?" and then they realize what they are.
"Help yourself. Take some for a friend," I say.
And then they giggle and take a mint condom and a red condom or whatever.
I would like to have them in the lobby of my office. Hell, I would like to have them in the waiting room at the juvenile court. I think that there is power in not only distributing condoms but making people comfortable with them. It is not a big deal. I know that you have sex. Have safe sex. It's ok to take a condom.
But of course it was slightly different with my own kid. Who was standing there holding a condom.
"That's not tea, that's a condom," I said.
"Oh!" he said as he dropped it back in the basket. "Why do you have these? Vanilla?!"
"I have them so that if people need them they can take them. Condoms prevent the spread of disease and stop unwanted pregnancies."
He shrugged and lay on my office couch reading his book.
My son held a condom in his hand yesterday and we were both calm about it (though it took a lot of effort on my allegedly open minded, liberal part). We can do this.
Comments (9)
i'm still sort of proud of myself for being able to use words like "penis" and "vagina" to the kids when i need to address an actual educational need. those words were NEVER used to me. it was a huge deal when i forced myself to say them to my own kids. and it's still harder to do that than it is to explain to evie that she shouldn't say "cock" in public and please don't talk about your balls in front of grandma. parenting is weird, yo.
@RacheRedux - oh my god this comment made my whole fucking day
WOOHOO!! you = awesome mommy. For realz.
You can do this. You are doing this. Best thing we can do for our kids is not bullshit them about sex, is be realistic about what they're gonna get up to, and try to help them get up to that stuff safely. You're doing exactly those things. And that's grand.
At least he didn't ask why they are flavored?? You can do this!
you're cool. he's cool. it's all cool.... glad to see you writing here..i've missed it
you can definitely do it. sounds like you handled the whole thing just right. vanilla condoms would confuse me, too.
Tom prefers his condoms to be .... oh nevermind. I think it's great your kid asked and you answered. I can't imagine how my parents would have reacted. Pretty sure my childhood sucked though.
My parents would have had an aneurism if they'd been forced to be in the same room with me and a condom.
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