I Bought My Teen Daughter A Vibrator

You remember that one person who made you feel tingly down there and it was all you could think about? Maybe you didn’t even know why. When you were first getting a clue about who lights your inner fire, you were probably a pre-teen.

As the years passed, you probably came across a number of people who visited you at night in sexy dreams. Like most amateurs, you may have filled in some of the details with a fog filter in your mind because you didn’t have any idea about how it really worked. You had a book, you got the talk but then the rest of the mechanics and such were based on what your friends told you.

We all had those early bloomer friends who were bumping uglies already. They either kept it secret, or spoke of nothing else. The over-sharers may have taken some artistic license with the facts. You started to believe that the first time you slithered out of your panties there would be fireworks, unicorns, rose petals and music playing as your hearts melded together. Even in the back seat of his Pinto or on the rec room couch, it would be magic.

Maybe you were fascinated by the tales your experienced friends were telling you. More likely you were shitting yourself at the possibility of getting naked and putting your mouth on stuff. Maybe you weren’t even entirely sure what that undercarriage stuff really looked like or how it worked. What if it smelled? Did you do the banana gagging practice with your friends to learn how to give a blow job? Apparently that is still a thing.

So let us agree that the whole topic of sex and intimacy is a dumpster fire of complex emotions, misinformation, odd beliefs and a heaping bucket of awkward. Now that we are adultish we remember that, at least in the early days, it is not all smooth moves and scenes from a well choreographed romantic movie. More likely it began with lots of nose bumping and terrible attempts at oral. There were fingers in wrong places, enthusiastic and completely ill placed licking and other indicators of newness. Then there was the confusion about the morning after, drama of the feelings that come flooding in when your partner stopped making eye contact, or became clingy. It is no easy transition in this time of life, no matter when you start the whole horizontal mambo thing.

As a middle aged Mother with a teen girl, I have had conversations about sex with her as she went through the stages of becoming a woman. I am happy to say that my girl had absolutely no teen embarrassment around the facts of life. I was a little unsure, but she made up for my inner cringing on the more sensitive areas by seeming to be comfortable. I was terrified that she might ask about my personal experiences, or how I know about what I am telling her. She did not, and I am thankful for that.

Being a woman of the world with my own share of good and bad experiences under my belt (literally) it dawned on me that there was another conversation I had to have with my daughter. I felt it was important to guide her to at least the start of the path toward discovering her own sexuality. There is a lot of advice out there for us Moms, but not so much about how to help your young person embrace their own self first. There is no manual on how you navigate that topic.

Thinking back to when I was young, I can’t imagine any of the adult females in my life telling me that I should be comfortable with my own sexuality and not wait for it to come like some sort of gift from a boyfriend. I will go so far as saying most of us didn’t get that advice.

There are so many wishes I have for my daughter the life ahead of her. In addition to the usual hopes for health, success, happiness and self fulfillment, I also want her to have great sex. I want her to love (or at least like) the people she sleeps with. I want her to have roses and music, but also fun sex, new sex, naughty sex and above all the kind of sex that makes her smirk a little when she remembers it years later.

So to start her off, I handed her a little brown paper bag with a subtle logo from the local, very classy, feminist sex toy shop. I told her that before she starts having actual sex with other people, she should develop her own sexuality and get comfortable with it. I said “we need never speak of this again, or you can ask me anything you want” as I handed it to her.

I don’t know how the gift and advice landed, but as it is with all parenting decisions, you have to step out of the old tropes and do uncomfortable things to grow your humans. I want my girl to love intimacy and sex and above all, know herself.

This author has chosen to write her piece anonymously.