In a recent Huffington Post article (here), comedian and political dynamo Bill Maher’s oozing sarcasm and biting wit took aim at President Obama’s defense of the firing of all teachers in a struggling Rhode Island school. We’ve  grown accustomed to Maher’s rants on religion and Linda Blair-esque attacks on anyone remotely contemplating the existence of a higher power.

Maher clearly has the answers when it comes to religion, but his brain, like a scratched record, must have skipped a couple of grooves in his casual lambasting of Obama for defending the firings.  He sorely missed the point and again is out to push the cynical agenda which so rampantly drains dreams, poisons hope and viciously exorcises his deeply seated religious demons.

The irony in his rant is that he missed some critical pieces of the underlying story. Factually, Central Falls High School was one of the worst performing schools in the state. The school board recommended that additional measures be taken to rectify the unacceptable academic situation. These additional measures included extra hours, additional tutoring, teacher training and additional planning time. The teacher’s union refused the measures without additional pay at which point the board threatened firing the teachers. They saw the train coming a mile away.

Not sure about you, but when the entire school under performs, seems like there is a problem with the institution. Maher would like to label all of the inhabitants of the district as terrible parents and accuse them of looking for a “boogeyman” instead of putting on their poor parenting dunce caps. But, the fact remains, Maher’s ability to critically assess the results of a properly functioning school seems to be a bit off.

Maher, who revels in his bachelorhood alludes in his article to  no connection whatsoever to the plight of parents across the country who have become nighttime teachers to supplement the poor education routinely delivered in the American public school system. Historically, the US has a tremendous credibility problem when it comes to delivering quality education in impoverished neighborhoods. The struggle for quality education in middle class neighborhoods is becoming increasingly difficult as well. The inability of our educational leaders to reward excellence in the class room and discourage mediocrity sentences legions of children to a substandard life as education is one of the primary determinants in the quality of life.

His argument, although sarcastically topped and bitingly written, lacks the heart and the conviction of someone truly engaged in the argument. It appears the topic is just another blog post to dash off between trips to the Playboy mansion. But any parent who has waited outside a lunch room to get a word in edgewise with a teacher who doesn’t return calls feels a little different. Any parent who has pulled their hair out trying to get a copy of their child’s lesson plan so they can spend extra time with their child knows the deal. They know the dilemma. The educational system is broken and “bogeymen” don’t exist.

What really gets me is that in the land of political correctness which Maher assails so fluently, the courtesy of a dislike or unDigg button is painfully absent from his post’s technical landscape!!!

A couple of weeks back, the subject was dodged but I knew the topic was far from buried.  Sex. An interesting albeit over saturated topic in the adult world , is an intriguing, embarrassing, funny,  engrossing and disgusting conversation for an inquisitive 10 and a snickering soon-to-be 9 year old.

I know, I know be honest, deal with it first go round. I’ve heard it and read it, but truth be told, my imagination just got the best of me.  Like a 50’s black and white reel with grainy oddly moving images, I  imagined remorseful adults locked up in the pokey, confessing to cellmates in possession of mom tattoos that the origins of their devious ways began when their dad screwed up “the talk.” I pictured them crying as they lamented of their downward spiral, led astray by their very own father.

Sounds absurd, but through the fuzzy channel of an unfocused brain, the words I chose somehow had the power to usher them from the innocent Eden devoid of sexual implications to a world suddenly saturated with it.

I didn’t possess the perfect beginnings for “the talk”,  so careless parenting stepped in courtesy of a local events mag entitled Creative Loafing. A city paper whose budget appeared to be on an extreme diet judging by the dwindling number of pages produced week by week. But I digress.

Creative Loafing, (bad daddy!!)

To understate a fact would be to say that Creative Loafing is NOT a kid friendly paper. Kid friendly in the sense that a child in possession of the magazine,  moderate reading skills and a desire to pass the time would feel they were doing a great job. Even if they hadn’t taken the trash out, they would realize they hadn’t gotten a tattoo, a piercing, called a singles chat line, hooked up on the local dateline, redeemed a Starship 1/2 off coupon, gotten botox or silicon breast implants.

Maybe once every couple of months I grab the magazine out of habit to see which bands are coming to town or review a particular cover story (seriously) or check out what’s going on in Atlanta. On occasion, I’ve needed to make a quick pit stop to clean the car after hearing the kids snicking at images of men holding hands on the inside pages or the scantily clad women urging them to dial 1-800-hot-pants. Aside from these minor incidents, nothing major ever came out of the not-so-often habit.

So, I thought nothing of picking the paper up on the way out of the library with my son about a week ago. We made it home and began cooking dinner without incident. While taking a break from the grill, I stopped by my office to see my son hunched over the newly collected paper, reading intently.

“What’cha reading, ” I inquired.

He lifted the paper up and pointed to the cover story without missing a beat. The story, “35  Years,” covered the details of a young man’s conviction for rape in Atlanta. I asked him, “is that something you think you should be reading?” He pauses, looks at me and comes to the sudden realization, “uhhhhh . . . No?”

Panicked and intrigued, I sit opposite him at the desk and ask him to tell me about what he’d read to that point. Eager to display his reading comprehension he proceeded to tell me. He spoke as a teacher would  impart wisdom to students and related his understanding that a man forcing himself on a women is called rape. He was satisfied that the penalty handed down, which was 35 years in jail, was a good sentence. His understanding was rudimentary and fundamental. That was oddly reassuring in that he didn’t really get the emotional human cost associated with the act. I realized that we were in a unique moment.

“How far did you get,” I asked, attempting to mask my concern. He pointed to the top of the second page. The time for the talk was at hand. Not a day later, not an hour later, not even five minutes later, but at that exact moment the time had come.

His response led to the instinctive question, “what is sex.” He smiled and giggled, coyly saying, “you know.” He moved his hands while giggling to indicate a motion for sex that only silly kids can make funny and not obscene. Drawn in by the giggles, his sister soon waltzed into the room and found a place on the floor, eager to add everything she knew and had heard from her friends to the conversation.

What followed over the next 45 minutes was an inquisitive, funny, serious and poignant conversation lead more by the children with me simply providing points of clarification I was amazed at some of the questions.

Can lesbians have children?

Can you die from having sex?

When I get married, do I have to take my clothes of to have children?

Did you and mommy have sex?

Can old people have babies?

The last was a great question that lead to my daughter running for her Bible to read to us the story of Sara and Abraham when they doubted God’s ability to give them a child.

All and all, the article albeit extremely scary, was a great starting point for our conversation. The hope was that they could feel comfortable asking their parents anything about sex. But I realized that the infamous talk is really not, “the talk.” It is she be called the introduction because it was simply the first step in a long road to teaching them how to effectively choose boyfriends and girlfriends and hopefully, soul mates that will strengthen them as children of God and lead them away from behaviors that would put them in harms way.

There were a couple of things that I learned and here they are:

1 – Get rid of any creative loafing and treat them like the plague if you have 8+ year old children. If you read them, read ‘em BEFORE you get home.

2- Similarly, find a mild mannered bock or article that deals with the topic, it’s much easier to start by finding out what they ALREADY know. This way you can be in control of how the conversation is initiated.

3-By getting your kids talking about their understanding of sex, it’s much easier to help guide them through the conversation and give them exactly what they need and not too much.

Good luck parents.