You are doing great. We all suck in our own minds. Just do your best as it happens, and you are fine. Don’t over think every moment.
(Like you can turn it off. I know. It is merely a suggestion… hah)

You’re not sucking at it, not any more than the rest of us anyway.

My explanation of lesbians wasn’t far off from yours I think it went like this:

“When a woman loves another woman, instead of a man, like mommy loves daddy, she’s a lesbian. And they live together and have a life just like ours. But with just women.”

At which point she looked at me like, O’tay then.

Another fun one: “Mom, why does everything say Made in China?” Which led to this final question before we ended that conversation half an hour later. “Well then, who pays the Chinas?” (by which she meant “who pays the CHINESE”.)

But next time - no “marry”, ‘k? Patriarchy!

Just take that cute kid over to my family pictures and point us out, by name - TW and Denise and Jenn, and Chris and Michelle and Joe, and RJ and Liz - that’s a family. Those are the two moms. They all live together, just like we do and they all love each other just like we do.

Simple.

That lynching thing, much harder. Though I will admit that living in the south has made that discussion a lot easier. Which is wrong and horrible, but real.

My 6 yr old son loves the Simpsons and really, really wants to understand every joke and cryptic reference in the show. He sees Otto the school bus driver with a bong “What’s that?” he says. Perfectly reasonable question for which I have no answer.

Then a week later he’s telling me about the KKK because they learned about it in social studies.

So I have no idea what to tell who when myself.

It worked for Seth.

I will say, if you’ve not yet addressed sex, you should find the video, “Where did I Come From”. It’s hysterical, but touches on ALL of the subjects and still teaches everything that he’ll ever need to know. Jason and I watched it for fun!

My 8 year old asked recently how a couple we know could have a baby when they weren’t married. I loved the innocents of the question and was struggling with words. She said, “Oh, this is an adult thing that I don’t understand yet, right?” Maybe she was just giving me a break, not sure. I told we could talk about it anytime, I just needed to think about it as it was a very good question. She said, “Nah, I’d rather play Uno with you.”

Anyway, I hope I can keep the lines of communication open always so she knows she can talk to me about anything - ask me any question.

So my long winded reply is I don’t think you suck at all. I think your son knows he can ask you anything, anytime (as long as you aren’t on the phone) and you’ll answer the best you can. What more can a child ask for? Your time and attention and honesty…that’s goodness.

to this:

“What’s a lynching?” was far more unnerving for YOU than for HIM.

brainbrainbrain…sttttttutttter.

“What’s a lynching?” was far more unnerving for him than for you. You have options all the way from “something you don’t need to know about yet” to “just a figure of speech honey” to “well, it’s actually where someone gets hanged by a rope until they are dead by a group of angry people - but that’s not what I meant when I used it that way.”

You didn’t blow it. If he REALLY wanted to know what the word meant? He would keep pushing it.

Lesbian is another word that is similar - I mean, honestly, when he really wants to know - and he asks you over and over and over again? You’ll hit the ground running.

Hard to do when you’re on the phone and caught off guard.

A couple of weeks ago, my daughter asked me how babies ‘got out of the mommy’s tummy’ because her best friend’s mom is having a baby. Since best friend was in the car at the time she asked and I didn’t know what her mom had told her I opted for “the mommy goes to the hospital and the doctor gets the baby out.”

Guess what? That’s all she wanted at the time.

Remember that you will have multiple chances for the awkward questions - and sometimes you’ll get it ‘right’ and sometimes, you won’t.