Got a call from my 10-yr old son this week, seems he had a joke he needed to needed to tell me. It was about this little boy named Johnny and a play ground conversation he was having with another female friend … and it was a prime example of his introduction into sexuality.

I imagine most of us remember these types of jokes. We heard them, we laughed at them, and we re-told them. As a child of a conservative home, the one joke that has stuck with me involved a little green jeep and a carport (let your mind wonder if you don’t know it). I heard them on the bus ride home, in the locker room, or at sporting events. There are many of these types of jokes, The Adventures of Little Johnny, and I think they are important to the aging of our children.

Lets face it, none of us parents really want to discuss the birds and the bees with our kids. We cringe at the thought of our daughters going out on a date with a boy, or discovering magazines under the bed in our ‘little’ boys room. Most of of don’t have the stomach to actually sit down and talk about the pleasures, the heart aches, the problems, and the details of sex with our children. Heck, we even call it the ‘birds and the bees’ talk! Yet, the kids are growing up and their bodies ARE changing.

The discovery really comes from friends and it comes from experimentation … excuse me while I untwist my stomach … ok, that is a bit better.

10 years old … grade 5 … memories of my own exploration into this world are still with me today. Finding the “Joy of Sex” book on my parents bookshelf. Finding aspects of the Sears catalog strangely more appealing. And of course, the sexual jokes told around school – as there are always those children that are just a wee bit more worldly.

But these are the introductions to a brave new world, they start the questions, they start the curiosity that leads to dating. The desire of relationships. Over the next few years I would start to hide photos of women from my parents and start playing with the sexual desires starting to build in me. Of course, I could never really discuss this with my parents … cause who wants to do that??

At them moment he is still bringing them up with us, his parents, which I take as a positive sign. It gives us the chance to open the conversation up with him.

There he was, lying beside me.  His light brown hair curling over his forehead.  His eyes resting softly in the dim light I am using to scribble these notes.  His pure, unconditional love has captured my soul.  I would do anything for him.  Yet, in this moment, I sit here and ponder how I am slowly dismantling the only world he has ever known.

His brother lies in the other room, deep into his dreams.  I may find out what his mind was piecing together in the morning, but probably not.  They are with me this evening, and back with their mother tomorrow.  I will get to see them again on the weekend.  It is a complicated schedule but there are reasons.  Everything has its reasons.  So it is important to me that these moments together are treasured.

My son shuffles in the bed, stretching and looking for a snuggle.  Or maybe it is me that is wanting a snuggle from him.  So much of where we are today started with him.  No, that is wrong.  It wasn’t him, he was not the issue – I WAS.  The truth be told, it has been a long road to where we are today.  Yet it was the time period that surrounded this young life that hold many of the events that broke the family.  The long hours at work, the emotional pressures of two children … the lives of mom and dad that become disconnected and drifted apart.  We both loved our children, we both wanted the best for them, we both were trying to keep our lives and ourselves together for them … we just went about it in different, and in some cases horribly wrong, ways.  And I look at him now with guilt and sorrow.  “I am sorry son”, I find myself saying to him quietly, “I will do better. I am, and will always be, daddy for you!”