07.09.07
How young is too young?
Many of us that are parents would like to believe that our children have no need of sex education until, well until they are at least 18 and that is despite the knowledge we might have of our own teenage years. It is a fact that children are exposed to more information from many sources at an earlier age about what used to be known as ‘the facts of life’. It is also a fact that there are actually more facts of life to know about than there might have been 30 years ago when I was a teenager. A couple of things have brought this home to me recently, firstly that someone wrote to our local paper to complain that her 13 year old daughter had received education about HIV / AIDS without being specifically asked permission. This had resulted in the decision to remove the child from that school. The second event was closer to home, and involves my sister in law discovering that my niece has had sex with her boyfriend at the age of 14! This young lady has always told her mum that she would not be doing anything like that, but then a boy arrived on the scene and suddenly it had happened.
I don’t necessarily think it is right for such a thing to have happened, and it is certainly illegal (the boy is also underage) but denying such things happen is not going to stop them. Pretending that unprotected sex cannot cause pregnancy or infect someone with HIV or some other infection is naive in the extreme. Of course we need to teach our children to wait to experience sex, but removing them from school does not seem to be the answer.
Nick Phillips said,
July 10, 2007 at 1:43 am
It’s never too young to teach kids about sex ed. The thing is, in my country it’s sort of a taboo thing to talk about sex. I feel the times have changed and kids are more exposed to sexual stuff so the earlier they learn about it, the better. The more you try to shield them from it, the more they’re gonna try finding out about it, maybe even in the wrong way. So, educate them while they’re still young I say!