Twinkle's Fascination

Yesterday was library day at school for Twinkle. She brought home The Human Body , which we perused all afternoon. T: "Look! It's a heart!", "Those are lungs", "Look at the skull" and so on. It was really cool that she thought everything was so interesting.

We got further into the book. T: "What's that?" Me: "That's a bladder. That holds tee-tee. When it gets really full, that's when you feel like you have to go to the bathroom." T: "Where's the poop?" Me: "That would be on this page with the intestines." So we read about what happens to food after you swallow it. I'm thinking, "This is fun." I totally understand her fascination with what's going on in her body that she can't see.

T: "What's that?" Me: "Uh. That would be a testicle." I knew we were getting to "those pages", so I just went full steam ahead. T: "What's inside there?" Me: "Sperm", pointing to a picture. She points to various other parts making me read the names written beside them. We talked about how boys and girls are different. She has a little boy friend that she's know since birth and she's seen his nether regions, so she knows about that difference. We looked at the girl pictures, too. I showed her where the baby actually is when a baby is "in a mommy's tummy". She saw drawings of full term babies. T: "Look that baby is about to come out". She didn't question where or how it was coming out, so I just chose not to address that. And then we moved on to something else. No big deal for her. I was glad Hubby wasn't home.

I told Hubby when he called what we were talking about. He was glad he wasn't home, too.

I've never thought about how to explain things to Twinkle. Obviously at 5, we're not getting very detailed. But, as we were going through the book, I suddenly realized the opportunity to be able to talk about boy parts and girl parts as normally and calmly as we were talking about lungs and hearts and what is "in there". My mom probably would have tried to end the book early.