Sex Education

[highlander]

On the news today they were saying how the goverment wants to make it compulsory to give sex education to a four year old. When i heard that i thought hecks they are far to young to understand. It would make more sence to teach them where chicks and eggs come from or which animal gives us milk, but then i thought i am contradicating myself here.
How many of us would skim over a question because we did not know how to answer it, so are the goverment right? It will be confusing enough for an older child this week if they see a newspaper when they see that a man in the USA has just given birth, ok now how would you explain that one?

[Murdina Bug]

I caught a snippet of this where they had two guests in the news studio to discuss this (sorry did not catch names or job titles) - however one lady was making the point that they were not talking about telling 4-5year olds the mechanics of sexual intercourse but rather starting to discuss relationships and interactions between people. The point being to give factual information to questions that kids ask instead of dodging the issue. However, the emphasis was on the fact that parents should do the informing about issues and teachers should support and back up.

Doesn't seem to be anything new in this story - just the usual headline grabbing news reporting!

[rfr10]

Giving a four year old sex education is totally ridiculous. There are two ways this could go- the child is given sex education, just like maybe a 12 year old would be given. Since a child is aware of sex at such an early age, they are likely to have sex at an early age. If not that, they will be brain washed into making sex a taboo term. In many surveys, it has shown that many teenagers are very naive when it comes to sex and this is due to the lack of sex education when they were younger. A child in primary seven is young enough to be given sex education but even at that age, they are still very young and somewhat immiture. Most children in primary school miss out on sex education due to the fact that teachers tell them that if they laugh, they will be put out of the class but what can you expect from a child that age when they are put in front of a tv screen with funny animated drawings of certain things. Schools need to have a proper, trained sex education teacher rather than allowing an ordinary teacher, who may be reluctant to teach the subject because of religious beliefs, etc. A four year old has only just learnt basic language and is not going to understand things such as sex.

[Angela]

It depends what they mean by sex education.

We always answered our children's questions as honestly as possible and didn't swerve away from the awkward questions that do crop up...and having three children each three years apart, and friends all having babies, questions were bound to be asked!:lol:

By the time each child was four we'd explained the basics of how a baby was made and born, in the context of a loving family relationship...and with no inappropriate detail.

We used a simple picture book aimed at that age group which made it a lot easier, and found our children absorbed just as much as they needed to and were capable of. They weren't embarrassed, just naturally curious, and I think it was right to answer their questions honestly and not make up nonsense about storks and stuff - which is what I was fobbed off with as a child! :roll: