“He slammed me against the wall and inserted his penis into my vagina”
That was the sentence that catapulted me into having THE TALK with my eleven year old son.
It was a Monday night and Law and Order: SVU was having a marathon. I’ve seen every episode but I still had to watch it. The episode was familiar, as in I know I’ve seen it but couldn’t recall exactly what it was about. The one character’s name was Luke- which is my son’s name. I call him to the living room and was like, his name is Luke too. So Luke joins me on the couch (normally I don’t let him watch SVU because of the content). We are watching for a few minutes and then it happens. The female character is claiming she was raped by her son’s friend. She describes the assault and says, ” he slammed me against the wall and inserted his penis into my vagina.”
Cue the crickets…Luke looks at me. I look at him. We both burst into laughter. He’s like, “Mom, what did she mean?” I played dumb and was like, “What did who mean?” We went back and forth a few times and finally he drops it and goes back to his room.
Fast forward to Wednesday night of that same week. Luke and I are eating our weekly Wawa Wednesday meal. What happened had been on my mind and I knew I had to talk to him about it. Just as he’s about to take a bite of his mac n cheese, I say, “Hey buddy, remember what that lady said on SVU the other night?” Of course he said yeah. So I began with the cliché of “when a man and a woman love each other very much, they have sex”. I then explained what that meant and how sex works. I talked about protection and why he has to use it and how a baby is made. When I was done, I asked him if he had any questions and he just looks at me and goes, “Well, that was really awkward.”
Ditto buddy. That was crazy awkward for me too.
So there you have it. Law and Order: SVU was how my son was formally introduced to the concept of sex. Am I naïve enough to think he didn’t have some knowledge? No. He was asking questions in a round about way for a few months and I knew it was coming. I would rather him hear it from me instead of googling it and seeing all kinds of things an eleven year old should not be seeing.
Struggling with how to talk to your child about sex?
What is your birds and bees story?
