Sex Ed Hooters Style

Virginian stay-at-home dad Bob Elston is doing the hard yards. He has four kids to my one and the mother-in-law's living under the same roof.

He also has the US media on his back after he took his eleven year-old son to Hooters and published a story about it on his blog.

It was a post-football lunch that included root beer, large plates of food and Elston Jnr having his photo taken with their waitress and her large, er, smile.

That they went is news enough. So is why. Bob explains it like this:

“My 11 year boy has reached the age where girls at school are showing interest in him but he is not ready to reciprocate with equal interest in them. The trip to Hooters, I saw, as an opportunity to see how he conducts himself around women. If he drooled and couldn’t take his eyes of the waitress, then that would be an unmistakable cue to me to start preparing another birds and the bees talk. If he acted embarrassed and shy, then that would be a sign that such a pointed talk could wait a bit.”

When the time comes with Austin I don’t imagine I’ll share Bob’s approach. I mean, whatever happened to 'he's eleven and that's why I need to start preparing the birds and bees talk'?

That said, I do admire Bob for thinking outside of the square. And even the great innovators don’t get it right all of the time.

As for the son, he found the whole situation “messed up". He was also unlucky enough to be spotted at the restaurant by his football coach.

No wonder that even before the media caught wind of it the kid had told his old man that the issues surrounding his first Hooters experience “will take a long time to go away.”


Read Bob’s Hooters post in full here.