Q: How did I get out of your tummy?
A: Mommy went to the hospital and the doctor helped get you out.
Q: How did I fit in your tummy?
A: You were very small and got bigger once you were born. Etc., etc.
But my son's question was way worse and caught me completely off guard. "How did you and Daddy make me?" What?!?! Ummm...who has my kid been talking to?
While I'm thinking of an appropriate way to answer my son's question without mentioning an egg and sperm, my 6-year-old chimes in, "Daddy and Mommy didn't make you, God did!" This caused a heated debate in the backseat in which Will became extremely frustrated and upset, "No He did NOT! Mommy and Daddy made me!!!" I was hoping this little bickering would give me an out but Will was insistent on an answer.
"Well, buddy. Mommy and Daddy love each other so much and we decided we wanted to have a baby and so we did something special and God helped us make you." I know. Terrible. I'm pretty sure he could tell I was being a bumbling idiot and my answer didn't satisfy him.
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| My last baby belly...not sure how it got in there ;) |
"I told you buddy, Mommy and Daddy really wanted a baby..."
"But HOW?!?!?"
"Ummmm, well..." and then thankfully we pulled into Nana's driveway and he got distracted. Phew! Not sure how I was going to get out of that one without coming up with some crazy lie like, "Daddy has a magic finger and he touched my belly." (Okay, I would never really tell my child that but in my panicked state that seemed like a reasonable answer).
His question today has made me come to a few conclusions today:
#1. I need to get a whole lot better about thinking on my feet. The kids have caught me offgaurd with questions before and I always try to answer them as honestly as possible but also realize that some information is not appropriate for little ears to hear. Which leads to conclusion...
#2. I need to actually think about how I'm going to talk to my kids about all the fun stuff that I don't really want them to know about quite yet. It's not that I'm against telling them the truth. I want to have an honest and open relationship with my kids and hope they will come to me to address these uncomfortable topics instead of getting incorrect information from a bad source (aka other kids on the playground). But I also don't want to be the one responsible for my son teaching his whole preschool class about the birds and the bees. It's a fine line to walk and I'm just not sure how to do it. And...
#3. There is a huge difference between my son and my daughter. As you read, my elder child (my daughter) was happy to believe that God was the one who made them. And although there is some truth to that, she is satisfied with believing that He was the only one that had anything to do with it. I appreciate her sweet, innocence and belief in everything she can't see. She will be our child who always believes and hopes for the impossible. It makes me a little sad that she will be absolutely heartbroken when she hears the truth about some of these childhood fantasies. Our son, on the other hand, already is starting to question the reality of these characters we love to believe in. He seems to already understand the impossibility of one soul delivering presents to all of the children he knows in one night much less all of the children around the world. He questions how things exist and why they exist. I love that he is curious and wants real answers but am a little sad that he's probably going to be the one to shatter Livi's fantasies.
I know that Will will have more questions for me. I know they have just begun. I'm hoping that the next time he asks me something like this I can keep my cool and answer his question in an honest but age appropriate way...or I might just say, "Go ask your dad."
