How do you teach kids how to put on a condom without actually using or even mentioning the word condom? That was the conundrum faced by Sanford Johnson, who was tasked with providing sex ed in Mississippi.
The state comes second a lot (sorry) in the U.S. - Second in terms of the number of teen births, second for STDs like Chlamydia and gonorrhea, second for the percentage of kids who've had sex before the end of 12th grade.
Important Lessons We Forget To Teach Our Kids About Sex
In 2011, a law was passed banning the use of condoms in teaching demonstrations and insisting on "abstinence-based" sex education. Because clearly all this talk of abstinence is working wonders for Mississippi...
At home, mercifully,
we take a more proactive and realistic approach to sex education and emotional intelligence.
But Johnson, kick-ass teacher, found the perfect metaphor on his own body and thus danced his way around the ban.
"I’m going to pinch out the air out of the tip of the sock because I want to make sure there’s room for my toes," he says in the video. "Then I take the sock and put it on the tip of my foot and I roll it down. You want to roll it all the way down your foot. And then you can put it in your shoe, and then you are ready to engage in shoe activity."
The Sex Talk Every Parent Needs To HearSo for all you parents who get a little choked up and tongue-tied when it comes to talking "shoe activity" with your kids, you could do worse than follow Johnson's lead and peel off your sock. Instead of making puppets out of those stray socks in the drawer, why not make a valuable life lesson of it?
“If you’re gonna engage in a shoe activity, make sure that your foot is protected. Make sure you use a sock each and every time.” 
Printer-friendly version