Sometimes I feel a little weird on park days. I make a conscious effort to always trudge out and rough house with the boys. Ok, I do miss some days when I’m being whiny and want to talk to grown ups. But I try to do at least a little rough housing every week.

I talk to all the little boys. They are getting used to me. I’m pretty different from their moms–that’s cool. We wrestle. Some new ones got brave yesterday and joined in. We had to negotiate. I talked about how breasts are really sensitive so be careful not to whack them and never grab a woman or girls breasts without permission. That’s a private area. But I did it with a smile on my face and a gentle voice and I went right back to wrestling and rolling around like puppies.

I think this is what really influences character. I feel like a lot of the rape culture ranting that yells at adult men about how terrible they are for the patriarchy is missing the point. I don’t want all of the adult men in my life to feel terrible and guilty for having a penis. That’s not what I’m interested in. That won’t make anyones life better.

One of my buddies in the home school group told me that she likes talking to me because I am very opinionated and very different from her but I’m not trying to convert her–I have no interest in having her be like me. So she gets to listen to things that are totally outside her experience and think about them without feeling pressured to change. I feel like that means I am doing exactly the right thing and I am tuning my message appropriately. Good.

I want to exist loudly in front of people. I want people to understand just how different from them the people around them actually are. I want it to be ok that I exist. I don’t need a whole bunch of mini-me’s running around. I’m not trying to become the dominant culture–I’m trying to be allowed to exist. I’m trying to stop feeling like I should die.

Playing with the little boys is part of this. I hug them. I will even kiss the top of their heads when they are being very affectionate (Err, this has only happened with boys I have known multiple years or who were under one year old I’m not incredibly creepy or anything.) I don’t kiss their faces. I don’t get into long embraces and I talk about body autonomy all the god damn time. I am very conspicuous about asking for hugs before I touch them. I model how I want to be treated. How else can they learn?

I have been seeing a lot of things on the internet advising parents to work on boundaries with their own kids–I agree with that message whole-heartedly. I just think it doesn’t go far enough. I don’t have responsibility just to and for my children. I need to talk to the kids at the park. I need to talk to talk to the kids in our neighborhood. I need to talk to all of the children who could be the ones my kids will sneak off and play sex games with.

I need for everyone to be playing by the same rules. No one but me is standing up to loudly announce the rules so I’m happy to do it. I go to the park and I don’t care if I know the kids or not I referee. I don’t micromanage or anything–I stay out of 80% of the arguing. But I intervene when they can’t share. I intervene when hitting starts. I intervene when someone is on the side-lines crying because they are too young to understand how to join the game.

I don’t favor my kids–Shanna is pretty bitter about that–because I care a lot about being neutral. I don’t pick sides. I model how to work things with words. I give lots of examples, “So you could say____ or ____ or ____ what feels closest to what you are actually feeling? Or something else entirely! I could be wrong.”

I tell them over and over that they own their body and they have the right to dictate how people treat it. I say that the other kids they are playing with are in the same spot. You can’t touch someone without consent. You have to ask. Don’t assume just because you are “friends” that it is ok to touch someone.

(My kid is not picking this up fast. Oy. Touchy thing.)

I’m trying very hard to create the idea that everyone has preferences and you must follow peoples preferences–which means asking questions.

One of the boys was playing with my belly jiggle yesterday. He said, “You have fat.” He was smiling and laughing and delighted by life. Clearly he didn’t see this as a problem. I bet his mom has done exactly the same thing to his belly.

I laughed and said, “I do! I do have fat! I looooooove fat. Mmmm tasty delicious fat! Fat! Fat! Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!!!!!!!” Then I grabbed him and rolled around on the ground with him. Other boys jumped on the pile, also laughing and started offering up types of fat:

“Like bacon?”

“Yes! Like bacon! And ice cream! MMMMMM”

Everyone was overjoyed.

A few minutes later after the crowd had dispersed one of the boys lingered and said, “I don’t think it was very nice of him to call you fat.”

My response was something close to: “Well he didn’t call me fat. He said I had fat and that is true. If he had said,” I deliberately made my voice all sneering and nasty, “‘Ewww you’re fat’ then I probably would have hurt feelings. Because he would be trying to make me feel bad about myself. But he wasn’t. He was just commenting on me. It’s like saying I have brown hair. I’m ok with him saying things that are true.”

He looked so confused. I’m sure he and his mom talk about me outside of actual interactions. Ha.

The reason going to the park is so “high spoons” for me is I believe with every fiber of my being that I am obliged to be nice to the kids. They are just learning and if I can seem positive and loving while I am giving instruction they will remember it and imprint on it more deeply. I am consciously didactically teaching children basically every time I am near them. It’s exhausting.

I think that’s what home schooling community is about. I think we are agreeing to teach one another’s kids. I realize not everyone feels the same way so I try not to say it too loudly. Ha. I’m not forcing them to memorize times tables or anything neurotic like that but I use group social outings as time to consciously work on the rules of society.

What the hell else are such times for? And if kids have to learn every rule completely on their own without adult help things turn all Lord of the Flies. Judicious adult intervention while mostly letting the kids direct and handle things is the optimal learning environment.

Studies god damn prove this.

It made me really happy when I commented to some of the moms that I was talking to their sons about boundaries and touching stuff she said that I’m going to teach sex ed when the kids are a little older. YES! Please! I’ve been training all my life. Ha. *beat head on wall*

The thing they don’t understand is I won’t be starting when the kids are older. I’m starting now. I’m starting when they are 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, ,9, 10, and 11 because that is how old the kids are in our group. I’m talking to all of them about touching and consent. There are slightly different explanation levels–I don’t talk to the three year olds about nerve endings. I say sensitive.

Sex is part of life because touching is part of life. If you want your kids to grow up to be healthy adults who are good at sex then they have to be good at touching–that is how things work. I understand that most parents feel kind of nauseated at the idea of their kids growing up to have sex but I have my eye on the end goal.

I want healthy adult children.

I have to teach my children and their peers about healthy touch if I want that to be the norm for their world. That means I have to be didactic. I have to choose to send on a message. I can’t just ignore things and let them slide or I don’t get to be upset when the culture isn’t what I want it to be.

Am I changing the world? If my little cohort of kids manages to grow up together and everyone gets a fresh healthy launch together to go out and feel like they are allowed to have the sex they want within the boundaries they choose then maybe I will have done something.

You don’t know what someone wants by looking at them. You only know what they want if you ask. If you have never asked what they want then you have no business having your hands on them.

If people believed that in the core of their being–how would the world be different?