To Tell or Not to Tell: A Mother's Dilemma

My eight-year-old daughter and I are sitting impatiently in doctor’s office because I am sure he can give her a miracle cure for her incessant runny nose and cold symptoms. I know – a pipe dream. But I digress. I read a magazine to pass the time, and as I am thumbing through the pages, my young red-headed daughter asks without the slightest bit of trepidation, “Mommy, where do babies came from?” SHOCK! HORROR! The question I’ve dreaded for eight of her innocent years of life! In the next few moments, I try to contrive every possible correct answer to this dreaded question. However, I barely manage, “I’m not sure you want to know.” What a wimpy answer! Evidently, my sweet child read the sheer terror on my face and responded, “I….I don’t think I do either.” Sweet relief.

The doctor soon arrives and diagnoses my daughter with a head cold. “She just needs rest and plenty of fluids,” he assures me. Like I said earlier, a pipe dream. What a waste of time!

A day passes, and during that time, I try to digest the inevitable conversation. Did I do the right thing? After much thought, I made a decision to introduce the “facts of life” to my curious daughter in VERY general terms. “This is natural,” I try to convince myself. So, while my younger daughter takes a nap (I’ll worry about her later – much later, I hope.), I pull out a book that I purchased some time ago for just this event. It’s complete with valuable diagrams and pictures. Isn’t that what all well-intentioned moms do? I thumb quickly through the pages, only to stop on the picture of Michelangelo, the one where he’s missing an essential element of clothing - underwear! I’ll skip that page!

I ask my daughter to sit with me in the library because, “I have a special book for you to read.” My heart races as I prepare for what is to come. “I can’t do this. I can’t do this,” I think.

My daughter sees the cover of the book and asks, “Can we read Harry Potter instead?”

“Oh yes, let’s do,” I want to say, but instead I gently tell her that this is a story that every growing girl needs to know. Here we go.

I read the first three pages relatively painlessly. Unfortunately, the fourth page reminds the reader that there are “girl parts” and “boy parts.” Immediately, my daughter asks incredulously, “What’s the boy part called?” I must do this. I hesitantly, and I mean hesitantly, say the scientific name. She giggles, “That sounds like ‘Venus’!” To make matters worse, she proceeds to say THAT word approximately twenty times in quick succession. Then she stopped and instinctly asks, “What’s the girl part called?” I relate the word to her, and she spurts, “And that sounds like ‘China’. Ba-china!”
This isn’t happening. Can I please erase the last five minutes from our lives? Just when I think things cannot get much worse, my other daughter, a mere six years of age, stumbles sleepily into the room and says emphatically, “Read to me too!”

At that point, the big sister jumps to her feet and proudly announces her two new vocabulary words. I feel faint.

I anticipate more of this maternal torture, only to hear my younger daughter, who by the way, was completely unaffected by those two words, say, “Isn’t it time for the Brady Bunch to come on TV?” There is a God. I stand quickly and say, “Why, yes it is. Let’s go watch it together. Just us girls.” My daughters trot to the television. I stand a broken woman. I close the book, an in doing so, I admit defeat.

This perplexing turn of events has forced me to admit that I am not ready, nor willing, to let my children break out of the naiveté that I have so long perpetuated for them. The great paradox is that I know I must do so, and with that, I prepare once again with great anguish for the birds, the bees, and my daughter. I know that by doing so, I am opening a new chapter of her life and turning the page on another.