School holidays, long awaited for but for my husband and I, the only uninterrupted time we get with his daughter. Granny had kindly saved us the 200 mile round trip to collect her from her mum’s, and after they got to ours, it seemed the birds and the bees were very much on my step-daughter’s mind.
“Mummy says babies come out of your tummy button but they can’t do as they won’t fit…..?!”, is how the conversation between Granny and Grand-daughter had started, on the four-hour car journey to our house. Granny went for the wide approach in answering, not wanting to confuse further, nor lie.
As I’d taken the week off work, Day 1 of our holiday began with a trip to the Natural History Museum. The big challenge was not the how much info is appropriate for an eight year old but rather how not to contradict your step-daughter’s mum. Naturally I chose the coward’s way out. Avoiding the “Mummy’s wrong” approach, I steered her around the 30 minute Dinosaur queue and instead went for the,“let’s see the human body exhibition instead”.
Twenty minutes later the pair of us were sat listening to the mother’s heartbeat, as a baby in the womb hears it. I was hoping that along with the diagrams of the umbilical chord, the illustrations of the baby’s head emerging between the mother’s legs (and not from the belly button) all questions had been answered with no signs of major embarassment on either part. Fortunately by then my nearly nine year old step-daughter, seemed more interested in the interactive brain display than the reproductive cycle and didn’t even look twice at the anatomically correct, mannequins of children, teenagers and adults.
Two weeks later on her next weekend with us, I gave her with a book on babies and giving birth and have to admit, it’s the only book I’ve seen her read from cover to cover. We were in the car (yes it was that good a read, it came with us to go to the shops) and it was hilarious trying to read over her shoulder while driving, and saying, “pay-nis and va-gina are a really good guess but they’re actually pronounced penis and vagina”. Then quickly adding, “they’re the biological terms that a doctor might use, they’re other words for willy or your front bottom”, not daring to guess what they might be referred to at her mum’s.
We had a giggle at the cartoons of a man and woman cuddling with hearts all around them, and although she still can’t bring herself to use the words ‘nipple’ or ‘breast’, without shuddering or breaking into fits of laughter, it feels like she’s comfortable with the info on sex. What was more impressive was the light bulb effect when she was reading about at the same-sex partners who adopt babies. “Well you know several same-sex couples….” I said and in return I got the , ” I may be only eight but I’ve already mastered the disparraging look of a 14 year old”, that pre-pubescent girls scarily pull off. When I mentioned the names of two male, family friends she came out with,“ oh, I thought they were brothers”…..
