Posts by BenWilson
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Emma Hart,
how long some perfectly sexual people have gone without orgasm because of the nature or quality of their chocolate.
Or because they had to eat it with the wrapping paper still on!
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to chris,
Classic link. I wonder how many Tai Chi practitioners realize that to increase their ki power, instead of "making hands like clouds", they could "fuck like rabbits"
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
I had my daughter believing, for some years, that Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson were the same person. But that seems rather mean now.
Heh. Pure fun, that one. The one's I'm most undecided about are the various fantasy people, like the tooth fairy, and Santa. Also, bogeymen and pixies in the garden are ones I've heard parents use to manipulate their kids. Not to mention Jesus....
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to James Butler,
Evolution put it an easy arm's reach away for a reason, right?
Easier to protect like that.
it is fine and healthy for you to play with your penis. But that is a personal thing you do in the privacy of your room.
I think I mentally rehearsed about 5 ways of saying it that wouldn't come out as "you shouldn't do it at all". In the end, I actually got to wondering if I needed to be in the bathroom during his bath anyway, I make them shallow so he's perfectly safe, and he's not prone to trying to stand up anyway. So I'm fading it out, leaving the room most of the time. He's welcome to play with it in there if he wants to, but he has to stop if there are others around. It's a pretty natural place to do it, and touching it came up from washing generally. You have to learn to wash your genitals somehow, I guess.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
God. It'd be so tempting. I don't know how anyone resists, really.
Yes, it's easy to see why telling bullshit to kids is so compelling - because it works. Mine sleep like clockwork. Literally. There is a monkey clock in their room, with eyes that close and open on setting and ringing of the alarm. I told Marcus that people sleep when the monkey's eyes are closed, and they don't get out of bed until the eyes open. He sticks with that, and consequently never learns of its utter falsehood.
I try to use truth now, though, he's 5 and can handle some explanations. I demonstrated why you wear a seatbelt with one of his teddy bears and the judicious application of heavy braking. Seeing it crash into the dashboard made the point, he repeats it as a mantra now as he puts the belt on. When he went to bed on Monday, he asked why the sun was still on. I did my best to explain daylight savings - that the day was getting longer, but we still had to go to bed when the monkey closes his eyes at 7pm. Mixture of lie and truth.
But sometimes truth just can't really be told. The answer to "why can't I turn the TV on and off" is really "because it annoys me and might break the TV, which would also annoy me". Instead it's "because I said so". I don't want to let him know what would annoy me, because when he wants to annoy me, he will know exactly what to do. And "why do I have to eat up my pasta?" is far too nuanced for a child to understand - "because getting in a habit of eating food you are given at the table, and at no other time will develop a pleasant family environment, during which pleasure will be associated with company, and you will learn to communicate. You are unlikely to choke on your food without someone noticing, and you won't drop it on the furniture".
Then again, I'm not so sure. Actually answering the "but why" questions honestly is a really good exercise in checking out whether you really do have good reasons, and them learning this process is a very powerful skill. He's systematically checking out so many corners of habit and ritual.
A hard one to answer, very much on topic for this thread, was "why can't I play with my penis". I had to think about it, and then modify it. "You can't play with it in front of people". Why? "Because I said so". Too hard to answer.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Bart Janssen,
However, getting restaurants to stop squirting that disgusting dark brown stuff over their dessert creations can be difficult.
So this has been a family tradition, handed from father to son, to associate chocolate with poo?
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
bugger off to see about that licentious Greece place
So THAT's where the phrase "bugger off" came from.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Emma Hart,
Don't stick your genitals into anything you're not absolutely sure they'll come back out of!"
I bet there was real experience backing that one.
ETA: I'm thinking some kind of ancient world farm animal, probably.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
This. I like to think of Leviticus as basically a set of council by-laws.
Yes, I can see an ancient Bhatnagar passing judgment on loud drumming disturbing the elderly, following by a youthful exodus from his clan.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Lilith __,
:-) Hey I wasn't the one posting YouTube clips of the Dalai Lama getting a toasting. I like Buddhists, although I can't rule out that that's because I don't live among them.
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