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N.I.C.E sex education
Thursday 17 June 2010
Categories: Drugs and Alcohol, Education, Growing up, Personal Safety, Sexual Relationships
In an ideal world children would remain innocent little angels playing innocent sweet games until … when? Who is to decide?
Children are born curious. Asking endless questions is how they learn. Of course different children ask different questions at different ages and of course some parents find the “Where do babies come from” questions just too embarrassing to answer. Or they fall back on the age-old get-out statements: “Under a gooseberry bush” or “Wait till you’re older”.
In fact ignorance has a disastrous track record when it comes to protecting the innocent.
NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) are now suggesting that schools start to teach children about sexual relationships and about the effects of alcohol from an early age. Despite the reactions of some of the more reactionary media they clearly aren’t trying to encourage our children to become sexually active at an early age or to try binge drinking any time soon. This beleaguered body obviously has good reason to believe that education is the way to reduce teenage pregnancy rates and alcohol abuse. There is evidence that such education is more effective if it is delivered before young people become sexually active.
The fact is that in the U.K. we have a woefully high rate of teenage pregnancies and it’s also true that our level of sexually transmitted diseases is alarming.
Teaching about the biological elements of sexual reproduction, including “how babies are made”, is compulsory. Surely we would prefer our children to learn about the emotional aspects of sexual relationships too?In an ideal world parents would answer their children’s questions accurately but at that particular child’s level, responding at the child’s level of comprehension. My elder daughter asked the dreaded question when she was about 7. I took a deep breath and answered “From mummies’ tummies”. She ran off happily and asked no more till she was 13 when she wanted more detail.
Younger daughter asked the same question at about the same age but was not so easily satisfied: “How do they get there?” Gulp. Being a good mother I tried to explain only to get the response “Yuk”. Desperate not to traumatise her further I emphasised the emotional aspects, how a loving relationship finds expression in physical closeness. Her response? “Poor Daddy”. Dumbstruck I tried to explain that when two people loved each other is was actually quite a nice thing to do, only to be answered by her “Fancy having to do that in front of the doctor”!
Perhaps it’s better to leave it to the teachers after all.
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