Sex Ed

It's sex ed week at school. That wonderful week at the end of the school year where the kids learn all the things. Of course, instruction is after lunch because we wouldn't want the kids talking about their new revelations over the lunch table. Sex ed is my soap box.

I've worked in women's health my entire career, over 10 years besides a short stint in hospice. I worked in public health for the first 5 of those years. I worked in a health department that offered nutrition education and supplementation services to pregnant women, new mothers, infants and children (that was my department), we did family planning services, STD testing for males and females, immunizations, and we had a separate teen clinic that provided exams, contraceptives, pregnancy testing, and STD testing for male and female teens. We kept very busy.

One day, in 2009, I was sitting at my desk and I pulled the next chart out of my box. I went to pull it up in my computer and the birthdate was 1997. I walked up to the front to the clerk and said, "Hey! This is wrong. I think this person is here for immunizations." She shook her head. "Nope. She's a prenatal." I called her back to my office with her mother. They both were quiet. I went through the things I needed to go through, gave recommendations and resources. She was 12 years old.

That was my first pregnant 12 year old, but it wouldn't be my last. It wasn't super common to serve a pregnant 12 or 13 year old. I might see 1-3 a year. It was always pretty upsetting to me. I'd see pregnant 14 and 15 year olds more commonly and would think how sad it was. Pregnant 16 and 17 year olds were just another day in the office. I wouldn't even blink.

I remember some of them so vividly. The 13 year old whose baby I helped with breastfeeding, the 16 year old who took a bus alone with her baby in the middle of the summer to get a breast pump to go back to high school, the blonde 17 year old with a baby with Down Syndrome, the 17 year old that gave birth to 2 babies in 12 months.

I never judged these girls, that was not my job. What was done was done. My job was to provide them and their families with resources and that's what I did. The same for my coworkers. They told terrifying stories- about  kids who went with untreated STDs because they were too afraid to tell anyone, kids coming in for HIV testing because they found out someone they had been with was positive. Scary stuff that public health workers deal with day in and day out. My work has definitely impacted how I feel about sex education and my views on sexuality in general.

Let's look at the statistics. It's estimated that 10-12% of middle school students are sexually active, that number jumps to 20-30% by the end of 9th grade, it continues to increase to over 50% by the end of senior year. Only about 60% of those report condom use every time, and about 20% used drugs or alcohol before their last sexual encounter. Unfortunately, most of the statistics surrounding the sexual activities of teens rely on surveys. Interestingly, teens are having less sex now than they were 20 years ago and the teen birth rate is down. During this time, access to pornography online has increased. Which is it's own separate issue. But this is the reality. It's alarming, but not surprising.

I had a 14 year old who had just had a baby come in with her mother for a postpartum visit. The mom was pissed, you could tell. I didn't blame her. Part of our screening was to ask about plans for contraception. So I was doing a normal visit and I said, "So, what type of birth control method are you planning to use?"
The mother said, "She doesn't need anything. She already learned her lesson."
COME ON LADY! We all know that sex is like Pringles.
                                       
That was a hard conversation. I was not in her shoes and I certainly could not imagine what she was going through but I was real with her. "Look, I know this isn't easy but it has already happened. Unless you can be with her 24 hours a day, you could find yourself in this position again 2 years from now. It happens all the time." We talked about it for a little while and she definitely felt like putting her on birth control would essentially be giving her permission to do it. But she didn't need permission. You know how many people start having sex after getting permission from their parents? F*cking no one. Maybe someone but that's not a thing. As much as we would like it to be a thing. It's not. She did wind up making a family planning appointment for her kid.

The saddest one was a 15 year old girl I worked with for almost 4 months. She was smart and had a very supportive mother. She made a mistake. I went to her house for a home visit once and she was alone with the baby. She had the baby in a front carrier and she was sitting at her computer doing school work. She had to change the baby and I followed her to her bedroom so I could do my visit. I walked in and it was a little girl bedroom. Pink, with trophies on her dresser, stuffed animals everywhere. There were Barbie sheets on her bed. I was so overcome with sadness.

I thought about the boy. He did the deed too. But here was this girl at 15, doing school at home alone and taking care of baby but he got to be at school. He was getting to live a normal life, he wasn't tied down, he was probably flirting with girls and going out with friends. Forever, she will live with the stigma of that. She'll be looked down on when she's a 30 year old and has a 15 year old. People will view her differently. The stakes for girls is so high, the burdens so much to bear. It's unfair. We exist in a world where boys are Gods and girls are sluts.

So many girls have been there. Even me. I remember being 15 and at a party. There was a boy that I liked, he may or may not have been my boyfriend, my memory is a little fuzzy. We snuck off to the edge of the woods to kiss. I don't know how long we were gone, it was just one of those things you do when you were young. Long story short, a rumor went around school that we had slept together at this party. Although, I don't think the boy started the rumor, I'm pretty sure he didn't deny it. I was mad about it, but even then I understood it. Because boys were Gods and girls were sluts.

People asked me about it. Literally came up to my face and were like, "I heard you had sex with so and so." I was absolutely mortified. I denied it, of course, because it wasn't true. But I had gone to the edge of the woods with him, and I had let him put his tongue in my mouth so there were elements of truth in the story. I realized that it didn't matter if I denied it or not. I felt like no one would believe me. So, I stopped denying it. I think I told people it was really small or something. It was the only power I had to fight back with. I didn't understand why anyone cared in the first place. It was unfair but it happens all the time.

I tend to be a little sensitive about it and I am very against anything that demonizes female sexuality and I will not tolerate the words hoe, slut or whore in my presence. My kids know how I feel about it. I will call people out if I see it happening. As a matter of fact, recently I took a kid home from school and this conversation happened.

Kid: *vents about day" And then so-and-so. She's such a whore.
Me: Really? A whore? Why is that?
Kid: Because she had sex with like, 2 people.
Me: So that makes her a whore? So anyone that's had sex with 2 people is a whore?
Kid: I mean, no.
Me: How do you know that she actually had sex with 2 people? Where you there?
Kid: No. So-and-so told me.
Me: So-and-so was there?
Kid: No.
Me: Then how do you know it's true?
Kid: I guess I don't.
Me: And if was true, and you think she is a whore, what about the boys she was with? Are they whores too?
Kid: *long pause* I guess.
Me: Is it really any of your business what she does?
Kid: No, the thing is that she is just so rude to me.
Me: Okay. So next time, just say so-and-so is so rude to me and never call a girl a whore ever again.
Kid: Uggghh, ok.

You don't have to do anything at all to be labeled a whore or a slut. Kiss a boy, wear a short skirt, be the girl that some boy likes and another girl is jealous, have a rumor spread about you. That is what it's like to be a girl.

I went off on a tangent. Our experiences shape our attitudes about these things. Because I have worked in this field for so long, I am totally comfortable talking about this stuff with my kids. I just think sex is something that humans do. I don't have a lot of hang ups about it. I think our society is so jacked up because sex is everywhere. There is sex is movies, in every song, in the media and yet we don't always do a great job as parents talking to our kids about sex.

I'm not sure why this is. Because we are afraid, we want to keep them innocent, we are uncomfortable....the truth of the matter is, we have to talk to our kids about sex because EVERYONE ELSE is. They are getting bombarded all the time with it. Most sex talks look like this: "Don't do it until you are married or make sure you always use a condom." Well, okay.

But what if they decide not to wait or what about the fact that condoms are only 99% effective if used correctly? Like, you need to know about the reservoir tip, proper application, and storage. So, for most kids that's it. They get 2 days of sex ed in school per year and the -don't do it, but if you do- speech once. Are we REALLY okay with that?

The truth of the matter is that one day all of them will be sexually active adults. Every person. Sex is a normal part of a healthy life. I think it's important to be sexually literate. ONE DAY they will have to know. I would 100% rather have them learn about these things from us than everyone else. I have seen first hand what happens when you say and do nothing.  So, at my house, we cover it it all. It's not taboo. We aren't weird, we don't have Kama Sutra posters on our wall or anything but we are kind of ho-hum about it. It's not a big deal, ask us anything and we'll give honest answers. We don't necessarily have formal conversations all the time. There are opportunities all around us. We were listening to the radio and there was a song that went something like, "Don't pick up the phone, because you know you'll wind up in his bed by the morning....." Really? I laughed. "Wow. This lady has very little self control. Sound like she needs a vibrator and an accountability partner."

Or if there is a sexy scene in a show we're watching I might say, "Women deserve orgasms too!" or "Never do anything for a boy that he wouldn't do for you." My kids are like, "Gross, mom! You can't say that." My husband just sits there like:
                          
My favorite is: "Remember kids, it's not cool if your parents are doing it!" hahahahaha. For real, if you watch movies you'd think that only good-looking, young people are having sex. It seems so glamorous. That is not real life. They need to know that.

We have real conversations too. When my kid's bus driver was arrested for knocking up an 8th grader (yeah, that happened) it was quite the story and kids were talking about it. There were a few kids at my house and the subject came up and one of the kids asked, "Why is it rape if she wanted to do it?"

That opened the door for us to have a really good conversation about consent and consent laws and how they can protect children. At that time, it was appropriate. Teenagers need to know consent laws. They need to know what it means to give consent. We talk to them endlessly about how to say no to sex but almost never about how to say yes and what happens when you say yes to sex.

Conversations need to be tailored to individual kids because everyone develops at different rates and kids have different demeanors. The sex education needs of a 13 year old that is growing a beard and has the voice of Barry White are going to be different than the 13 year old that just sprouted his first armpit hair. It's going to be different for the 14 year old that started her period at 10 than the 14 year old girl that started her period at 13. Maybe your child isn't into members of the opposite sex at all- then you might need to have a different conversation with them all together. That's okay. You have to know your kid and meet them where they are at.

Teens need to be aware of the risks and dangers of sex and how to protect themselves from STDs and pregnancy, including abstinence. We focus so much on the physical aspects of sex but they need to know about the emotional impacts. It's so much easier to protect your body than your heart. We need to talk to them about the hook-up culture and what healthy relationships look like. We need to model that in our own relationships. We need to balance messages of dangers with positive messages about sex.

Sex is not inherently bad or dangerous but the consequences of it can be life altering. It also is a wonderful thing. Definitely makes the top 3 list.

I believe that sex should be safe, sober, legal, consensual, and mutually enjoyable. Those are my individual values and these are the things that we talk about. I might be super progressive and your values and thoughts about sex might be different. That's okay. What's more important is that you share your values and thoughts with your kids because I can guarantee you that the world is sending them messages that might not be in line with that. If it makes you uncomfortable, utilize books or Youtube videos, or just send them to my house with a condom and a banana.

I don't really know the right answer. I'm not saying that the way I'm handling things with my kids is the right way but I do know it's right for OUR family. I can tell you with 100 certainty what is wrong- not saying anything at all.

I'll get off my soapbox now.

Japan

                         
Here I am, finally. I have sat down to write this blog, like 100 times. Let's face it - I have spent the past 6 weeks in survival mode. There's been so much to do- it seems like a blur. Like Japan was only a dream.

When we went to Italy last summer, it was an 11 hour plane ride. Long, but not terrible. When I planned our trip to Japan, we had a 15 hour flight from NYC to Shanghi. I thought that 15 hours is not much longer than 11 hours..... WRONG. That is WAY too long to be on an airplane.

We flew China Eastern Air and boarded the plane just after midnight. It was perfect timing, we could fall asleep and when we woke up, half the trip would be done. The plane takes off, we get in the air, and then we had HORRIBLE turbulence for 5 hours. That's right, for 5 hours straight, the plane rocked and rolled and shook. It wasn't ideal. My husband was hating his life, gripping the arm rests and having full-on panic attacks. I'm pretty sure he thought we were going to die.

I leaned over to him and whispered, "I'm going to need you to be calm, because if the kids know you are freaking out- they are going to freak out." I was fine. Truly, I was already on the plane. If it was going to fall out of the sky, there was nothing I could do about it. So, I ate my airplane Chinese food and watched a movie. The turbulence didn't bother the children at all. They slept and were happy.

Thankfully, the last 10 hours were smooth so my husband didn't have to jump out of his skin. When we landed in China, I thought he was going to kiss the ground. We had a few hours to kill until our flight to Japan so we got breakfast. The breakfast menu was interesting. Beef and noodles, dumplings, rice. We ate, my 13 year old bitched because the internet was running slow, and we napped at the terminal.

Our flight to Japan was delayed for a few hours and by the time we got to Tokyo, we were exhausted and smelled bad. We purchased a train ticket and the lady at the counter spoke good English. She wrote down which lines to take and we were on our way. We get on the train and our stop was the last stop. It was an hour and a half. That was fine, it was late, the train was empty. Well, we are 2 stops from where we need to be and the damn train finishes it's route and then starts running in the opposite direction.

My oldest started crying, "We're lost in Japan!" The crying pissed off my husband, who was seething. The youngest was snapping. Our pocket wifi wouldn't hook up. I just laughed. "This reminds me of the time the bus dropped us off in the middle of nowhere in Rome." No one else was amused.

At the next stop, we got off. "We are taking a cab!" my husband declared, "I don't care how much it is." Long story short, this guy that worked at the station walked us to another train line and just pointed at this map in Japanese and we figured out what we needed to do. We were at our train station in 15 minutes and we took a cab to our apartment.

The kids were grumpy as shit, they both had colds, I thought my husband was going to throw them out of the window. Everyone was hungry. "I'm going to walk down to the convenience store," I announced. It was 11 pm and here I was in the middle of Tokyo - going on an adventure.

I got some Bento boxes, some bananas wrapped in plastic (that was weird), some chilled coffee for the next morning, cough drops. The man at the counter tried to talk to me in Japanese and I just smiled. We ate and then crashed.

We were all up by 6 am. We felt like we'd been hit by a bus. It's a 13 hour time difference. We planned to go to Shinjuku National Garden and then meet up with a kind-of friend of my daughter's for lunch. We put on our tennis shoes and hit the road. We got our pocket wifi hooked up so we could use GPS and actually navigate the subway system like normal humans. As we were walking to the train station, there was this gate thing at the top of the hill. We decided to explore. We walked in and it was a cemetery and shrine. So cool.
                       
We wandered through the graves and then made our way to Shinjuku. We walked through the city to the garden and it's everything was larger than life. It was like New York City, except everything was in Japanese and it was much, much cleaner.

As we walked through the gardens, cherry blossom petals rained over us. It was beautiful.


The weather was perfect and we wandered around in a daze, almost. In disbelief that we were here, on the other side of the world. As we were leaving, my oldest complained that her stomach hurt. We were meeting her old marching band friend, so I told her that maybe she was hungry and that we'd have lunch.

We did meet up with him. He was a marching band kid, newly 19 and stationed at an air force base close to the city. Air Force boy was genuinely glad to see us. He doesn't see many non-Japanese people who aren't soldiers. We took us to a restaurant where we cooked our own okonomiyaki.

Then my oldest got terribly sick. We went back to the apartment right away. She vomited profusely. I packed the medicine cabinet with me, so I gave her meds and told her to take a shower. Air Force boy showed me where this amazing grocery store was near the house. It was 2 levels, which was weird.

Here is the thing about Japanese grocery stores- if you don't read Japanese, you are taking a bet on everything you buy. Like, I brought orange juice. It was in a carton, it looked like there was an orange on the carton - but that shit was not orange juice. You think to yourself, "Is this squid or barbeque spare ribs? Is it chocolate or bean paste?" hahaha. It was an adventure for sure. I just took my chances.

The next day, my oldest was still sick. Poor child was on her death bed, crying. "Mom, my stomach hurts so much and I miss Hollister boy."
                
A stomach bug AND dopamine withdrawls? It was just too much for her to endure! I didn't have time for that though, because I had to attend the Festival of the Steel Phallus with my 11 year old. That's right- we went to a penis festival. Because I'm the mom of the year.

It really wasn't that scandalous- at least by my standards- I guess that's not saying very much. They had these 3 giant penises in these shrines and there was a temple where they were playing traditional Japanese music. They were selling penis whistles, penis tee shirts, penis lollipops. People of all ages were there, elderly couples, young children and everything in-between. There was a guy dressed up as a penis in a kimono walking around. The mood was jovial. We found it fascinating. We ate penis-shaped fried rice sticks wrapped in teriyaki marinated bacon for lunch and watched the parade. I enjoyed it.
                                 
We made our way back to the train station and I was feeling a little woozy, the jetlag was kicking in hard and I was nauseated. The subway car was full and all of a sudden I felt really hot, my ears started ringing and I started to feel faint. I'm going to pass out, I thought.

I didn't, but when we stepped off the train my youngest looked and me and said, "Mom, why are your lips blue?" I explained to her that I didn't feel well and that we'd be back soon. Bless this child, she was so worried about me. The whole walk back to the apartment she kept saying, "Don't forget to breathe, mom."

When we did get back, I switched off with my husband who took the little one to Akihabra to check out all the anime stuff. I crashed and slept for 15 hours. When I woke up in the morning, I felt well - and so did everyone else. We went exploring as a family again.

We went to the Ueno Zoo and then went paddling in the swan boats in the park while we viewed the cherry blossoms. It was absolutely breathtaking.
           
We went to the Tokyo Nation Museum and viewed all the art and statues. So freaking cool. We tried to keep a slow place and be low-key as we were all still recovering from our post-travel funk.

The next day, we hit it pretty hard. We went to Meji Shrine in the morning, did some window shopping at Harajuku, we crossed the busiest crosswalk in the world in Shibuya, we had lunch at the Metropolitan Building where we got a birds eye view of the city, we went to the Maramatsu Flute store and where my oldest got the chance to try a variety of really expensive flutes....we ended the day at Kawaii Monster Cafe where we ate crazy food and got to see a show. It was on my youngest daughter's bucket list. It was a great day!





We spent the following day at Tokyo Disney Sea - and Disney is Disney - it was fabulous. The park was really cool. King Triton and Jasmine's castle was there. The show at the end of the night was AMAZING. Fireworks, pyrotechnics, magic- pure Disney. It was so weird to see Mickey Mouse and all the characters come out and speak Japanese. The kids got a kick out of it.


Disney kicked our ass and we were soooo tired the next day. We had more of a chill day. We met up with Air Force boy again who took us to the mall. The girls got outfits and we sampled almost ALL the candy in the candy store. We had lunch at a cool little restaurant.

Going out to eat in Japan is funny because most places that are not touristy, don't have English menus. You are lucky if you get a menu with pictures. So you look at the picture, point to it, and hope for the best. They would bring food out and you'd think, "I don't know whats in this, but f*ck it, I'm eating it." hahaha.

That night, everyone crashed early and I ran to the grocery store and explored our neighborhood. We were not in a touristy area AT ALL and it was so cool to explore the shops and back alleyways. I had a quiet dinner alone underneath a Japanese lantern and read a book. It was amazing.

The next day we went to Senso-ji which really cool. Then we went to Akihabra where the kids played in the 7 story Sega arcade. It made my husband so happy. It was the coolest. We pet cats in a cat cafe. I loved that, since I'm a crazy cat lady. We window shopped and had tempura for lunch. We headed to Meguro river at sundown to see the cherry blossoms and lantern but a freak wind storm cut our time short.
                     


We visited the Imperial Palace on our last day in Japan. The gardens were so pretty. Then we went to this park near our apartment where there was a waterfall. It was like this hidden oasis in the middle of the city neighborhood. That night was cold but we ventured out for- Chinese food and to view Tokyo Tower all lit up. Beautiful.



The next day was departure day. My family was excited to go home, but I was so sad to leave. I enjoyed not bearing so many domestic burdens, not having to plan dinners or carpool. Japan was like a beautiful, amazing dream that I wasn't ready to wake up from.

The trip back was not as rough as the trip there. We were glad to be home but a piece of Japan will leave in us, forever I think. Our traveling has definitely brought us closer as a family. It's taught us a lot about ourselves. We are adventurous and brave. We navigated one of the biggest cities in the world! We ate strange foods and communicated with people that don't speak our language (pointing, nodding and smiling got us through 9 days in Japan). We decided to do something and we did it. It was a great experience for the kids and for us and it makes me so happy.

I have developed a bad case of wanderlust. We would like to cruise the Greek Isles and Croatia out of Venice in the summer of 2020. That's a save-for-two-years kind of trip. I'm trying to convince my husband to do a short off-shoot trip to Mexico City in 2019 but we'll see. He's not too keen on it.

The trip is done, the school year is coming to an end, I am starting to feel like a normal human again. Hopefully, I will keep up this blog. Who knows what kind of adventures 7th grade and high school will bring?!?!