Catholic Dads

Welcome to As For Me And My House! This series chronicles the place where “the rubber meets the road” in the Nod household. For those of you just tuning in: these are the Nods.

Boys.

They are like chips off of the old block. When they’re four years old, they follow Daddy everywhere, because he’s a hero and can do no wrong. Anything Daddy does is fascinating and your boy wants to copy everything. But then they start to grow up, lose that baby fat in their faces, and before too long you’re sweating the details of The Talk.  We’ve reached this point in the House of Nod.

Talking about sex with their boys is dreaded by Dads everywhere. When is the appropriate time? How much do you reveal now vs. later? Is this the end of their innocence? How do I bring this up, anyway?

Breathe. Breathe.

The plain fact is, thinking about it is a lot worse than actually doing it. (Having a class lecture on personal hygiene and flatulence given by a nun: that’s embarrassing – by contrast, you can handle this one.) There is no one “correct” way of doing this, although there are probably a lot of bad ways to go about it. Throwing a book or a wall of facts at your son, pornography, or letting the school or their peers handle it are all terrible ideas. Man up – this is your responsibility as head of household and as a Dad.

How do you know when your son is ready? There is no single answer, but there are some guidelines.

• Interest. This is the easy one – if your son asks, tell him. You don’t have to go into unnecessary detail, just answer the question clearly, concisely, and then change the subject unless circumstances warrant differently.
• Development. Physically, it’s going to happen, so if you pay attention, you’ll know.
• Brain development. Mental and emotional maturity is also a kind of physical development.  Partly this simply depends on age. The best way to judge this is to KNOW your son. (You are talking to him on a regular basis, right?)
• Spiritually. Keep it in context. God made our bodies and he made sex too – and it is good: unitive, creative, and pleasurable.  Here is a good guide on what age-appropriate Virtues you should be encouraging in your children.

In my boy Wynken’s case, it started with a comment. At the end of the school year there had been some minor in-fighting with a group of boys with whom he had been previously chummy. When I asked him about it, he said that one boy in particular had been talking about some movies he’d seen that had sexual content and that it had made my son feel uncomfortable. (WHY do parents let their young kids watch any old thing?!) Right there I knew I need to find out what had been said and to correct any mis-information he might have gotten, so I did what anyone would do: had my son help me fix the stair gate.

Keeping your hands busy is a great way to talk to your child when you don’t want them to feel self-conscious. It also allows there to be natural pauses and silences where he can come up with questions of his own. Since Wynken is a rising sixth grader, I figured that there were a number of basic things he should know. I’ve been keeping my eye on his and his classmates’ development for a while now, and I’ve watched the kids the next grade up start to hit puberty, so this day didn’t catch me napping. I had a general outline in my head and filled in things from there.

The most important things I wanted to convey for him at this stage was really about himself, the changes his body would be going through, the new interest in girls, strange or conflicting thoughts and emotions, and hygiene. (Guess what? You stink now. Take a shower.) I emphasized that all of this stuff was perfectly normal, normal, normal; that everybody went through it, and no stray thought, no dream, no chance arousal – none of this makes him weird;  and I encouraged him to talk to me any time with any question.

After that I went through some basic biology about a woman, her body, her menstrual cycle, and how God designed it to nurture a baby. (I could hardly skip this part, as Wynken has been watching Walking With Dinosaurs for years – a perfectly innocent program until they mention that the female dinosaur had these sturdy hips to take the weight of a male during “mating”. Oy! He knew what a sperm, egg, and conception were, but not how the one got to the other.) I told him that God created woman as the “crowning jewel” of his creation, being the last thing that He created. I tied it in with Adam and Eve and how “a man will leave his father and mother and cling to his wife and the two will become one flesh.” (Gen 2:24; Mark 10:8)

After that I put it all together for him, the biology, theology, and marriage with a little Theology of the Body: how God created us with these powers and how we image the Trinity. God the Father and God the Son share a perfect love and union and the Holy Spirit is spirated (breathed) from that most Real Love. In the same way when a husband and a wife love each other completely and without reserve, their love is so real that you have to give it a name 9 months later. “Making love” is literal. Such a beautiful thing.

So, he got the overview. I didn’t want to overwhelm him with too much detail because there should not be only one single talk about sex with your son. We’ll be talking about and emphasizing different things at different times in his development.  Right now he needs to know about himself mostly. He’s going to be gaining a new power and he needs to know how to use it correctly, just like any other ability. I’ve been telling him for as long as I can remember that “A man is someone who controls himself.” And with the aid of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and self-control, one of the 9 fruits of the Spirit, all this is possible.

In the meantime, we’ll be much more focused on forming his ideals, working on things like fortitude and perseverance. Oh. And cleaning his room – have you seen the floor lately?

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I welcome your thoughts and feedback in the combox. Like they say in baseball, let’s hear some chatter!

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