FRENCH WORD-A-DAY

Kristin- You failed to point out that this is one of the most hilarious "faux amis" in French. "Ce pain, est-ce que il a des preservatifs?" (Was this bread made with preservatives?) ROFL.

I find the French approach to sex education refreshing. My own sex education in an age when parents were supposed to provide it was absolutely zero.
The independent (catholic) school, where I used to to help teach the 7 to 11 year olds English, had a larger than life-size sectional drawing on the wall showing the 9 months of pregnancy. If pupils did not know how pregnancy started they certainly knew about what happened afterwards. I suspect that in a rural area pupils became aware of the mechanics of copulation at an early age.

My own attempt to teach my own son (I do not have a daughter) about sex was terminated very quickly by him. So his sex education from me ended up being a stumbling, very pompous and awkward, It's always the man's responsibility to look after the woman as far as contraception is concerned'.

Here's to many more weeks, months, years of your scenes from your life in France. You make me feel sentimental sometimes and you make me laugh often.

Mike.

Hi! Kristin
Your piece today brought back memories of my time teaching teenagers in the UK. As a class teacher it was my task to teach them S.P.A.C.E (social, personal and career education)Of course within this came sex education . I carefully prepared the lesson to gently bring in the idea of contra ception only to be stopped short by a voice of a 14 year old saying" Why are you doing this Miss ? We Know all this already !!"
Ah! well I was full of good intentions
Best wishes
Audrey

I think parents today have a very difficult time trying to determine when is the right time for "the talk" with the Internet, TV, movies, etc. being more and more explicit (and implicit) in their "display" of sex. Our daughter knew "the facts" at an early age, our son wasn't interested until much later - baseball and reading were his main interests, but in boxing up his library after he was married I suspect that he learned a lot more than we knew in the wide range of books that he read.

Here in Paris, the kids got to practice putting a condom on a banana! (Secretly, I wished I'd been a fly on the wall for that class!)

Preservatif is also a tricky faux amis, tout le monde! Beware! You should have seen the looks I got the first time I asked at the grocery store if a particular food item contained preservatives. And I had no idea why! I even asked several people!

I looked up "preservative" (as in bread) in the dictionary, and found "agent de conservation."

I've always been grateful that my parents told me everything I needed to know, such as how babies are made, correct anatomical terms, etc., as well as a "save it for marriage" attitude. Nowadays, yes, we have to make sure our kids know about preventing diseases, as well.

My son and I haven't had lengthy chats, but I've found various TV shows and movies, and occasionally other things we hear about (such as someone's Facebook posting), give me openings to talk about both safety and morality.

I do think parents have the right to know what their children are learning and doing. In the Washington, D.C. school system, if their offspring ask for (and get) contraceptives, not only are the parents not told, they aren't allowed to have information if they ask. I think that's going too far. Wouldn't you want to know?

I think that parents should be notified in advance that the sex ed class is going to be taught on a certain day and have the option to either attend themselves (to know what areas they wish to expand on or to add a value structure to) or to opt to keep their children home that day and teach their own version.

Good morning from Wisconsin,

I had to share an experience we had with this Word of the Day. When our French Adventure student was visiting with his parents about age 13 we took them to a lovely lakeside ice cream parlor. Albin ordered a special bottled drink they produce locally and was reading the label in anglais for his mother "without preservatives" read the label. He turned with a very confused face to Jocelyne and I tried to explain that a condom and additives to drinks are not one and the same. Very funny memory!

Bon courage, Kristin, from a mother whose boys have rolled their eyes more than once and still do. : )

Hello,

As a mother of 2 teenage boys, I can relate to this post. I found condoms in my sons jeans when doing the laundry one morning. To his surprise I returned them. Then as the days went on despite the fact his mom was correcting his misconceptions, he listened...primary in the car where he couldn't escape. I made the mistake once of telling my mom he had started to have sex. She said, "well you have to stop him"! Yes, because that works. All you can do is give them the correct information, ingrain in them that is is always good to wait for so many reasons, as as with most things that teens do, hope for the best. My mom never gave me a talk, and my dad definetly didn't. Unfortunately kids do learn too much at school, but from friends, and TV has changed astronomically since we were kids.

From rainy Northern Virginia, have a wonderful day where you are!!

When I first was living in France, there was a competition for high school kids to design the front side of the condom machines placed outside of nearly every pharmacy in France. I thought the winner was great. On this particular machine, after you put in a few coins to purchase the condoms there was a button to release the package; it was marked "Pousser A Fond"--push in deep!

The other thing that shocked me were condom ads on TV. The one that I liked the best was of a naughty nurse talking with someone or something. Suddenly the screen goes cloudy, as if an oily sheath had covered the lens. One then realizes that the entire commercial was from the point of view of what was encased in the condom.

Kids--our parents warned us about them. ;) Actually, telling your children what you think about sex is worth *more* than a try. The school can convey information about how to stay safe (and not pregnant!), but they still need to know how you feel they should behave for a happy life. I have heard that studies show that teenagers whose parents discuss such things are more likely to wait to begin sexual activity. So preserve them (LOL). Tell them what you think!

Hello Kristin
I have a son, he is 8 years old and still very innocent, just thinks of legos, robots, etc. but no girls yet, as for the girls in his class are already chasing boys. Well, he's got a couple of sugar gliders that we got a couple of months ago, the male is neutered; a few days ago he said that he is hoping they have babies, I told him that the male can't have babies because he had "surgery" he told me I was wrong because the one that will have the babies is the female, that for sure the one that had the "surgery" was the female. I didn't want to start that "conversation" yet since he is so innocent and still believes in "Santa" I know they will start pretty soon with that in school, but until then I just want to enjoy his innocence.

When we were visiting France in 2006, we took two of our children, Maria age 15, Nick age 19 at the time. They were fascinated by the preservatif dispensers that they saw in many cities(Look Ma, just like a Post Box, right on the wall!) I got them a small phrase book to help them with their French but they were mostly interested in the "Dating/Meeting People in Bars" section of the little book (I didn't even realize they HAD a section in the book for Dating!!) It was chock full of handy phrases, most of which are not repeatable here. But they clearly learned the French word for condom! Well, c'est la vie!
xoNancy L

From a fellow Arizonan:
I did a study abroad in college to Paris and lived with a lovely older French woman. One night at dinner the conversation drifted to food and I mentioned something about preservatives... the wrong kind of course. Madame looked at me and indicated that was definitely not what I meant. Judging by her reaction I knew I'd said something wrong but didn't know what. After dinner, my roommate and I promptly looked up the definition and had a good laugh. My mistake has been well remembered.

Ahhhhh....you're reached a milestone.... At least your schools face sex ed head on (not a pun, btw.) Often I wished the US could get out of the puritanical age.
I remember asking my son, he was probably close to 20 or a little over, if he was using les preservatifs,,,practicing safe sex. "As many as I can, he replied". Not the answer I expected, but let me know he understood how important it was to be safe.
Questions reveal a lot in these cases. Your kids will put your mind at ease many times. I know yours are wise and mindful, in spite of the blossoming hormonal influences.
Remember, they don't know how nervous you are. You can do this.
Roz

Kristin,
I do understand your -> 'enough is enough is enough', but, what bothers me is the lack of communication between your daughter's school and the parents. Don't they have parents' evenings from time to time, telling parents about what they decide to do for their pupils'education ... and 'their' role in 'your own' children's sex education? Any warning and discussion beforehand about their handing out condoms to 13 year old girls?

Up to the end of their secondary education, my children were never given condoms at school. The person responsible for sex education would talk to us during a parents' evening, It was easy to ask her any question so that we knew how she would deal with the topic. She didn't hand out condoms to 13-year-old pupils and she did not encourage the teenagers to be sexually active at an early age. Teenagers who did (often without their parents being aware of anything!) were discretly advised to go and see her about sorting out the issue of contraception in the best possible way (she had access to the medical centre, and doctors could prescribe 'the pill', if they judged it necessary). Chatting to our children about sex, pregnancy, contraception, relationship was the best possible complement we could provide, when they were in the right listening and discussing mood -not just because it was Sex Ed Day.

Many years ago my husband and I were travelling in Europe. I was using a diaphragm at the time and it unfortunately developed a hole. We were in Paris visiting my cousin, who was doing graduate work at the Sorbonne at the time. We asked her what the French word for Condom was, but she didn't know -- so she asked her boyfriend. We teased her about it, but she pointed out that she had never been the one doing the buying.

I'll never forget that word, ever.

Love today's post! It has been over 45 years and I am still recovering from the time my mother took the opportunity to explain "the facts of life" on the occasion of our pet mouse giving birth to a mound of hairless tiny micettes. Since this is a public post, I will spare my 87 year old mother and your readers of the details. The short of it is that I thought she had really gone off the deep end and made it all up since it made no sense to me why any sane person, or mouse for that matter, would want to do "it." I vaguely remember it had something to do with two people in love. Hmm, do mice fall in love? I can hear my sister Suzanne reading this and laughing all the way from New Jersey!

In the end, it was a brave attempt by someone raised in a Catholic boarding school where the girls took baths with a towel wrapped around them!

Margaret in Durham, NC