Awkward Questions

Madeleine Thompson - 22 Aug 16

Anybody remember that scene in Three Men and a Little Lady, where Mary asks Peter and Michael if they have a penis?  I remember laughing and cringing at that one.   I laughed of course from the comfort of being a pre-teen who could still laugh in innocent embarrassment at such things.  Of course, now I’m a grown-up adult person, I’m supposed to be all mature about talk of the genitals and reproduction, right?   Wrong. 

I have a four year-old-daughter and a two-year-old son.   Until now, conversations about private areas have been limited to ‘front bums’ and ‘back bums’.  Pretty standard and easy stuff to navigate.   For some time, my daughter has been very interested in anything related to bottoms in general so I was expecting some awkward questions soon.   I’ve already had my son pointing at my boobs and shouting “Your bottom, Mummy!”.   How do you reply to that one?  No, I had no clue either.

So we were edging closer and closer to some awkward-question-ness from child number one as she is becoming more self-aware and world-aware.   And tonight, she delivered it.  

Now, I’m a bit of an over-thinker (actually, a lot of an over-thinker.  If I was a computer I would overheat often).  I think a lot about the right things to say in different situations.  I think in retrospect about things I should have said, and I predict what I will say when something comes up.   I have thought a lot about how to approach the whole penis/vagina/origin-of-babies questions and I think the most sensible thing I heard was to keep it simple – not to give private parts different names, tell it like it is, and answer any questions in a straightforward way.   

So, this evening at bath time, after my son had got out of the bath and was being dressed by my husband, my daughter hung about for a moment longer, closely examining her bits and asking me about them.   I try to be careful not to make her feel embarrassed about any of this but also to let her know that it’s her body and her private bottom etc.  She asked me why her brother had a different bottom to her.  Cue: many internal questions for me but mostly this one – “Should I just say Willy and be done with it?”   I didn’t.  I looked her in the eye and told her in a matter of fact way that her brother had a penis.   She accepted this surprisingly quickly and I did an internal high five that I coped with this in a grown-up adult mature person way and then took her through to her bedroom for my husband to take over bedtime.    Her first question as she entered the room?  Could she see her brother’s penis.

Try being grown-up and mature when your husband is bent over, silently laughing into the floor.   It’s not easy.  I made a swift exit and told the rest of the family via Whatsapp that I’d dropped the P bomb.   We all virtually laughed because anything to do with bottoms and bits is funny though I know it shouldn’t be.  Why do we get so embarrassed at being asked perfectly straightforward and normal questions about life?   Why is it that somebody says Willy and we instinctively want to turn red and laugh?  Maybe as a nation we need to be collectively less embarrassed?  A bit less Carry On?   I could go deeper into my feminist moans about our bizarre relationship with breasts (people are happy to stick them on a magazine but they turn in horror at women using them to publicly feed babies) but I won’t. That’s one for another post.  

I read a lovely piece last year in The Guardian about how in Sweden there is one word for each genitalia – Snopp for boys and Snippa for girls.  How fabulous is that?  I don’t know if it is still the case but kudos to Sweden for a genius idea.   I’m all for keeping it real but I think something like this would be great in the UK.   

Anyway, I digress.  I’m glad I told my daughter but I do predict many questions to follow and I need to get my answers ready.  

Madeleine Thompson

I am mum to my little chicks, Aisha, 6 and Abel, 4. Originally from Yorkshire, UK, I now live in a little town in the North West. By day, I work for myself as a freelance PA. By night, I indulge my passion for writing.

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