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| "I am telling you what he said...." |
My sixth-grader comes home on Friday asking for help with his science project. He is to do a report on Sylvester Graham, the inventor of the graham cracker. Nicholas has never asked me for help searching for information before.
And boy, am I glad that he did. I hopped online and goggled the name...
It would seem that
Mr. Graham was something of a purist and followed a vegetarian lifestyle; he believed that certain foods caused impure thoughts which could lead to excessive
self-satisfaction and coupling for reasons other than procreation.
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| "Birds do it; bees do it..." |
There were some other things, but the first thing I noticed was this article on
Snopes.com.
To say that I was shocked could be an understatement.
Being the over protective parent my husband accuses me of being, I looked up the information and fed him the main ideas. Some articles are riddles with specific words while others were general. Given last week's google search for images, I have learned my lesson when it comes to just letting him have an all-access pass to the internet.
After we'd gathered all the facts that he needed to complete the project, I asked him if there were any words that he had seen that he had a question about.
Wouldn't you know it?
Sexual.
I don't consider myself a prude, but there are some subjects that I don't want to talk to my children about. These include but are not limited to:
- the existence to Santa (of course there is!)
- what we do behind closed doors (storks, cabbage patch, moses basket on porch..take your pick)
- what we do ALONE behind closed doors (shaving my legs..out in a jiffy!)
After I gave myself a pep talk, I laid it all out on the line. I explained it all to him. Frankly, I should have done a better job of this
last year when he had puberty class.
Now I have to do it all over again with the 11-year-old. Because that puberty class? They only talked about hygiene and body hair. I had to give permission for that? Please. They can learn more on prime time TV.
However, I did not tell him about Santa Claus. I figured it was the least I could do for the boy since he'd just heard his mother utter words like sex, making a baby, and masturbation.
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| Got milk? |
I did email the teacher and let her know that I thought the ideals of Sylvester Graham may be a bit mature for sixth grade especially since her instructions were "google it." I am curious as to what she'll say.
One last thing is certain, I'll never view graham cracker quite the same.
