It’s happened again. The phone call from my mom on a Saturday afternoon. She picked the kids up in the morning from our house and at nap time she sneaks into the other room to call me and complain. Why must they always talk about their penis and vagina? It’s normal, I say. They are less than two years apart, they bathe together, and they ask a lot of questions. Yeah, my mother says, but does she have to hear about it every darn weekend?

    Maybe it’s a bit different in households of all girl or all boy children but in my house with one boy and one girl and lots of preschool questions, discussion of private body parts is probably a bit more frequent and detailed.
  

    One of the first things my son asked when I started putting his toddler sister in the bath tub with him was where is her penis? She doesn’t have one I said. She’s a girl. She’s penis-free! (My husband always notes the bit of bias I put in that statement but I’m not about to call my daughter penis—less). But that caused a lot of questions. Why doesn't she have one? She's a girl. Why do I have one? You're a boy.

    To be fair, the whole question of having a penis was probably detrimental to my son's development. He was on the road to walking and talking and then at ten month's old discovered his built in amusement park and quit trying to walk and talk for about six months while he sat around fascinated at what nature had given him. It's an amusement that's bound to last a lifetime and I don't want him feeling shamed about sexuality. I've started saying things like "That's fine, but you can't do that in front of your mother." And also, "that stays inside the house, babe." No matter how prepared, hip, and comfortable I am with preschooler sexuality it was still jarring to ask him if he was ready to get out of the tub only to find him singing along to PJ Harvey's "This is Love" while stretching certain body parts to their limits.

    These days, it's less about pocket pool with him and more about using it as a rod to stick bath toys at the end of or horrible true facts like the one he inquired about yesterday---is it true they get hair down there when we are older?! 

    We never thought twice about answering our children’s questions no matter how wacky, obscure, or sexual. I figure isn't it best to answer truthfully to the best of our ability? I still remember my mom being pregnant with my brother and handing me a book called "How Babies Are Made." I had no powers of inference. I saw the dogs humping, the bee pollinating the flower, and then two humans under a blanket. I went clear to junior high before I realized you couldn't get pregnant from being under a blanket with a guy.

    My three year old daughter is, of course, the one my mother truly worries about and rightly so. She's the out going one so she's most likely to say embarrassing things in public. She's fascinated at the moment with the various size of women's breasts. My stepmother, whose breast cancer left her with one, is a particular source of interest. My daughter has been known to say things like "Grandma has one breast on today" or when mom is wearing a prosthetic saying "Grandma has two breasts on today but one isn't real." 

      She's informed us that her vagina isn't going to get any hair, thank you very much, while in the grocery store. I try to take it in stride and move on. Acknowledge, yes, okay. Sure. Move on. Any hesitation and the five second comment seems to last for hours.

      Is there a time when they realize that body talk is for inside the house? Or perhaps inside the brain? That the local reverend and post mistress don't need to know the details? My husband invited over a female friend from work and her two boys for a play date on a recent Sunday afternoon. I knew immediately that my daughter liked the woman. "Hi," she said as she attempted to climb up into the woman's lap, "I'm Paloma. I have a vagina. Do you have a vagina?" Heidi was cool about it. She answered, "Hi Paloma. That's nice. I have one too." That information made my daughter beam as if she was suddenly a member of some secret society. Perhaps she is?

    Still, I have a feeling those phone calls from my mom on Saturdays will keep coming. I recently explained that babies live in the uterus not the belly, when they are on the inside.

    Anyone still use made up words out there for body parts? Storks still coming? Is it a generational thing to now tell the truth?