I used to nanny a three year old named Audrey when I lived in San Francisco. Her parents were self defined feminists. The unfun kind of feminists that (from my perspective) get feminism all bunched up and twisted around to look like a feminist who is the wife must be stronger or more powerful than the feminist who is the husband. It's that uncomfortable power dynamic whenever one person in a committed relationship is calling all the shots and the other one just hangs their head and says "Sorry" for everything. If the wife is the power player, then they called it feminism. Part of their belief was in making sure that their little girl used the proper terminology for all of her body parts. This was before the Vagina Monologues came out, so you can imagine the shock value this had when they spoke to Audrey about her privates in public. (Her parents were, in every other way, really awesome and terrific parents. I learned a LOT from them about raising an empowered, happy child.)
Often, in my afternoons with Audrey we went to the same parks, shops, eateries each week. Most of the people in those places knew us by sight and some probably assumed I was her mom. Sometimes she even called me mom and we had similar features too, so it would have been an easy mistake to make.
That week Audrey's mom had just learned she was pregnant, but I was unaware that they had already explained everything in great detail to their three year old girl. As we were standing in the ice cream shop Audrey said loudly, "My mom's pregnant!" and at the same time that I made the "uh-oh, this lady thinks I'm her mom and I'm not" face, the lady behind the counter made the "oh! congratulations I'm so happy for you" face. But before either of us said a word, Audrey blurted, "Yes! She has a baby in her uterus and in nine months it's going to come out of her vagina!" And at the same time both the lady and myself made the, "oh my god" face and I grabbed our ice cream and rushed Audrey out of the shop. We never went back.
I knew that Audrey's parents would have been exceptionally proud of her for her candor, but I never mentioned it to them because I didn't want to encourage more outbursts.
