My Five-Year-Old Son Knows What A Period Is

If there’s one thing that every parent can agree on, it’s the challenges of going to the bathroom by yourself after you have kids. If they’re not babies screaming because you’re leaving them alone, they’re toddlers or preschoolers barging in because they need to wash their hands, or to get a drink of water, or because their favourite toy in the whole wide world is, naturally, in the cabinet under the bathroom sink.

So Ben wasn’t even two and a half when this scene, which probably repeats itself in homes all over the world daily, happened: I was in the bathroom when Ben came in”¦and noticed the pad I was wearing in my underwear.

A few weeks before that he had given himself a pretty decent scraped knee, so he knew what blood looked like. I could see the wheels turning; his brow furrowed. And with a trace of worry in his voice, he asked, ”Mommy, what’s that?”

My husband and I had always said we would be open with our kids about sexuality education. We have always used the anatomically correct terms vulva, penis, testicles rather than nicknames. When I was pregnant with Alicia only a few months before, we had explained that an egg from Mommy and a sperm from Daddy had combined to make the baby that was growing in Mommy’s uterus, not her tummy.

But when I imagined the first really awkward question we’d have to answer, I’d sort of imagined it would be, ”How did the sperm get to the egg?” or ”Why does my penis get hard sometimes?” and not ”Why is there a bloody something-or-other in your underwear, Mommy?”

So there I am with my pants around my ankles and a choice staring me in the face. But while I was somewhat uncomfortable with having this discussion quite so soon, the choice was easy for me.

”It’s a pad. I’m having my period.”

”What’s that mean?”

”Well, if there isn’t a baby growing in my uterus, my body doesn’t need the stuff inside the uterus that helps a baby grow. So every so often it comes out, and that’s my period.”

I could see him thinking. ”So what’s that for?” he said, pointing to the pad.

I shrugged. ”Just so it doesn’t make a mess.”

And as quickly as that, his curiosity was satisfied. We’ve had more conversations about periods since; every so often, he has another question. When he got a little older he wanted to know if it hurt (to which I replied, ”Not all the time, but sometimes I get cramps when I’m having my period”) and why I was getting both pads and tampons (”I like pads most of the time but use tampons when we go swimming”).

I have explained that periods are not something everyone is comfortable with talking about, so he doesn’t bring it up much in public, but people who hear about the conversation often ask why I would tell my son so much. They understand why I would explain these things to a daughter, but the prevailing attitude often seems to be: ”Why does a boy need to know so much about periods?”

Why? Because my son has a mother who menstruates, and aunts who do. He has a sister who will menstruate and two grandmothers who used to. Half of his classmates, half of his colleagues at work, half of the people in he world that he lives in will menstruate, do menstruate, or have menstruated. If he has a female partner when he grows up, she will menstruate; and if they want children, her period will be of much more than academic interest for a while. Why shouldn’t I tell him about an experience that half the world has?

There is no better time to teach your sons about menstruation than when they are this young. They don’t have any preconceptions; they haven’t heard nasty phrases like ”on the rag.” They haven’t yet learned that some people think of periods as gross or weird or scary. If Ben seen something that looked like his mother bleeding, without an explanation, he probably would have been scared. If I had been embarrassed or angry or disgusted by his question, he would have been perplexed and upset. Even if I had just brushed his question away as some parents suggest (yes, I’ve heard the phrase ”women’s mysteries” from time to time) he would have learned a very powerful, and very negative, message about menstruation and what his attitude towards it should be.

Instead, he learned that a period is just a bodily process, part of the miraculous way that these collections of bones and muscles and organs not only grow and change and move, but reproduce themselves. And he’s learned that, if he ever has questions no matter what the topic I will answer, and I will answer honestly.

Now, if only teaching him to knock before he comes into the bathroom was that easy.