Getting hairy - peripuberty hits the Bonkers House

There’s a whiff of puberty in the air. Hairs are appearing. Hair gel is being used in industrial quantities. ‘Don’t come in, I’m changing,’ is a common refrain. How strange that this body, which I grew within mine, which I have always known as well, if not better, than my own, will become something unknown. It seems highly unlikely that I will ever see my son’s willy again. How strange but really, how natural and good. I always knew that you ‘borrow’ children, that they aren’t yours and that the main purpose of parenthood is to allow them, in their own time, to move away from you, to be independent, to be their own people. But it seems to be coming so soon.
I’ve always tried to be frank and down-to-earth about sex stuff but seriously I have very little idea about the mechanics of boys and adolescence. Spouting breasts and periods, copious weeping and sulking – yes, those I get (those I’ve had). But wet dreams, erections, voices breaking – nope. Way beyond my field of expertise.
Fathers should step in at this point but Adrian is still pretty vague about human biology. ‘Hormones – what are hormones? We don’t have hormones do we?’ (we being men). And (my favourite): ‘Men don’t have hips, do they?’ So there was absolutely no point in asking him to do the fatherly thing. Hence I did what I always do when confronted with something new and potentially problematic – I bought a book.
What’s Happening To Me? (Usborne) looked suitably unintimidating and turned out to be a little cracker. Straightforward, blunt (‘you will start to sweat more and may smell’), light and humorous. I handed it over in a pretty casual way. ‘Was buying a few books and thought this looked interesting.’
And that, I thought, was that. Maybe he wasn’t ready. Maybe the hairy legs were something else entirely – werewolf syndrome?
‘Did you ever take a look at that book?’ I asked a few weeks later.
‘Oh yes. I’ve read it about five times.’
Well, who’dda thought? If you’re the kind of parent who finds the words ‘scrotum’ and ‘semen’ don’t trip easily off the tongue, I’d heartily recommend this (there’s a girls version too but I can’t vouch for that).
It’s also teaching me a bit about girls too. Apparently girls ‘don’t need to shave their faces’ (tell that to the women who regularly get their taches waxed). And ‘some girls trim their pubic hair, so that it doesn’t poke out of their swimsuits’. Tell that to my London friends who wouldn’t know a pubic hair if it floated in their mojitos.
Actually, the more I read of the book, the more I realised that what’s going on in our house probably isn’t puberty proper but more of a peripuberty (if there can be such a thing). But it won’t be long. In the meantime, I’m beginning to think I may have missed out on a few essential growing up lessons. Maybe I’ll buy the girl version for myself.