The Birds and the Bees Talk with your Aspie kids

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Hello there, I am new so forgive me if this was talked about before, but I did not see anything so I decided to start my own thread. Next week in my son's 4th grade class they will start talking about the "s" word. This makes me a bit nervous. Not because I am a prude or anything, but I really don't think my 10 year old Aspie is ready for this. (I don't think any of the kids are ready honestly. I am glad I am not that teacher that is for sure! Tough crowd 10 year olds can be.) Anyway, in prep for the Big class, I started talking about a few things with Jay. It was actually quite funny. He started off very interested and ended up hiding under a pillow. so my question to all you moms and dads out there... how did you approach this subject with your child? Was there a good book you used. Jay takes things so literal that I am afraid if i don't expose him to something before the class ... well who knows what can happen.

aspie perspective:

I used to not think I got a sex ed class until I remember some bizarre field trip they took us on to some learning center about reproduction in elementary school, about your son's age.

I got nothing out of it, and took something literally... my memory of it is poor, but I don't believe they were very straight forward about it all. You should give an aspie a medical, fact book on it. They're not going to learn anything when possible slang terms are used, other children are giggling, and with lots of other implied speech.

I don't think I even knew what sex consisted of after the trip! I just have a memory of huge, spacious rooms and one dark room with lots of screens where they showed the developmental stages of babies. My mother asked me what I learned when I got home and I had nothing to say.

oh, and please don't mention "birds and bees" without explaining what that even means, because I don't even know. Birds and bees don't mate.

Thank you and you are so right... the idea of Birds and bees confused him at first too. I had to explain that before even trying to explain anything else. I think a more clinical, medical book would be better for him too. Just facts. Thank you!

buryuntime has a point. GOD, I learned about sex YOUNG. One of the books I had available to me would have made a good teenage book on sex.

And your son may be more ready than you think. And YEAH the whole bird and the bees stuff doesn't make sense. Heck, I read about two ways that birds mate. neither is really like humans do. and BEES? Well, THAT doesn't end well for the drone.

As far as I can see, outside of the fact that they show that males and females are needed, there are only TWO similarities!

With birds, the male may often be prettier but still he has to give the female gifts, put on a show, etc... and SHE has the final say. The FEMALE initiates things, or at least goes along. The males will FIGHT for her.

OK, maybe that is KIND of similar to humans, except that with humans, the female is understood to be prettier, and the male is often at least supposed to THINK he made the first move.

With bees, the female is not necessarily faithful. She goes out and mates with a LOT of guys that AGAIN, DIE for the pleasure. 8-( The female goes home and stays home all day just having kids! Oh, and she wants everything HER way! In a way, the workers are almost like the female version of eunics, so maybe we should call them eunicoid, rather than female. SO, for illustration, I am calling the queen, the only real female, female.

OK, some POOR families are like that. OLD families were SOMETIMES a little like that. And with humans they have to mate for ANY kids. and there are only two types.

BTW birds and bees BOTH lay eggs!

ANY mammal would make more sense! EVEN platypus that lay eggs makes more sense! Kangaroos make even MORE sense! But why not talk to them about HUMANS!?!? You don't have to explain the external egg, or the pouch, or anything else.

Frankly, calling an ovum an egg is kind of silly too. I guess you could call the womb of a pregnant mother an egg. YEP, the WHOLE womb. Think about what it looks like with a fetus and the amniotic sac, etc... It looks VERY much like the inside of an egg. NOT in color or substance, but appearance and function.

Why not call it an ovum, and you could maybe mention how it is the human equivalent of the blastodisc in an egg. MOST of the egg is simply food, and in humans the placenta serves THAT purpose. You don't have to explain about the drones or queen and why there is only ONE real female.

With humans things average out almost to 1 female for every male! China practically declared WAR on females and EVEN THEY average about 5:4.

BTW even a BEES egg is larger than an ovum. And a birds egg is larger still. Still, they describe the blastodisc as being a few cells and ovums are about an 8th of a millimeter. So the size makes more sense too.

My parents gave me only a minimal talk about where babies come from. (They never used the term "the birds and the bees"; I didn't hear it until second grade, when a classmate said it.) The said something like: "daddy helps start the growth, and the baby grows inside mommy's tummy, until he's ready to come out; then a doctor helps make sure the baby comes out safely". I got that explanation pretty early on, and didn't really care for more details.

When I was in third grade, my parents bought me the book Where Did I Come From? (ISBN: 0-8184-0253-9). I liked it a lot, and found it very helpful, despite the fact that it has cartoon graphics of nude men and women, veiled references to erections and orgasms, and humorously written descriptions. Some vague sense of social intuition (the kind NTs have in full swing) told me not to discuss the book with people, but the information presented left very few questions unanswered.

Come to think of it, I actually preferred it that way.

My mother gave me the facts when I was 4. She told me the names of all the parts, and how they worked together, and a few of the basics of how babies grow.
(I was fascinated with it for ages afterwards; I used to make pairs of "sperm" and "eggs" from Play-Doh and mash them together, then add more to make little Play-Dog babies.)
Later on, in early high school, my school gave a more in-depth talk on contraception, safe sex and so forth. Most of which I already knew.
Both my mother and my school used a very straightforward approach, which I think worked well.

I explained to him when he started having more precise questions. I drew a sketch of the inside of a woman's body, the uterus and the baby inside, the sperm's journey, then he started asking stuff about "but twins? and real twins and fake twins?" so I drew that one too, explaining how it worked , then I had to explain periods, I drew that one too, and when his step dad walked through the door from work with a collegue of his, he ran to them saying "look look, mom drew me naked ladies haha cool right?"
cue facepalm.
But he got it he was 8 and so not traumatized.....
He explained how everything worked to random people in the bus for months after that though, so be prepared

I don't think there is anything wrong with education.

I rather a child be told earlier and giving small brief details, before they get older and have no clue what it was. By the time they hit teenage years, sex may be a topic that is either forced by other peers or even in a relationship forced on the partner.

Education gives them the power to understand.

I barely know what it is. My parents didn't teach me, and it was too disgusting to want to pay attention to it in school. So now I am completely baffled about it, and not prepared at all for any of this. Yay!

Thank you everyone. I am wondering if that book "Where we Come From" is too young for Jay. I am going to go to the bookstore this weekend and will look into it. Thank you for the recommendation. It will be perfect for my NT 7 year old daughter if nothing else.
Appreciate the feedback.

I have news for you....you are a prude.

My parents and grandparents had "the talk" with me about "how babies are born" when I was 4 and my mom was pregnant with my little sister, spurred by me asking where babies came from.

My grandmother went so far as to buy me an illustrated medical book for kids on human anatomy and give me a detailed presentation of reproduction.

My response was the typical "eeeew!" and it didn't damage me in any way.

Concerning things such as contraception and sexually transmitted diseases, my siblings and I weren't particularly sheltered and my parents weren't bashful about such things. They weren't taboo subjects in my family and I'm pretty sure I knew what a condom was by the time I was in 4th grade.

I recall they rented my sister a video for children on the matter when she was about four. It was paper animation, which I thought was quite funny, and it demonstrated "love making" using cats.

To be honest, my parents didn't talk to me about it, and just knew it would happen in school.

Despite the misconceptions I had until middle school, I'm kind of glad.

That...that would have been awkward.

Ever see kindergarten cop? In that movie, there wass a young boy in swartzeneggers class that kept explaining the obvious external difference of the lower part of the sexes.

I have a 14 yr old diagnosed with Aspergers... and I strongly believe I have Aspergers myself. My mother handed me a set of books and said "You're smart... read this." We never really talked about anything. I learned the facts... and the books were great... but I wouldn't recommend her method at all. It left me too much on my own with no one *but* books to turn to if I needed questions answered.

With my son we answered any and all questions as honestly as possible right from the start. We *never* sat him down to impart information he wasn't ready for and never denied him information he wanted. To that end we were also *very* careful that we were answering the questions he was asking... not the questions we thought he was asking. For instance, at age 7 when he asked "How do babies grow?" he wanted to know how the fertilized egg divided and developed to become a baby nine months later. If we had fully jumped to the answer we *thought* he wanted at first... we would have freaked him out.

But it was right around that time that he gained his first two siblings just in two short years... so it was on his mind. Even with short answers to just the questions he was asking it was *very* soon after that that *he* explained the whole thing *to us*. Here is a quickly editted cut and paste of how I emailed it to some of my family at the time:

***

We were at Pizza Pro a few weeks ago when my husband suggested (as he often does when we are having a relaxing day 'out') that when we got home we should put in a movie for the kids and go take a nap. Well, my sweet innocent 8yo pipes up with "I know you aren't going to take a nap. You are going to try and make another baby". Yeah... ok... so don't choke on the pizza... respond to the 'just what are you teaching in homeschool?' look daddy is giving me with a 'not me!... it must have been an independent study course' look... and tell the kiddo he'll have to explain what he means by that when we are at *home* sometime before all of Pizza Pro becomes involved in the conversation.

The next day I asked him again what he knew about 'trying to get babies'. He told me that he thought he had it all figured out. So I told him to explain it to me and I'd let him know if he was right. He hesitated and said he thought he knew what happened... except that "you would never do that". Oooookay. So what happens?

He proceeds with a fairly accurate description of the process. I confirmed that he was right and asked if he had any questions he wanted to ask. Well... he tells me... the only thing he couldn't figure out was how everything got through their clothes. He had really been *fine* to this point... very scientific and matter-of-fact... not overly shocked or bothered... just filling in the gap in his understanding of genetics with a little common sense consideration of how the 'mommy and daddy pieces' of the baby get together. But when I told him the reason the clothes weren't usually a problem... that just about killed him! Naked?!?!? Scandelous. But he's gotten used to the idea now... it just took a day or two to get over that part.

***

Anyway... all shared to say... (number 1) I am *so* glad we homeschool and were never forced to sit him down and impart information that he wasn't ready for and (number 2) I am so glad we were honest with him from day one and let him come to it in his own very Aspie way (scientific interest with true innocence). If we had choose the time and place to force the facts on him... I don't know how that conversation would have gone. I don't think it would have been pretty for any of us.

I don't know what I would do in your situation when the need to 'beat' the school to the discussion puts you on the clock. I would hate that. If you had all the time in the world I would suggest getting male and female mammals as pets (whatever sort your son would develop an interest in) and let the lesson unfold as the questions come up from caring for them. NOT simply 'let him figure it out on his own'... just let *him* develop the questions before you force feed him the answers. He is going to learn so much more with so much less stress over it if he can learn it *when he has developed an interest* in the actual process without the messy social aspects clogging things up.

My son is 9 and he knows all the mechanics except the actual act of sex. He is uninterested in girls, and until he starts to hit puberty I'm going to spare him. I don't want him to think of sex as icky, and I don't want him to think it's something children do. So I'm going to wait a bit longer.

My mother misunderstood me when I asked "how people make babies" and started going on about "big cuddles for adults" and "naked" and "tenderness" and "love each other very much" and I just about puked. THAT'S just NO no no no NOOOOOO!! !! !
I'm an aspie . Don't go on about how if "feels nice" ! ARGHHHHHHHHH!! !
I learnt about it in books, that was a lot less cringe worthy. Give me cuts of the uterus anytime, but please. Don't make me picture mom and dad "loving each other very much".