My princess and puberty

She's turning 12 pretty darned soon; she's my middle baby, my first girl. And it doesn't come without its challenges. I'm not one of those moms who cringe at the idea of having "the talk." In fact, my kids might complain that I'm too frank about the birds and the bees.

There was a recent podcast by Dan Savage, the very popular sex advice columnist, that made me think that maybe I wasn't as open and frank as I thought I was. I thought I was incredibly open about sex and what is involved. I had pretty much written and rehearsed my script for the talk about sex having real adult consequences so make sure you're ready for those before engaging in sex -- of any variety:  safe, oral, or otherwise. But recently Dan, a father himself, talked about the parents' responsibility to cover the stuff they don't talk about in sex education classes. Sure we can talk about the mechanics, the diseases, and the dangers but have we ever given thought to the pleasure, the kinks, the exploration, heck -- the joy of sex. Maybe that's why they wrote the book with all those weird 70's era pictures, because there isn't a discussion about the joy of sex when you're in class at school.

So with another birthday fast approaching, I decided to go ahead and drop some knowledge on my daughter. All the kids get uncomfortable when I try to blast them with some knowledge. I think that is probably normal though. As I never had any kind of discussion with my mother, I wouldn't know how to be on the receiving end of such a talk. And because I'm pretty sure my husband takes the same tack as my mother does in this regard, it falls to me.

I've talked to my older daughter about the impending period coming her way over a year ago. That went fairly well. I insist that she carries pads and tampons with her at all times. We've had the talk about sex in so far as the "special hug," where the penis goes in the vagina and sometimes ends up with babies. We've talked about mucous membranes and disease transmission.

But lately, I've realized that I don't know how to broach the joy of sex. Not at all. Dan Savage says you have to do some of this like a "download." You talk, the kid listens. Sounds like something I could do.

Instead, my daughter rolls her eyes, puts her fingers in her ears and says, "lalalalalalalala," until I stop. During the pauses, I yell things like, "oral sex still counts as sex!" And, "please wait to do anything like that until you're much older." And, "boys in high school don't know what they're doing so you'd be better off waiting at least until college." That last sentence took a couple of breaks to go all the way through.

This may take a while. Thankfully, I'm starting relatively early.