“How come you were pregnant before your wedding?” A snippet of an Interesting conversation with my ten year old

“These days, people talk about the need for sex education even for very young kids so in the spirit of this, I called my ten year old daughter and nine year old son for a small pep talk of the basics of sex education. We talked about liking boys or girls, the dangers that a girl could face with boys and how getting pregnant should only happen after marriage.  I gave them a small book about this stuff specifically written for their age group to further explain things. Happy with myself for taking the first step in this daunting challenge, I signed off.

A few days later, I overheard both of them arguing. I didn’t pay much attention because they always argued …until I heard my name. I stopped to listen and the conversation went something like this:

Daughter: I’m telling you I’m right. I was born April and their wedding was October. Pregnancy is nine months so I think they were pregnant before the wedding.

Son: Wait. Let me calculate it myself. (Then I heard him counting). You’re right. But ah ah…mummy said you’re not supposed to get pregnant before you marry.

Daughter: Exactly. So how come she got pregnant?

Son: Are you sure the wedding was in October?

Daughter: What do you mean …what kind of dumb question is that?

Son: I’m going to ask her now.

Once I heard that, I took off into my bathroom and shut the door. Of course, my kids don’t respect my privacy so they just ran in and proceeded to ask me the question. Not knowing how to respond, I told them I didn’t have time for such ridiculous questions and promptly assigned chores to them.

Do you know it didn’t end there? Later that night, my husband came into our room with a amused look on his face. When I asked him what the joke was, he whispered that our kids just welcomed him home with questions about me being pregnant before our wedding. They wanted him to confirm if it was true or not and if true, why it was so since I told them it was wrong.  

It was funny because we both felt guilty and honestly, I felt like I had done something wrong. When they got tired of us sending them off on errands anytime they asked the question, they stopped. I was relieved but I also learnt a lesson …about planning any speech I intend to give my kids so I would be prepared to answer their questions without fear.