"Teach them at home," say proponents of Alberta Education's book ban

I don't want other parents deciding what my kids can read and I certainly don't need the government's input.

Taking more cues from a failing nation, Alberta Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides announced that the deal was done: as of July 4 (or “Calgary”) school libraries will no longer carry books that reference sexual relationships, sex, or other “inappropriate” subjects. This government intervention was deemed necessary, despite seeking public input that told the government to mind their own business, after four graphic novels available in some school libraries that included drawings of people engaged in sexual acts were brought to the Minister’s attention. The books were available in sections aimed at young adult, or mature teens in school libraries that are typically set up by age-appropriate content and reading levels.

While I think it’s great that the UCP played the game of “but what do politically-engaged adults think — just kidding,” the people whose input they really should have sought were those of students. My perspective, as a parent of five, has long been that children are people with their own thoughts and feelings. This is not, I’ve discovered, a universally held belief.

To be fair, I already knew this because it’s not how I was raised, but I once liked to think my generation was more enlightened than the last, and I certainly didn’t think my kids’ generation would be less enlightened than mine.

Kids talk pretty candidly amongst themselves and if we’re lucky — that is, if we create the foundation of trust and acceptance upon which they know that their thoughts and feelings are safe to share — they’ll do the same with us, too.

I remember being at “summer day camp” (babysitting option for working parents) when I was about seven hanging with three or four girls on the playground who talked openly about being sexually molested.

It was as casual as how I imagine others talk about a show, or a game. Very matter-of-fact because we didn’t yet know that it’s supposed to be something you don’t talk about. The shame comes later — after adults discover you were talking about it and use it to make you stop.

Forgive me if I can’t help but associate that with a government who wants to ban books that detail the experiences far too many kids have.

I’m a parent

There’s a world of information to choose from to share with your children. Some parents also have to think about work, or school, or a wide range of other things on a daily basis. I’m also not an expert in everything.

When should you start talking to your kids about sex? Attraction? Sexual fantasies? They should expand the “What to expect” series with a “what to expect: the pre-teen and teen years.” So when I saw a number of responses that we could share these things with our kids at home, I really wondered when parents drop that stuff.

I had a social psychology class that taught us about a fun way to find out what your kids think, and identify areas of concern, by using hypotheticals. One that I did when we first moved, because they’d be making new friends, was “if some kids asked you to skip class, would you do it to try and make friends?” Pretty minor. My son, who was starting grade four, said he wouldn’t because he has siblings and doesn’t need to do stuff he knows he shouldn’t to make friends. Excellent.

My daughter, who was starting grade five, hummed and hawed over it. Worrisome. This response suggested to me that I needed to make sure I was more available for her during this time, and I was. It was also something that cemented our relationship because she struggled that year but not alone.

That’s not to say I didn’t have some flops.

When I was pregnant with my third child, my daughter and son were aged four and three, respectively.

4: how did the baby get in your stomach? Did you swallow it?

Me: *dies a little inside* uh, no…

4: how does the baby get out?

Me: well, when the baby is big enough, it will… come out… from below.

3: I knew it! It comes out of your butt!

Me: no, girls have another spot…

4: Nooooooooo!!

Gawd. I actually don’t think they ever really caught me as unprepared as I was that day. I do remember that when I was pregnant with my fourth, and four and three were then seven and six, it came up again and I was able to answer more intelligently. The next three-year old did not care about that conversation in the least.

When that three-year old was about 10, however, he got an earful.

My kids had been in French Immersion in public school before we relocated and the only school that offered something similar in the new town was a Catholic school. My spouse was a non-practicing Catholic, and I was a non-practicing Presbyterian, but that meant automatic acceptance from his side.

I wasn’t politically engaged at the time, so I thought nothing of the permission form to attend sexual education I was asked to sign over the next couple of years. I’d had it repeatedly when I was in public school.

By the time the third was up for it, however…

That time, when I read the form that stated students would be taught sexual education through a Catholic lens, and something about “blood-borne diseases,” I had questions. I called then-13 and 14 into the kitchen and asked them what that meant.

13: AIDS

14: mostly AIDS

13: AIDS

I realize that, being a smart ass myself, I raised a bunch of smart asses. I still got the drift — from a Catholic lens.

I explained to 10 how blood-borne diseases were transferred, including inadvertent transfer through fluids like first responders and medical professionals getting blood spatter in their eye because it’s not just a “sex thing”. I told him about oral, vaginal, and anal sex. I threw so much at him in an effort to pre-empt biased information and the poor kids’s eyes were wide AF.

Potentially to my credit, neither 14 nor 13 batted an eye at any of it, just nodded along.

At the end of my monologue, I told him to make sure he asked if he had questions because the person giving the presentation was a professional (nurse; I thought “nurse” rather than barely adult representative from a pro-life group). Despite the whirlwind sex-ed info-session I had just spouted off, 10 said to me: “I realize they’re there to help, but if I have any questions, I’d rather ask you.”

Definitely one of the proudest moments of my parenting life, to be sure, but I was winging it on the eve before (as I discovered later) the single sexual education class offered to them at Catholic school.

When I was in school, sexual education came up every year from grade five to nine in health class. Sure, the focus was mostly on STIs (sexually-transmitted infections, though they were called STDs — sexually-transmitted diseases — then) — that was where we got the “official version” of sexual education.

The unofficial version was whispered in hallways, at recess or over lunch, and in notes passed in class.

We also had great knowledge of who was doing “it” and who wasn’t. We were, or at least thought ourselves to be, a worldly rural Alberta junior high where rumour had it that our music teacher was intimately involved with one of her students. They transferred her to the high school. Probably unrelated but it was not long after yours truly made a highly inappropriate retort to said teacher in front of half the band class waiting to go into the gym for a recital.

Turns out she was right that I couldn’t keep my mouth shut at the best of times.

I don’t think our school was ridiculously out of the norm — aside from the music teacher, hopefully. According to my kids, they pretty much knew everyone in school who was doing “it” too. Adding to their own worldliness, and mine, and many generations before, they always knew someone who had an older sibling who was willing to share more.

Yet, with all the information that is freely shared on the playgrounds, and in the halls, our government is focused on the possibility that kids could read about something a completely ignorant and out of touch parent group finds “inappropriate”.

Just the facts, ma’am

When domestic abuse became punishable by law, it looked like “instances” of domestic abuse skyrocketed. That’s not how it works. First, it actually has to be labeled a crime, and once it is known as such, “reporting” skyrockets — the “instances” haven’t changed; only the recognition, which begets reporting, which begets data collection and year-over-year comparison.

Children are and always have been a vulnerable group. Stories, whether they are fiction or fact, allow them to see their own experiences reflected back to them, or set expectations for those experiences in the future — like that hypotheticals exercise I learned in social psych.

Did I love seeing a graphic novel depicting a guy giving another guy fellatio, or a guy and a girl having sex? Not overly, but it wasn’t my experience to pass judgement upon; I’m well past having to wonder what any of that is. I get that the logic makes me an outlier from the get-go, but just because it isn’t particularly mind-blowing to me doesn’t mean it isn’t life-changing for someone else — like one of my kids.

I can’t tell them everything they want to know and my experiences may not be what they need to hear. I also guarantee they talked things through with their peers, or heard things way before they figured out how (or even if) they wanted to talk to me about it. They don’t need a library book to find out what they want to know but it would be great if they had to access to more, not less information that has been reviewed and determined beneficial to even one kid.

For that, at the very least, I am thankful someone else wrote down their experience. Or what they wished theirs had been. Or what they hope someone else’s is; especially when it comes to sex.

Ask any of your children which would be more difficult for them: walking in on their parents having sex or seeing it depicted in a graphic novel. Mine chose the former.

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