Saturday, August 15, 2009

The importance of "Inappropriate" puberty books.

We all have either asked 'certain' questions that lead to one talk or another either about sex, or puberty. Such as: "Where do babies come from." Or "Why does my brother/sister have different parts than I do?"

Well, what if you, as a mother/father/older sibling don't want to give that talk to your son/daughter/younger sibling? What will you tell them?

The easiest thing in my opinion to do in that situation is hand the asker a book about puberty and other things about growing uh. Making sure it's age appropriate is important You wouldn't want to mentally scar your 6 year old.

Though nowadays with book banners running wild everywhere it's hard to find a decent book that hasn't been banned. Especially books about sex and/or puberty.

But what would happen if all the puberty books in libraries and book stores were banned? You'd probably have to give "The talk" to the asker sooner than you wanted to.

I know my co-writer Meghan showed me a web page (Which, I regret to say, I don't remember where it was) and I mother wrote this "I don't want to talk to my kids about puberty until after their married." A little ironic, eh?

But what if everybody lived by that rule? Girls aged 10-18 would start bleeding and have no clue what was wrong with them, and, if they were home alone, they would probably start freaking out and call 9-1-1, just to learn it's their period and it would happen once a month until they hit menopause.

Then there would be boys. They would wake up in the middle of the night, sweating and their bed would be wet. They would most likely get extremely embarrassed because they think they've gone back to when they were 6 and still wet the bed. And maybe, just maybe, they would look don in the middle of science class and see they had a lump in their groin of their pants and would think that something is wrong, freak out, call home, and then they would have to have a talk with their parents about growing up, just to find out it's nothing too serious.

Over the years, many puberty/sex books have been attempted to be banned by book banners everywhere such as "It's Perfectly Normal" It's a very animated puberty book that describes your body and how it grows up. It's designed for third-sixth graders. In my opinion (Though I've only read one page from http://www.myppmc.com/Books%20-%20Pornogrphic%20Sch.%20Library%20Pictures.htm) I find it 95% appropriate for the age group. I'm only against the masturbation for the younger crowds because most parents don't want to walk in one their third grade son masturbating in the living room, only to hear his explanation is "The book Mr. Smith read today said this was perfectly fine!"

So in conclusion, my opinion is this: Puberty books and growing up is just a way of life. You don't have to show your kids those books, just don't try and get them banned because you don't like them. They are extremal helpful for any parent/guardian that doesn't want to talk with their kids about it, and help many children, young and old understand things much better.

1 comment:

  1. The not learning about puberty till they're married thing was from a Maureen Johnson blog bac when her book was being banned in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. She posted a bunch of comments she got from her blog readers.

    Nice blog 83! I feel bad for the imaginary kids.

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