Book Review: Changing You!

I recently happened upon the book Changing You: A Guide to Body Changes and Sexuality by Dr. Gail Saltz. It's a book on sexuality that was published last year. In the Beyond Birds & Bees workshop I recommend that parents buy a book about sex for their kids every year or so, so I was pleased to find a new one to review.

Changing You is about 30 pages long, and illustrated with cartoon-style illustrations. It briefly addresses: puberty, boy genital names & pubertal changes, girl genitals and pubertal changes, erections, menstruation, hair growth, sexual intercourse, fertilization, pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding. It very, very briefly mentions masturbation and hints at sexual abuse (at almost the same time--saying that it's normal to touch your own body but that you shouldn't let anyone else do so.) All in all, a good run-down of the basics.

Here's what I liked about it:

• The target reader age of this book seems to be around 8-9, an age group that seems to be hard to write about sex to... everything seems to be too young or too old.
  
• The text of this book is great--direct, age-appropriate, and clear. There aren't too many words, either (my biggest complaint about "It's So Amazing").
• Happily the correct terminology for a woman's external genitalia is used. (That's "vulva," fyi.)
  
• Two notes to parents provide great information about talking with your child about sex.
• The photos and tone of the book overall are very positive.
  

Here's what I did not like about the book:

• Nocturnal erections are only hinted at. Alongside a photo of a boy in bed with an erection under his sheets is the description: "Some mornings, it's not just the sun that rises..." I think we can do better than hints. Let's name names and give our sons (and daughters) at least the basic facts. Come to think of it, I'd of preferred a bit more teaching about what masturbation and sexual abuse are, too.
  
• When defining sexual intercourse, it says: "When a man and a woman love each other and decide that they want to have a child, they will do something called 'sexual intercourse' ". Welllllll, that isn't exactly true, is it? Last time I checked, people were having sex at times other than when they wanted to reproduce. Ahem.
• Some of the illustrations look a little weird, particularly the ones of the naked boy and girl, where body parts are named. Their bodies are virtually squares. Again, I think we can do better. A more realistic representation of a body is appropriate--no child will recognize themselves in a square.
  

So, I would recommend this book for:

• girls
• ages 8 or so,
• who are moderately interested in sexuality issues, and
  
• who are not asking lots of detailed questions yet.

I would not recommend this book for:

• boys, as the illustrations have lots of hearts, flowers, and the color pink... not themes that traditionally appeal to boys. Plus, the data on erections/boy body changes just isn't sufficient.
  
• a child who has already started the puberty process, or one who is searching for details and in-depth information. The information is just too basic.

In summary, I'm definitely going to add this to my list of recommended books, for the age range between "What's the big Secret" and "It's so Amazing." It's a great resource for young girls who are searching for basic info on sex and puberty.

If You Could Talk to Dr. Ruth...

I recently volunteered to review Dr. Ruth's new book Dr. Ruth's Guide to Teens and Sex Today for Parent: Wise Austin magazine. It's a win-win situation: I get a free copy of a book that I might have purchased anyway, I have some incentive/accountability to read a new book that relates to my work, and if I write something coherent/useful, I might get a paragraph published in the magazine. So I was pretty excited about picking up the book on Monday. But once I had it in my hand, a letter fell out of the front. It's a letter from the publisher, highlighting all the ways the book is great and media outlets will want to promote it. And then at the very end, it says... and Dr. Ruth is now available for phone interviews about this book.

Whoa! Interview Dr. Ruth? Really? Wow.

A quick Wikipedia scan tells me that she's 4'7", 80 years old, and was born in Germany. Jewish, she lost both of her parents in the Holocaust. She's a mother of two, grandmother of several. She became the cultural icon she is now in the 80s, when she had a call-in radio show where listeners could ask questions about sex. Most of us know her as a sexuality expert, of course, but would you believe that after WWII, she was trained as a sharpshooter in the Israeli army?!

But back to the question at hand. Could I interview Dr. Ruth? Frankly, I don't even know if I would be permitted to do such a thing. But I think I'm going to ask. But if they say yes, well, then that's where the real work & worry starts! Help me out... what would YOU ask Dr Ruth?

Can we talk about it at the grocery store?

I tell parents to use and teach the proper terminology for genitals with their young kids. This usually prompts a popular question: "But if we teach them that word, won't they yell it out at the grocery store?"

Well, in a word, "yes."

Yes, they probably will say the word penis (or vulva, or whatever) in the grocery store (or say it to Grandma, or at preschool, etc etc etc.) But it's okay--teach the correct words anyway. Why? Well, (a) the positive reasons to use the proper words outweigh the potential embarrassment of the grocery store scene, and (b) the likelihood of your child making a scene with those words is directly related to how freaked out you are by them. If you practice using those words and can incorporate them into your normal vocabulary (just like elbow, eyebrow, and ankle...) your child will have less incentive to 'make a scene' with those words--because they won't be as powerful.

Furthermore, alongside teaching your children the truth about where babies come from, and the proper terminology for all body parts, I encourage parents to teach their children limits for talking about sex. When your child makes the inevitable comment at the dinner table about "poopy" or "farting" (oh, how those young kids love potty humor!), your redirection can include the reminder that those topics are private, and not discussed during dinner/when guests are over/in public/etc.

And then maybe you'll get to have the same conversation I had some time back with my young daughter. As the two of us were driving somewhere, she asked about a family friend:

"Does he have a penis?"

Um, yes honey, he does.

"Can we talk about it at the grocery store?"

*ahem.* No, dear.


Have a great week, ya'll.