Awkward Turtles Make Weird Babies

I heard a new saying yesterday and I had to ask my granddaughter to repeat herself. I couldn’t possibly have heard what she just said right.

A little louder, slowly, and making sure to clearly enunciate each word, she said, ‘Awkward turtles make weird babies! You know, Pressly’s messed up because her mom and dad are brother and sister, so they are also her aunt and uncle!’

We were feeding our bottle baby goats, one of which was born with a cleft deformity. Pressly’s lip is split and one of her nostrils is inside her mouth. My granddaughter is afraid to feed her because we have to make sure the nipple of the bottle is past the nostril or she could drown.

Although we did have an incident last summer that has resulted in some ‘line bred’ goat kids being born, Pressly is not one of them. I just quickly replied, ‘No Pressly’s mom isn’t related to her dad at all. Awkward Turtles have nothing to do with it.’

I was more interested in where the hell she had heard that phrase, so I asked.

Apparently, this was one of the lessons in their public school’s sex education course in sixth grade! Seriously!?! THAT is how they chose to teach them not to get involved sexually with blood relatives. I feel there may well have been an ‘Awkward Turtle’ involved in the making of that particular lesson!

I do suppose the phrase may have come from one of her fellow student’s while they were on the topic. I just feel that if that was the case it should have been quickly nipped in the bud.

Thank God we were given the opportunity to homeschool her when the pandemic hit! Maybe I’m a bit of a prude, but it seems to me that there are some subjects that should be handled with a degree of seriousness and respect. Yes, I’ll admit, it’s funny, but…

It’s one thing to use cute jokes and poems to teach math methods and rules of grammar and spelling. In my mind, sex education should never be a ‘light’ subject. It doesn’t have to be a hard conversation with kids, but it does need to be matter-of-fact.

Incest is not a topic to be taken lightly, with an air of joking fun! It’s situations like this that make it harder for victims to come forward and speak out. I am a survivor of sexual abuse. I was being molested when I was in sixth grade. When I imagine myself back then, sitting through a class like that, it makes me want to vomit.

Birth defects and disabilities are NO joke! I certainly hope that any disabled child that has to sit through this particular lesson isn’t left asking themselves if their parents are ‘Awkward Turtles’!

I think it’s things like this that is a root of many of society’s problems today. Perhaps people think it will make uncomfortable conversations easier if a little bit of humor is injected. Instead this is the kind of lesson where we need to take the opportunity to teach compassion.

Yes, I’m sure the little fable about ‘Awkward Turtles’ kept the lesson relatively short and light. If it’s a topic that has to be discussed in classroom full of eleven-year-olds it should be done in a way that leaves everyone feeling safe, comfortable, perhaps even emboldened to come forward.

I’m incredibly thankful that I now hold my granddaughter’s education in my own hands. We had made the decision to continue with homeschooling when we discovered just how much she was struggling with the simplest of academics. She has FASD and oftentimes the simplest of operations get lost in her brain.

Having your peers watch as you struggle like that makes it hard to walk out of the classroom and make friends. The stress of knowing that all eyes are on you, because you can’t perform simple tasks makes it all but impossible to retain what is being taught.

Now she is involved with youth groups and clubs that allow her to develop healthy friendships. Her social life and her academic life are two completely different entities.

We can give her whatever academic lessons she needs at her pace, even if that means a lot of refresher lessons on first-grade math, before moving on to more difficult concepts.

Most importantly, we can teach important life lessons without worrying about inappropriate ideologies being injected.