Eggs and Seeds

Last week Sassy got an ear infection -- a really bad one, in fact. Unfortunately for her, she had fluid oozing out of her ear for days, which resulted in some midnight tears and calls home to a longtime friend and pediatrician. In the end, we were incredibly grateful we didn't have to locate a hospital and that things arighted themselves with a cocktail of recommended antibiotics, (thank Heaven for modern medicine!), but it did result in a couple of missed days at school. By the time she could finally go back last Tuesday she was terrified to go back by herself, and insisted I attend class with her. So, immediately after I returned from biking Coco to preschool, I took my vulnerable first grader by the hand and walked to Ciao Sin Elementary School. 

Sitting at the back of the room I smiled with nostalgia. Between the colorful walls, the little desks, and the nurturing twenty-something teacher, this seemed to be the ideal picture of a first-grade classroom. Sassy's classmates all buzzed with 6-7 year old energy, and their eagerness to help her touched me greatly. One little girl even told me that she noticed Sassy didn't have a pillow for nap time, and so she would bring an extra one from home to help her. Another girl who sits next to Sassy proudly introduced herself to me after I noticed her instruct and help my daughter with cleaning up her area and her backpack, in keeping with the decorum of the classroom. 

As a side note, I find it interesting that for every 50 minutes of class instruction, the children are allowed 10 minutes of recess, which is easily done since all the classrooms open right onto the commons/play area:

The children also clean their own classrooms regularly. 

Meet York, my new friend.

After a couple hours or so of Chinese instruction, the children attended English class next door. 

Here Sassy helps demonstrate how to form the letter "S" with her arms.

After spending the morning with her I decided to go back and check on the baby, since he was at home alone with Ama. Sassy was resistant to this, and made me promise her I would return after lunch. So, after making a reappearance at home in order to feed Buggas, I revisited the school again for a brief window in order to comply with my promise. This time, however, my window of time would be brief since I needed to get back to relieve Ama, who had a doctor's appointment. 

This time, as I sat at the back of the classroom I smiled at the children who were just beginning to awaken from their post-lunch naps at their desk. I thought it was so sweet. Just then their teacher, Ms. Lin, started class again and turned on a projector, with a little cartoon for all the kids to watch. As it came up I laughed at the chosen title written in English, "The Birds and the Bees." . . .

"That's so funny." I thought, "I'm sure they don't know what that phrase really means. So classic Chinese."

But as the cartoon continued, it turned out the joke was on me. Narrated by the voice of a little girl, photographs of she and her family appeared, with a subsequent question, "Why am I not in all the earlier photographs with my parents? What happened? Where did I come from?"

As this all began to unfold, I still naively thought, "Surely, this is not what I think it is. Surely, this country which has always been so conservative--at least when I was here before--would never show this sort of a film to first graders. I mean, wouldn't I have received a note or something? Wouldn't the teacher have said something?"

At that point, cartoon sketches of a male and female body with their differing genitalia came up on the screen, with all the accompanying first grader gasps. None of them could have matched my inward shock, however. 

"Oh-kay . . . This is actually happening. Wow!" 

My thoughts started racing. My eyes flashed between the teacher, all these little first graders, and Sassy, wondering (or rather hoping) that perhaps she might not really understand what it was she was seeing. When she turned towards me with raised eyebrows, I laughed at my stupidity. I mean, what kid can mistake cartoon breasts?!

While my thoughts swirled the video continued. By this point it pictured little "eggs," happily enclosed within the woman, with accompanying tailed "seeds" within the men . . . both of which are words Sassy is well-versed in. Oh boy! There was no getting around it. She was receiving her first talk on the subject--in first grade and in Chinese . . . Man, would she have stories to tell about this one!

Quickly, as the film progressed, I surveyed the situation. With both of the boys we have given the talk at the age of 8, when we felt that they were individually ready. Thankfully in this case, I had been having feelings that perhaps Sassy was ready to learn about it a bit earlier, otherwise I would have been much more panicked. However, it didn't change the fact that I didn't know how this subject was really going to be taught, albeit Asian-cartoon style, and that I felt it was most appropriate coming from us, her own parents. 

Meanwhile, the child narrator started into questions about "How do the little happy seeds get to the egg in my mom?" As the child entertained the possibility of the "seeds" traveling across a rope drawbridge from the man and the woman, I knew I had to act fast. Not wanting to make a scene, or give Sassy the impression that the subject was anything to be ashamed of, I tried to strategize on the best way to handle this whole thing. I surveyed the difficulty I would face in trying to extract Monet from her chair, and out of the classroom for a moment. 

Within seconds, there it was . . . a very specific sketch of a male's you-know-what, all with the intention of showing the kids exactly how the seeds make it to the egg. 

"Sassy!" I whispered with urgent English whispers, "Come here. I need to talk to you." She turned just in time. 

We quickly opened up the door and stepped outside. Though Ms. Lin looked upward in surprise, at that point I didn't care. 

I knelt down so that my eyes were level with hers. "Honey, have you ever wondered how babies were made?" I asked, "Is this something you've ever been curious about before?" Reluctantly, she nodded. 

"That's okay. That's totally normal, and it's something that you can always ask me about, and that I'd like to talk to you about sometime."

"This is weird, Mom." she replied.

"I know," I admitted, "This isn't exactly what I expected today, either." Looking down at my watch I realized I had to leave right away to get back to Ama. I took a deep breath in and out, saying an inner prayer, and asked her, "Honey, would you like to stay and watch the rest of the film?" (I figured that by this point the most critical part was probably past . . . "It's up to you." I reiterated. 

Looking around her, her expression cracked me up. "Well, I kind of want to stay . . . I think."

So, with a continued prayer in my heart I opened the door for her to go sit back down, while I quickly walked out of the school. As I passed each first grade classroom (of which there are several), I could see the same cartoon being shown in all of them. Compared to typical American kids, these Chinese kids were tiny, pretty immature, and I was blown away by the fact this was systematically happening like it was. It really blew my mind. What killed me even more was that I couldn't stay to see what kind of "damage" I would be dealing with later. 

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[Note:  I have to say that I did not have my camera with me when I went back to the school, and was so mad at myself for this! I kept thinking about how badly I would have loved to snap a couple shots of the video, as no one would have believed this was really happening, not to mention it was the funniest visual version of the Birds and the Bees that I'd ever seen. I kept thinking about how my friends from my book club would roll with laughter over this one.]

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Thankfully, Sassy breached the subject again a couple days later when she was gathering laundry with Jamin.

She brought it up when she commented, "You know, if my mom hadn't had a miscarriage, our family would have six kids." 

"That's true," Jamin responded. "Sometimes the mom's body isn't ready to give birth, or the baby isn't healthy, and Heavenly Father knows that it's better for it to wait for later."

"Well, I know where babies come from now." Monet boasted, "They showed me a video about it at school."

"Really?" Jamin responded, pretending to not already know. "What did you learn from it?"

"Well, . . . it starts with a mommy egg, and a daddy seed, and you have both of them to make babies. And then you get these little guys with tails and faces . . . And then they take the seed to the mommy egg . . . And then they have to get to the mommy egg, and they have to go all the way and they have to look for it, and then once they find the mommy egg, they circle around it and make a bubble.  . ."

"And, how did the seeds get to the mommy egg?" Jamin asked, waiting for the pivotal answer.

"Well, . . . I don't really know. Mom took me away to talk to me for something right then." 

. . . Please insert a giant sigh of relief here, along with a "thank you" for whatever angel arranged the circumstances for me to be there at just the right time and place. Seriously. Explaining human sexuality to my kids in the proper way and with the proper context of family and the gospel is really important to me, and here Sassy almost had her first introduction to the subject completely without my knowledge. Talk about a close one.

Thankfully, knowing about what happened, I was able to later ask the Sass whether or not she had any other additional questions regarding what she saw. I was prepared for a heavy discussion, but fortunately the only thing I got was, "Well, how does the mommy's egg eventually crack open once it's all cooked?"

You've got to love seven-year-olds. :)