Gen X and Puberty Ed 2.0

Gen X, remember the good old days? When we were kids, we left the house after school (if we even came home) and ran around in the woods with our friends until our moms called us in for dinner. We didn’t have structured activities. No one checked our homework. No one was asked us for the highlights/lowlights of our days at the dinner table — they just told us to shut up and eat.

Speaking of eating, I had two lunches all year long: bologna sandwiches or a cheese/mustard combo. If I didn’t like them, I could just leave them in my locker (which I did for six months until a teacher smelled them). I would never dream of telling my mom I didn’t like bologna. Today, if my kids don’t like their lunch, they speak right on up and they get new choices. Like sushi. And pasta, served hot. And they only eat beef jerky from the farmer’s market.

You get the point. We were tough back then. We were nothing like the overprivileged, talked-to-death kids of today.

But wait a minute: those are our kids.

So, my fellow Gen Xers, if the 70s were such glory days, why then are we parenting the way we are? Why do we know (and talk ad nauseum with our children and other adults) about “unfair teams” on the playground? Why do we even know what Swun Math is?

Because maybe talking isn’t so bad.

My fifth grade boy just completed puberty ed. Whereas my husband remembers being ashamed of his changing body during this period of his life, my son is relishing in every minute of it. Together with his female classmates the boys spent a week talking about everything from penis and breast size to menstruation and wet dreams. And he loved asking me questions and rehashing the day’s lessons. Questions have included whether I use tampons or pads. Do I shave my private region. Topics of conversation have included boners, condoms and the melodious sound of the phrase “ball sac”. He thinks he is getting pubic hair (which he is thrilled about) and actually showed me. And I have answered all his questions, discussed the details, and agreed that there is something satisfying about saying ball sac.

When I was in seventh grade, we had sex ed. In a classroom of about 30 sitting in straight rows we took turns reading a detailed description of the sex act out loud from a textbook. The girl who got the misfortune of reading the money shot, so to speak, was overweight, pimply and mortified. And she mispronounced penis (think pen-is) and vagina (vajina). We laughed. The teacher yelled. And that was the extent of my sex ed in school.

That same year I woke up with my period. I’d never discussed periods with my mother. I’d been a “surprise” baby, which my 42 year old mother had thought was a tumor for four months. Remember, in the 70s, 40-somethings were not breeders. Her shell-shocked body had gone directly into menopause after having me so the only supplies in the house were super thick pads from more than a decade earlier that had to be attached with safety pins, which my mother didn’t have. There was no time for a trip to the drug store so I had to stick this thing in my pants, clench my thighs, ride to school and then go to the grim-faced school nurse, explain my situation, and get more modern conveniences. Then I had to go in the bathroom and try to figure out what to do.

I cried a lot that morning. I was already crying when we picked up my neighbor Stephanie, as we did every day, on our way to school. Stephanie was always late, her dad regularly coming out to tell us to wait five more minutes for her to eat her bagel. He didn’t care that my mom would be late for work. My mom wasn’t crazy about Stephanie and her family, as you can imagine. She would have been even less crazy about her if she knew Stephanie had kicked me off our lunch table a week before.

So when Stephanie asked why I was crying and my mother said it was because I had “become a woman” that morning (exact words, I kid you not), you can imagine how hard I sobbed.

I don’t know why I didn’t tell my mother right away what had happened at school,why I allowed her to waste her time picking up a mean girl that consistently made her late while Stephanie’s parents enjoyed coffee in their PJs. I also don’t know why I didn’t tell my mother about all the other injustices that happened in middle school. The time a kid hocked a loogie in the parked bus window, landing right in my hair. The time the bully stole all the Duran Duran pins off my Jordache bag and dared me to say something about it. There was no clear reason not to tell my mother. My mom was incredibly loving and supportive. She cared deeply about me. But by then it was the early 80s. And I guess we still just didn’t do that in those days.

So here is my point: maybe we Gen Xers aren’t doing everything wrong. Maybe leaving your kids to run wild every afternoon isn’t the ideal state. Maybe the fact we talk so much with our kids, are so involved in their lives could actually be seen as a good thing.

Was it really so great that we were all on our own every day, figuring everything out with our friends? Wouldn’t it have been amazing if our parents had told us that middle school sucks, it’s OK, you’ll get through it. Wouldn’t it be great if they knew enough about our friends and our dynamics to know when things were wrong?

Because I’ll tell you what did happen when I finally told my mom that Stephanie had kicked me off the lunch table. She called that father up and told him Stephanie could get her own ride to school from now on. And then we both celebrated.

My 9 year old daughter has already decided she will use pads when she gets her period. She and her girlfriends read their American Girls’ young girl guide to their bodies and recently pronounced my boobs a stage 3 while they were at a stage 1. She’s ready and excited for her “big day”.

Don’t get me wrong — there are many things I am sure I am epically screwing up. There are things my kids will do differntly with their own, laughing at how our generation of parents acted, and that’s ok. It’s evolution. Let’s face it, I am surely over-involved in my kids’ lives. I’m definitely overprotective. I won’t let them swim in the ocean without me when they are ten like I did with my friends. I won’t let them cross a busy street — let alone rollerskate across one — alone. And maybe that is a mistake. But I do feel good that my kids know they can talk to me about anything and everything.

So Gen Xers, remember this when you are driving your kids to art class or cooking class or lacrosse practice today and someone reminds you how ridiculous you are for not letting your kids play with snapping turtles in the backyard like in the good old days: you are doing OK. Just ask your kids. You can talk to them.