The birds and the bees conversation.

Dear Lord alive!!  It wouldn’t just be the birds and the bees these days, would it? No siree; it’d be the birds, the bees, the bee’s two friends in a roast situation, and the bird’s ex-mate wearing a gimp mask, shouting, ‘Do you take it up the b…………!?’ And somewhere, a critter recording it all on a mobile phone.

                   We do WHAT!?

Who on earth wants to have that conversation with their children approaching puberty/starting secondary school/asking questions? Not me, that’s for damn sure. It’s a bloody minefield that even I can’t negotiate, let alone putting it in simple terms for the youngsters. How do you explain why there are some people out there who like wee and poo games?  And that they will tell you about it during your first conversation, before you’ve even held hands behind the bike sheds (or in my case met for a vermut)!  When all you want to say, is that “ladies and men lie down together and have a cuddle, and then a baby appears from nowhere”.  Last week, was my weirdest conversation EVER, with someone from Tinder.  I’m always surprised, when I am surprised by something that I should no longer be surprised by. But that’s another post for another day.

So, imagine, you sit your kids down to have ‘the chat’, (right about here I’d be three quarters gin, for Dutch courage), you invest some time going through the whys and wherefores of the basics in the simplest terms, and they come back with, “Oh Muuuuum!!!! Johnny already did that two years ago, and Samantha has been into waterworks since she saw it on youpron.com, last Tuesday. You’re such a basic b*tch.”

Mortifying.

As a parent, it must be so very difficult to accept that your children are exposed to really, all kinds of stuff that you had no idea existed until you read Fifty Shades of Grey, (or in my case, started using dating apps).

It seems too that it’s not just the birds and the bees, and the wasps and the butterflies, (and all their broad-minded friends); but respecting the butterfly when she says ‘no’, and not interpreting it as a very fuzzy ‘yes’. And that you don’t have to send the bird a picture of your fou fou, if you don’t want too.  Especially if you’ve never even met the bird yet.  And that if you refuse to send the picture of your fou fou to the bird and the bird starts getting abusive with you, that you should not let it affect your confidence.  Or that you can even report the bird to the police now, if you are seriously worried, because it’s threatening behaviour even though it’s a little bird.  But with no boundaries. On Snapchat.

And that there is nothing at all wrong with refusing to be coerced by the butterfly, into doing something you don’t want to do, just because the butterfly said they did that exact same thing with the wasp last week, and the wasp didn’t complain, says go on, go on, go OOONNN a thousand times and tells you, ‘you’ll love it’.

Whatever happened to first base, second base, etc??  I remember the electricity of holding a boy’s hand for the first  time.  That same thrill now is probably provided by electrodes.  Attached to unmentionables.

Online porn, accelerated ‘relationships’, advanced sexual practices that should be waaaayyyy down the line once trust and confidence have been well and truly built within a loving relationship (or provided by an expert/found in a special club when you ARE AN ADULT), should not be standard chat for anyone of school age.  The sauciest thing I saw at that age was a copy of Cider With Rosie.  The waiting list at the school library was three months long.

That seems so very innocent now, not at all like the minefield modern children have to pick their way through.  I would want to preserve my children’s liberty and innocence forever, and lock them away from what’s all-too-readily available.

And quite honestly, to also spare my own blushes when my twelve-year old arrives home one day, and decides to ask me about *teabagging!

And that is my ‘reasons why I don’t have kids’ #41.

*I had to Google teabagging for the purposes of this blog.