The Vagina Monologues 2: A Boy's Perspective

Spring is upon us. The birds are chirping, the bees are buzzing...so, it's about that time for the Brandi children to add a good dose of early sex education to the daycare curriculum. This time Nick is taking the lead in making sure all his classmates know that boys have penises and girls have vaginas—heavy emphasis on the vagina dialogue—girls have vaginas, he doesn't have a vagina, and vagina is just an all-around a fun word to say. As we followed another mom and her two boys out the door the other night, one of them turned to her and said, "Mom, what's a vagina?" Enjoy your dinner conversation tonight, Margaret. You're welcome! I also had an interesting trip to Target with him where he pointed to every woman we passed and said, "she has a vagina." One kind, older woman actually replied to him, "that's right dear. I do!,"then patted me on the arm and said if this is the most embarrassing thing he ever does to me, I'm lucky. 

So, just as we did with Lainey, we had a talk about how vagina is not a bad word, but it's a private word that he should just use at home with us. He accepted this pretty easily and as far as I know has laid off the vajayjay talk at school, and we've had no more public outbursts. BUT, it's really ramped up his usage at home. For the most part, he keeps it topical—when he's using the potty, he reminds me he doesn't have a vagina, but Lainey does. However, he'll also just randomly chant it over and over and tell me it's okay, because he's at home. Or he finds ways to casually drop it into conversation—"Hey Mom! Darth Vader doesn't have a vagina." Or he works it into fine bedtime literature—Mark was reading The Day the Crayons Came Home and got to the line about the Great Wall of China. Nick smirked and said, "You mean the Great Wall of Vaginas." He had us with that one; we couldn't hide our laughter. Because c'mon, that's pretty freakin' funny.

Overall, we're trying not to give it too much attention, hoping this phase will pass quickly, so we can start another awkward one—preferably one that doesn't involve talking about our its and bits.