I’ve moved in with a former lover who is recently widowed and caring for his four-year-old son. His parents live there, too, and I’m sort of — filling in the gap — while looking for work so I can get my own place. He doesn’t call me Mama, I don’t refer to myself as Mama, but for Mama-functions and enforcing Papa’s rules when he’s busy, I’m the go-to girl. His son seems to have taken to me between bouts of grief like a fish to water. We get along great and he thinks of me more as a big sister or aunt.
Last night, a comfort conversation (on both sides) led to a physical exchange. His son hasn’t mastered knocking, and was apparently watching almost from the beginning, having come to his father’s room in the wake of a nightmare about his mother’s funeral and cremation. He’s very curious about what he witnessed.
How do we explain this? We can’t say “Papas and Mamas share special hugs to make babies”, because not only does he have a Mama and she isn’t me, but we weren’t trying to conceive and there won’t be a happy surprise down the road. Neither of us are religious, so God-plans and religious framework are out. We don’t believe in lying to him either, so forget storks and magic. We can’t put it in the context of being married, either, because we aren’t.
I’m not a parent, being a stop-gap for him is a crash-course in progress, and his father is stumped. His parents are real old-school and believe in either waiting until puberty or the school addresses it first, but both his father and I believe in making ourselves readily available to honestly and directly answer his questions.
Thanks for your thoughts!
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A 4 year old is too young to understand sex, so don’t bother with baby-making or everything else. You love the kids father and adults do things in private to show they love each other. This is more an opportunity to get privacy and knocking on doors in his head than it is to explain casual sex.
He’s four years old!!
I would be honest up to a point. “Sometimes grownups need comforting. This is one way that we can comfort each other because we are both sad about …. Different things make different people feel better.” (Go into examples that HE would know — blankies, pacifiers for little babies, stuffed animals) then tell him that this is how some GROWNUPS like to be comforted. You don’t need to go into the mechanics or anything like that. Tell him if he has any questions that you are always there to talk about anything. Then drop it. It probably isn’t really a big deal to him but it could become a big deal if you spend too much time on it and talk it to death.
This seems…ah…extremely unlikely to be a real question. Sorry.
I would approach this as adults need hugs sometimes, just like children do, and leave it at that, then have a conversation about knocking on doors and privacy!
Maybe he needs the opportunity to talk about his mother a bit more, hopefully that will help stop the nightmares, and prevent this happening again from that end!
you don’t.. a 4 year old is not going to understand what you are talking about.. what did he see when he walked in.. were you naked on top of each other… i suggest learning to lock the door..
what you do is focus on ‘private time’.. teach him to knock.. ‘when daddy has his door shut, you knock..”
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