We thought we were being challenged as parents when Johann was the ever curious, climbing, getting-into-everything baby and toddler. We thought we were being challenged even more when he was 4. Our apartment had become the world’s largest imaginary zoo and aquarium, the first to ever house dinosaurs and a blue whale. Johann continues to feed and care for the animals on a daily basis. They sleep with us at night, which I guess is why my back is so stiff in the morning. Our bed simply isn’t big enough to sleep everyone comfortably.
Then came the day after I told Johann the reason the ants were coming into our apartment was because of the crumbs on the rug. The next morning the floor was swarming with ants on top of a huge pile of tortilla chips. Angry, I cleaned it up and put purchasing ant traps on my to-do list. Johann was excited when he woke up, until he realized I’d cleaned up the mess already. I reprimanded him for what he had done. He was upset with me for getting rid of the ants. He said he was trying to attract the ants so that he could capture them and keep them in a jar to study, to have a pet. Well, as it turns out, that was small potatoes. Now Johann is 5.
Johann has been curious about all things animal since he was 2. He has known about and understood how vertebrates and invertebrates reproduce for some time. He’s been asking more and more questions about humans. Answers have always been matter-of-fact using medical terminology, but we’ve only given enough information to directly answer the question and satisfy his momentary curiosity. The material he was asking for was stuff I didn’t see until I was 10 and in the 5th grade health class. I was hoping to wait on the other details until he was a little older.
Well, my idea of “a little older” was in terms of years, not months. Johann had a different idea of what that meant. He suddenly wanted more information about the human body. He was focusing on the differences between the male and female reproductive systems. The diagrams in the Eyewitness Human Body book
we bought didn’t satisfy him. Neither did anything else we showed him from our college biology, reference and art books on the human form. He wanted a live model.
Let me tell you, I was way out of my comfort zone! Here I thought I was doing an astronomically phenomenal job in speaking openly about the topic. I didn’t make a big deal about the inevitable seeing me nude occasionally, as I’ve been coming out of the shower, etc. Especially when you consider I come from a grandmother and mother who have a very Victorian outlook on the female body and a terribly Puritan view on anything relating to s – e – x or (whisper to yourself when you read this) “down there”. It was a disappointing and hard lesson in respecting people’s boundaries for Johann. However, rather than having him get his information in an “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” game with someone else, we promised to try to find more reference material to answer his questions.
The other night I was doing the dishes. Johann was asking Eric pointed, probing questions. Although I couldn’t hear every word above the running water, I knew Eric was being pumped for information, maybe even being grilled, because of the insistent tone in Johann’s voice and the uneasy tone in Eric’s, followed by bewildered looks in my direction. As I came out of the kitchen to find out what was going on, I heard Eric talking about sperm. Johann was asking about zoo breeding programs. How do they get the female pregnant? How do they ensure genetic diversity? How do they collect sperm? What’s artificial insemination? What if that doesn’t work? What do they do then? In trying to answer one question, ten more seemed to follow.
Eric looked as if he was suddenly where I had been a few days before and looked to me for some assistance, since I was calm. We carefully explained the process of artificial insemination. How the sperm is collected, they examine it for viability and then they use a syringe to place the sperm into the female. What’s a syringe? I had Eric get one out of his office from his dyeing supplies and explain how that worked.
Eric mentioned the other alternative of surgically removing the egg from the female, fertilizing it in the lab and then surgically placing the fertilized egg into the female’s uterus. He explained the risks involved and the procedure step-by-step. Once Johann felt he had enough information, the new breeding program for his imaginary zoo was in full swing.
He spent the rest of the evening with us, mostly Eric, as his assistants, “collecting” sperm (filling the syringe with water from a cup) and putting it into little glass sample bottles (test tubes) to be frozen or directly put into the appropriate females in the zoo. (This was where one of us took it into the kitchen and pretended to put it in the freezer and then poured the water down the drain so he could fill the bottle again.)
Soon we were taking care of every cat listed in his animal encyclopedia. He was pretending to do genetic testing to improve the cheetah’s chances of recovering as a species. He was fervently trying to successfully breed all the endangered cats to repopulate their normal ranges. There was only enough time to do the cats before bedtime that night, but he has plans to do all the other animals in the world. I think the wild dogs and wolves are next.
Before Eric became the assistant, he went outside to collect himself. He was uncomfortable about being questioned and upset about losing his syringe to science. While it was happening, I was trying to hide my uncontrollable laughter by leaning over the sink and finishing the dishes. I’m sure that didn’t help. I took Eric aside, like he had done with me during the human body episode, and explained where Johann was coming from. He was simply searching for answers to quench his insatiable curiosity. I told him to look at the bigger picture: uncomfortable questions and a $2 syringe versus Johann doing genetic research and creating successful breeding programs for all the endangered species in his imaginary world. Despite the messes and need for discipline or re-direction in some of Johann’s escapades, I have always been impressed with the advanced thought process behind it. But this… boy, are we in trouble!
