MOD MOM: Who-haas, wee-wees and me

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May 10, 2009

By LISA HURT KOZAROVICH The News and Tribune Sun May 10, 2009, 01:11 AM EDT

The other day I received an email inviting me to participate in a Mother's Day contest. The contest: In 50 words or less, share the best creative advice your mother ever gave you.

I was stumped for a moment, thinking my mother gave plenty of advice but I wouldn't call most of it creative, or even advice in some cases. I mean, before my first overnight trip with a college boyfriend, and a group of friends all sharing a hotel room for an out-of-town concert, her “advice” was “Don’t do anything to mess up your life.”

What exactly did that even mean? Don't drink and drive? Don’t run off with the band? Of course, with her averted eyes and tone of voice, I knew exactly what she meant: don’t have sex.

Of course, even that insinuation of a sex talk was a step up from the “advice” she gave me as a high school freshman, when I arrived home one afternoon to find a stack of books about the subject on my bed. The books were never mentioned — they simply showed up one day and disappeared a week or so later.

Looking back, I realize that wasn’t such a bad move for my mom — raised on a farm in the 1930s, in a strict Christian household where sex was a taboo subject. After all, most of my peers got zilch on the subject.

Although there was the transfer student from the big city, whose divorced, hippie mom taught her to use the proper words for body parts as soon as she could talk, offered to put her on birth control when she turned 13 and talked in such detail about sex education, including the fact that her father couldn’t provide an orgasm for mommy, the girl wasn’t just informed, she was mortified and had sworn off sex forever.

In between those two extremes were friends who had been on the receiving end of “the talk” — that short, awkward, not terribly informative, parental discussion about sex. The underlying message usually being, “don’t do it and, if you do, you better not get pregnant.”

Obviously, we’ve progressed as a society in educating our children about sex, if only because AIDS and TV forced our hands.

That's why, as the mother of a 2-year-old, I’m already having to think about how to handle the subject.

During a diaper change just the other day, it happened. Ava pointed to her nether regions and asked, “what that?” Her daddy did what most daddies of little girls would do in that situation — he mumbled something about “wee wee” and quickly tried to distract her. He then told mommy the story, thinking somehow being female makes me the expert on all genitalia issues. Hey, I was just glad she asked him. I have enough guilt without worrying about scarring her in that department too.

Fortunately, that was the end of it — for now anyway. But I’ve vowed to be better prepared for the next time. As is my nature, I started with research. The problem is, now I'm even more conflicted about how to proceed.

According to the experts, it’s practically child neglect to use words like “wee-wee” and ”bottom” instead of the anatomically correct words. I understand the reasoning — physicians say for health matters, and God forbid, sexual abuse, children need to know the proper medical terms for their body parts.

Call me old-fashioned, but telling my baby girl, pacifier in her mouth and teddy in her arms, that she needs to wipe her anus just doesn’t sit right with me. Just as with my potty-training concerns, I seriously doubt she’ll go off to college in diapers discussing her “wee-wee” with her gynecologist.

So at some point, we’ll have to make the transition — and get ready for the hard questions, like where babies come from. Oddly enough, I feel better prepared for those questions than the simple task of naming those ever-important parts. Maybe that’s because my own never had names. They were all “private parts.” That seemed to work out for me, or it could explain my super secrecy with my own bathroom business.

Then again, closed bathroom doors and non-medical terms for baby bits sits just fine with me.

How about you? Send me an e-mail and let me know how you handled the subject.

Lisa Hurt Kozarovich is a freelance journalist for several magazines, The Evening News and The Tribune. She is a former award-winning newspaper reporter and editor. Her columns and stories have appeared in numerous publications across the country. She can be reached via e-mail at Lisakozar@hotmail.com

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