Sex Education for Toddlers
Posted on June 12th, 2008 in goofiness, teaching
My wife and I grew up in the 1970s, so naturally we got plenty of detail about sex from about the age of two or so. In my case, I got my information from a book of my older brother’s: the out-of-print classic How Babies Are Made.
My parents had gotten the book for my brother to explain why the hell I was suddenly showing up to mess up his sweet deal. I don’t think it gets into homewrecking siblings, sadly, but through its pleasantly childlike construction-paper art, the book sketches the basics of the birds and the bees and the chickens and the dogs. With all that early information, you’d think I’d have the healthiest possible attitude toward sex, right?
Wrong. I cannot make it through a reading of this book to Boobaby without breaking down in hysterical laughter. It starts when we finish with flowers and pollen and turn the page on this:
Nice cockade.
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I mean, please. Who can help but giggle at this? I try to restrain myself, to treat the subject of reproduction with the quiet dignity it deserves, but then we get to mammals:
Good boy.
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Even Boobaby chuckles at this one. I mean, could his expression be any goofier? I have to think that the artist is in on the joke at least a little — I mean, really, did he have to choose a cocker spaniel for this particular illustration? By the time the human baby comes along, I’m usually reading through teeth clenched against the next outburst of goofy laughter.
Yeah, I know. Real mature.
So about all Boobaby is going to learn from me and this book is the idea that sex makes puppies and that sometimes it’s frikkin’ hilarious.
Which, I guess, isn’t too far from the whole truth.
Yeah, I Twitter, don't laugh. 
June 12th, 2008 8:16 am
I love the two separate lines to both separate testicles on the dog.
Just in case one would be seen as a testicle and the other mistaken for a fridge freezer or something.
June 12th, 2008 3:02 pm
*cackling* I’m with xbox, though it looked a little like an apple mac to me!
I used a book called ‘Where did I come from”. It was a little more modern than the one you are using now.
June 12th, 2008 3:02 pm
oops, forgot the link…. heh
http://www.amazon.com/Where-Did-Come-Peter-Mayle/dp/0818402539
June 12th, 2008 5:57 pm
Oh my God. That is just…hmmm…well now, I can’t think of one word to describe that.
Hilarious is right. I think it best to try and not take sex TOO seriously.
June 12th, 2008 6:57 pm
I think I had one as a kid that was very scientific. Pictures of babies in the womb and sperm under a microscope type thing.
What? It worked for me!
Oh and you have to be careful with roosters, they don’t always keep to the chickens. We had roosters and ducks in the same pen. Those poor poor ducks.
June 12th, 2008 7:56 pm
Oh. My. God.
That is the exact same book I had. You can’t even imagine the memories I am being flooded with RIGHT NOW.
Oh. My. God.
June 14th, 2008 5:02 am
I’m in awe that those pictures are real and were actually in the pages of a children’s book.
June 14th, 2008 10:30 am
I know — weren’t the 70s cool?
In a kind of creepy way?
June 14th, 2008 5:22 pm
LOL!!!! I remember this very book being read to me! I also remember saying to my very liberal, conservative, PTA mother, “You and Daddy did THAT?!?! That is disgusting and I never want you to do it again!” (I remain the youngest!)
June 14th, 2008 6:29 pm
Liberal conservative mom? Wow, that must have been a challenge growing up!
Honestly, though, I had no clue what was going on when it came to the people. They just show the large-nosed couple under a quilt. I didn’t get what was happening under there until a lot later!
June 19th, 2008 11:27 am
This is hilarious.