heart to heart

In each community, there are some parenting offerings that feel very “must do” if you have any hope to be a “good parent.” You attend kindergarten information night in the spring before your preschooler starts elementary school. You go to lectures by authors and therapists about how to create “resilient” children and learn to parent in the “digital age.”   This practice continues through high school when you attend symposium after symposium about how to take the pressure out of college admissions – which are mostly spent looking around the room and trying to figure out which highly selective school everyone else is trying to get into.  

And, in our community, we have a nearby university hospital that offers a course called “Heart to Heart.” 

Here is the online description of the class:

“Heart to Heart: A Seminar on Growing Up for Parents and Kids

This informative, humorous, and lively discussion of puberty, the opposite sex and growing up sets parents and their pre-teens (aged 10-12) on a the course for talking with one another about these topics. Topics include physical changes and growth, common concerns pre-teens may have during puberty, feelings, actions and consequences and sexuality and sexual reproduction.”

The deal is that the same sex parent takes their child to the class before they hit puberty so that they are prepared for the coming physical and emotional onslaught. Our oldest child is a boy so my husband got the the first assignment.  Here’s how it went (as told by my husband):

I love the idea of outsourcing awkward parenting tasks, so I had no real objection to the idea of Heart of Heart taking the burden of talking the “birds and the bees” off my hands.  Sure, with a schedule calling for two three-hour sessions over two Wednesday nights, I questioned why the curriculum was five hours and fifty minutes too long. But I was still optimistic. A little bit of extra time was a fair trade for relieving me of the burden of ever saying “masturbation” to my offspring.  We’d slip in a couple minutes late, slide into some comfy seats in the back, avoid eye contact, and head home in silence. Great plan.

As we started the initial session, I had no reason to suspect that this plan would not unfold as expected.  I quickly settled in and started to zone out when the instructor asked the room to come up with some of the nicknames that are used for male genitals.  I barely had time to chuckle about how embarassing that was going to be to answer when something moved suddenly in the peripheral vision to my left. I looked over to see my son, sitting on the edge of his seat stretching his arm out as high as he could to catch the instructor’s attention.

As the reality of what was occurring, I reflexively gasped and whispered, “Put your hand down, what are you doing!?” My son turned to look at me, smiled and said, “I’ve got a good one, Dad, it’s a “DONG.”  I stared in horror at this monster sitting next to me and tried to make sense of what I was seeing. After a few more minutes of rapt attention on his part, I realized that I had just assumed that the “normal” male response of embarassment, denial and deflection had been genetically encoded into him.  But what I was seeing was some strange mutation. My son was not only enthusiastic to learn about these topics but excited about the opportunity to do it in a group setting.

What followed was a three hour horror show for me and the emotional baggage I had carried with me through a life of Catholic education.  As the topics moved from female anatomy, to sex and, of course, masturbation, my son looked over to me several times to exlaim, “You know what Dad, I did not know that!”  I looked at him each time without knowing how to respond, finally muttering something along the lines of “Yes, you did” and trying to melt into the floor.

The car ride home was a blur.  My son was recounting his favorite hits from the night while I desparately fiddled with the radio.  The next few days at home were a study in how many of those topics he could weave into our dinner conversation.  I considered asking my wife for a paternity test.

We somehow completed the course that next week and I was able to breathe again, comforted by the thought of these topics never coming up again between us.  But, as it turns out, your kid’s reactions to these things isn’t ephemeral. And the comfort my son feels in talking about all the things I’ve repressed my whole life has been on display ever since.  Over a decade later, I can say with confidence that I’m much better for it. Can’t say I ever want to revisit “Heart to Heart,” but somehow I did learn something from it.