14 and 11 (almost 12) are keeping their cards close to their chest. I am always asking them if they’re masturbating yet in an attempt to normalize it. I am beginning to think I have failed. You know when someone talks so much you can’t hear them anymore? I think that has happened.

I haven’t used porn since September 2022. I wasn’t hooked on it but I did rely on it and I wanted to have my house in order before my children came of age.

I miss it. So convenient. Not like a miss cigarettes. Now those things are addictive. But we already knew that.

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) demonstrated that the same genes subserving addiction craving are also associated with salt craving, a natural instinct. In other words, addiction is disordered wanting at a very basic, cellular level.(Dr. Donald Hilton, Culture Reframed, March 13th, 2024).

A couple summers ago I bought my children an online sexual health course to bolster the education they weren’t getting here in regressive Ford Nation. (Read about it in this charming piece called Canada Province Cancels New Sex Ed Curriculum After Protests from the BBC.) 14 and 11 didn’t like the course. They said the jokes were terrible. I watched a little and thought their review was overly kind. The jokes were unspeakably bad. I almost wrote the organization for a refund.

Both of their phones are dumb. Just a phone, text and Spotify on them. And the laptops are on safe-search, which probably doesn’t do much. Abstinence doesn’t work. I should provide them with an alternative. So I’m scouring vintage shops and Facebook Marketplace looking for old porn mags.

I mean, she’s wearing a Christmas tree. Not exactly XXX.

Growing up we had a porno bush. It was a rhododendron tree on the west side of the West Van Ice Arena. It always had porn in it. We called it the Porno Bush.

We also had a vodka stump. But anyway …

I am hoping that old-timey soft core porn is a good idea. Better than them not hearing anything I say. Definitely an improvement over the things they can see online. Besides, there’s interviews with Kurt Vonnegut and Maya Angelou. Plus, all that great advertising.

Zig When Others Zag

Exploring the opposite can unleash a lot of potential. If you’re at least not doing the same thing everyone else is doing you’ll separate yourself from the pack. You’re not being afraid. And fear impacts judgement so you’re making less mistakes. You’re thinking for yourself (I tell myself). Rather than wringing my hands and telling my kids porn will ruin your future sex-life I am recognizing the lay of the land and I am showing them another path forward.

Other People’s Parents

The value of my children being with adults that aren’t me or their mother is also underrated. The importance of having friends isn’t just for companionship, it’s for their companion’s parents and caregivers too. Other adults who have lived a life and learned something from it. And whose voice they can still hear.

In 1994 I got my first email address. In 1995 my cousin built me my first website. Fatlamb.com. (So old it predates the wayback machine.) In 1997 Ontario got a new sexual health curriculum. And that is still the same one that is taught to our children today because Dougy Fresh didn’t want to piss-off the religious. So our kids aren’t being taught by other people’s parents how dangerous the internet can be.

I’m going to do other things to encourage healthy habits for my two male children. I’m going to buy them beer. I’m going to suggest they can party at mine. I’ll help them procure fake IDs. They can have their own Uber accounts. Whatever it takes so they aren’t in their rooms staring at TikTok.

I just hope they don’t come home with cigarettes. I’d be hard-pressed to say no.

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