The other day, Sunny and I were driving home from school and we passed by the old apartment building where she was conceived. I nostalgically pointed to the apartment building and said, “Look, Sunny, that’s where Daddy and I made you.”
UM, GROSS. Why would I think my 5-year-old wanted to hear that? And in no way was I going to tell my daughter how we made her.
Then, of course, the inevitable question, “How did you make me, Mama?”
“Um,” (silence for like 10 seconds) “Well, actually, we went to the seed store, picked out the most perfect looking seed we could and then went to a pet store and we gave the owner the seed and told him to give the seed to the stork and the stork would deliver you to us and put you in my tummy when you were ready.” Genius. And it only took me 10 seconds to come up with that peach.
“Why a stork?” Damnit.
“Well, because storks were chosen years ago by a famous Queen named Queen Victoria (she was actually Cinderella’s mother) to be the deliverers of all babies.” I mean, I’m crushing it, here.
“And how does the stork know where you live?“
Would you stop it? “Oh, well, because the seeds all have addresses on them.” Check and mate.
“But what if you move?”
“Well, then the Stork knows because he has a really big nose so he can smell the family he is looking for anyway.” And I reach for the radio…
“What if the stork is locked out? Will he bang on the door until someone hears him? And what if no one is home? Does he just sit outside with the baby? And what if…”
I desperately tried to change the subject and finally blurted out:
“Sunny, this is very important. We cannot question where we came from because storks can hear us up in the sky, and if they hear us they could all get very offended and all fall down at once and crush our cars and then we will never be able to have babies in this world ever again.”
Sunny just looked me and then up at the sky and said, “I respect you, storks.”
So Funny!
I dint think I ever askd my parents..i dont think theyd aknowledge the ? If I I had…lol n idk how ill answer my son if he were to ever ask…i mean u never want to explain something like that to such a young child I figure so I think the stork story works best…greay job haha
My parents never answered that question when I asked at the age of eight (I totally blame Full House for enlightening me to ask that question in 1991). I ended up finding out on my own, in one of my mom’s Ladies Home Journal magazines. I think learning on my own was so much better than getting “The Talk” when I was a teenager (which also never happened–thank god).
That is amazing! “I respect you, storks.” What a great story!
why do we find it so difficult to tell our children the truth about babies? I find the stork, seed cabbage patch story so confusing and I am not sure it helps our children in the long run… granted… I do not have children, but I was one and my mom did not use the stork story. I got a brief version of “mommy and daddy loved each other and that specific kind of love makes a baby.” which was then expounded on as I got older. So I sincerely want to know what we have difficulty telling our children the truth about it all?
I was also told that thing about “mama and papa loves each other so much” no storks, no seeds! but then again, none in my family has ever used the stork/seed story… I heard those two for first time when one of my classmates told me ‘how to make babies’ when I was 8.
Ha ha ha that is awesome. I wonder how I will finally answer when my 2 1/2 year old asks that question.
I was told babies came from seeds too without the whole stork story, I think in a way that marked me. When I was little I always ate fruit very cerefully, because if I’d swallow the seeds I’d get a fruit baby lol….
Save her the fear of eatting watermellons and tell her this are different seeds