Sex education for 4 year olds

[STEED]

This has to be the most disgustful thing to date to be suggested. In the name of common sense children should live like children and have a childhood. Stop forcing them to grow up fast which only results in a messed up child.

I hope this stupid idea gets thrown in the bin.



Give four-year-olds sex education, say charities

Two leading sexual health charities are calling for children as young as four to be given compulsory sex education.

Brook and the Family Planning Association (FPA) argue that teaching children about sex from a young age would help reduce abortion rates and sexually transmitted infections when they reach adolescence. The charities said children should be taught the names of body parts and about sex and relationships.

http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2289256,00.html (http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2289256,00.html)

[sonar732]

This has to be the most disgustful thing to date to be suggested. In the name of common sense children should live like children and have a childhood. Stop forcing them to grow up fast which only results in a messed up child.

I hope this stupid idea gets thrown in the bin.



Give four-year-olds sex education, say charities

Two leading sexual health charities are calling for children as young as four to be given compulsory sex education.

Brook and the Family Planning Association (FPA) argue that teaching children about sex from a young age would help reduce abortion rates and sexually transmitted infections when they reach adolescence. The charities said children should be taught the names of body parts and about sex and relationships.

http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2289256,00.html (http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2289256,00.html)


As a father of 4 girls, I can't believe what I'm reading. My youngest is 5 years old and she mearly giggles when she sees her mom and I hug..."You're in love and married". I'd hate to see her innocence taken away for the 'future' possibility of STD and abortion teaching.

[XabbaRus]

Yep agree with that. Stupid baby boomer hippies here. My 6 year old thinks it is great when me and the wife hug..she goes around saying "you love each other" and that is the end of it....and when she has a bath with Max she thinks his willy is just something to grab hold of for a laugh...(Max is 2 now by the way)....

Saying that a friend of ours explained to her son who is the same age as my daughter where babies come from...(explaining the difference between men and wome). Anyway the upshot of that was hse explained how girls pee and then she said where babies come from..His response? "Can I see....." great!!!!!!

[Skybird]

Boy I know why I left social and psychological science behind - too much crap-thinking there.

Health care charities, eh? Damn freaks - that's what I say. Has anybody considered to check out if maybe a pedophile interest organisation is behind this? No kidding, there are efforts from such deeply rotten organizations to lower the age for children having legal sex with adults to low one-digit ranges because "little kids have a right to experience tenderness" and "forbidding pedophiles to live out their gentle motivation and criminalising their interest and calling it perverse is a form of discrimination".

Both quotes are original quotes from a german TV documentation broadcasted maybe four years ago. I was so annoyed that I deeply engraved it in my memory.

But we certainly do not wish to discirminate somebody, don't we.

From a psychologist's perspective i must say the argument of that charity organisation is pseudo-intellectual excrement making mockery of every serious psychological theory of mental developement in children we have. Note that what they propose is someting totally different than kids in primitive tribes being risen in a climate of where being naked and relations between men and women are being experienced in a completely different situational context.

As a very close friend of a family with two girls, 3 and 6 years, I must say I feel that I really would like to have a silent little word in the cellar with those braindead charity workers, one by one.

Four years, good heaven. that is as disgusting like having 14 or 15 year olds lectured and drilled in military weapons handling. Bah.

[Skybird]

In the name of common sense children should live like children and have a childhood. Stop forcing them to grow up fast which only results in a messed up child.

OH YES...!

[Platapus]

While I agree that sex education (appropriate to the age) is a good thing. I am having a hard time imagining what would be appropriate for a four year old. :nope:

[UnderseaLcpl]

Not the providence of the state unless the children are wards of the state.

[Schroeder]

My god. Here in Germany they do this in 4th grade (10 year olds). Just before they start to get "interested" in the other sex.
What the hell is a four year old supposed to do with that knowledge which he/she can't understand at that point anyway?:damn:

[XabbaRus]

Hey in some parts of teh UK they'd be like, great now I know exactly when I can get the baby and benefits.......

OK bad taste..I'm going to have to look into this more.

[GSpector]

Great, now I'm having flashbacks to when VADM Joycelyn Elders (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joycelyn_Elders) was the Surgeon General.:nope:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5KeO10vjXs&feature=related

[Sailor Steve]

Shades of Brave New World.

"Now Sarah, you and Johnny go play with each other...I mean play together...":dead:

[Monica Lewinsky]

This has to be the most disgustful thing to date to be suggested. In the name of common sense children should live like children and have a childhood.

Can not agree with you more. This is really SICK. At least wait to they are 14.

[mrbeast]

This has to be the most disgustful thing to date to be suggested. In the name of common sense children should live like children and have a childhood.

Can not agree with you more. This is really SICK. At least wait to they are 14.


I think that might be shutting the gate after the horse by the time kids are 14.

[GSpector]

I figure 14 is ok, but only if they have not asked questions by that time. If a kid starts to ask earlier then 14, that would be a good time to try to address it, not avoid it.

I agree with some in that it is not age specific but child specific.

[Letum]

I don't believe it somehow ruins the innocence of kids or somehow ends their childhood
because to a young child the birds and the bees is irrelevant and uninteresting
compared to tree-houses, dolls, toilet humor or dinosaurs etc.

My parents where a little too English to talk to me frankly as a child so from well before
I was 4 they left a picture book called "Where do babels come from?" in my room.

When I couldn't read I ignored it coz the pictures where boring.
When I could read I ignored it because the story line was crap.
Only by the age of 5 did I become curious to such things and then the book explained
everything. A good way to go about it imho.


By the time the school educated me I had learnt everything (and a lot of dis-information)
from the playground chat. They should have addressed it earlier I think.

I don't mind what age the teach it in schools. Before the age of 8 it's just not gonna
be interesting for most kids. After the age of 13 and you risk leaving them uninformed letting horses bolt.

[Sea Demon]

As a father of 4 girls, I can't believe what I'm reading. My youngest is 5 years old and she mearly giggles when she sees her mom and I hug..."You're in love and married". I'd hate to see her innocence taken away for the 'future' possibility of STD and abortion teaching.
I have a 5 year old boy, and a 1 year old girl. Raising my girl in this day and age with the so-called "non-judgemental" "lefty progressive" wacko's running around is going to be a challenge. If it were up to me, some of these "well-meaning" education "professionals" would be out of a job.

Of course we shouldn't be so judgemental, closed minded, and regressive as wanting our young girls to keep their innocence and be raised to be virtuous rather than like harlots. (Sarcasm off). Oh yeah, and we may be trampling on some liberal educators constitutional rights to "educate" if we as society decide they're not fit to educate. Society, and it's taxpayers, may not have the right to self govern and arbitrate, and determine eligibility requirements for it's institutions (of learning in this case).:roll:

[GSpector]

I am not to worried about the age a child is taught it by the Parents, as long as the Child knows that they can come to their Parents to ask questions and the Parents are willing and able to sit down and answer the tough questions. I would just prefer it's before they learn it in school.

At least if the kids know it before the schools teach it to them, that should be an easy class for the kids to pass.

Just leaving a book in the kids room sounds like it could work, but that may just start the questions ;)

By the way Letum, that was the book my Neighbor read to me. She was like a Grand Mother to me and my Brother's anyway. I think I was about 8. My father just wanted to joke about it when I was 9 and I walked up to him and asked him about "The Bird's and the Bee's", just to see what he would say. I was very grateful for my neighbor. My father did try to teach me though a while later but his technique just gets into legal issues I won't bring up here. I'll just say, his method did not work for me.

[Safe-Keeper]

Reading comprehension skills, much:roll:?

Some time ago, the leader of a Norwegian day care center stated in a day care center magazine that kids should be allowed to explore their own and each others' bodies (which kids do, regardlessly of how gross you feel that sounds), and that you shouldn't yell at them if you caught them looking at each others' parts or touching each others.

What happened? Guess.

You guessed correctly. The news, even the non-tabloid papers, blew it up as "OMGWTF PEDOPHILE WANTS TEH SEX GAMES IN DAYKARE!1111:o:o:o (http://www.google.no/search?hl=nn&q=pia+friis&btnG=S%C3%B8k&meta=)", and it appears 80% of the people who read the papers were retarded enough to not question this outrageous statement and think a little for themselves (and with some reading comprehension, it would've been obvious what she was really saying).

The scary thing is that these "adults" are the same people who vote on serious issues - environment, war, homosexual marriage, the economy, and immigration, to mention a few, are all in the hands of people who very obviously can't analyze news. If that's not a scary thought, I don't know what is.

Same thing here, in a sense. The term "sex education" covers a lot of things. The article itself says The charities said children should be taught the names of body parts and about sex and relationships.Er, what? So basically, they're going to be told that a boy has a willy and a girl has a peehole, that you shouldn't touch other peoples' private parts if they don't want you to, and that when they grow up, they're going to have boyfriends and girlfriends and make kids. These are four-year olds. Do you really think they're going to go into great detail, more than perhaps "they lay down in bed and make kids, it's called 'having sex', and a kid starts to grow inside her, and nine months later it's born"? I don't think so:

Julie Bentley, chief executive of the FPA, said: "This is not about teaching four-year-olds how to have sex but teaching them about respecting themselves and others and giving them the confidence to ask questions when they get older and do want to find out more."It's like maths - at primary school children learn the basics so that they can understand more and more complex concepts at a later stage."

I strongly hope you show more critical skill when it comes to more important subjects.

Oh yeah, and we may be trampling on some liberal educators constitutional rights to "educate" if we as society decide they're not fit to educate. As long as fundamentalists have the right to tell kids they that the theory of evolution is a lie, that abortion is evil, that gays must be persecuted, that condoms don't work and that atheists are evil...

...well, then if "the right" can ruin kids by turning them into raving fundies, we can "ruin" kids by telling them about tolerance and safe sex when they're ready for it. As long as fundie schools, up to and beyond the level of the place in Jesus Camp, are real... 2008-era public schools will be.

Freedom goes both ways.

From a psychologist's perspective i must say the argument of that charity organisation is pseudo-intellectual excrement making mockery of every serious psychological theory of mental development in children we have.Does it now (http://extension.missouri.edu/xplor/hesguide/humanrel/gh6002.htm).

[Sea Demon]

...well, then if you can ruin kids by turning them into raving fundies, we can "ruin" kids by telling them about tolerance and safe sex when they're ready for it. As long as fundie schools, up to and beyond the level of the place in Jesus Camp, are real... 2008-era public schools will be.

Freedom goes both ways.

Who's footing the bill to the public schools? The taxpayers are. I think the taxpayers deserve a say in how they're run. If the voters decide they don't want this in their schools that they are funding, they have the freedom to determine that. Some government bureaucrat shouldn't be the final arbiter. Freedom is indeed a great thing. You might want to apply it properly however. The "fundie" schools as you call them do not teach the above, other than your few examples. And they are funded through private money. Not the taxpaying base, and have the freedom to determine their own curriculum. Of course you provide a movie that outlays a private group of individuals and assume every Christian/Catholic/Jewish school teaches the exact same thing. How biased and narrow of you.

[jeremy8529]

Well, im 16 here, I was raised different from most of you guys, I was taught there was no Santa Clause, and that children were made via sex, it was never a mystery to me, even before i started grade school. I knew how it happened, I just didn't understand why anyone would want to do that, right? I knew the name of all the organs and their functions , but I didn't understand why, just yet. So far life is good, im not scarred emotionaly or any other way. It was just the way I was raised I guese. I will make a big notice here, though, it wasn't the goverment that taught me, it was my parents and that does make a differnce. Just my 2 cents here. Kinda to give you guys a perspective from somone who was educated at a young age.

Although they plan on teaching at age 4, I think i was 5-6 ,but in this case I don't think that much of a age difference matters. :up:

[Sea Demon]

Well, im 16 here, I was raised different from most of you guys, I was taught there was no Santa Clause, and that children were made via sex, it was never a mystery to me, even before i started grade school. I knew how it happened, I just didn't understand why anyone would want to do that, right? I knew the name of all the organs and their functions , but I didn't understand why, just yet. So far life is good, im not scarred emotionaly or any other way. It was just the way I was raised I guese. I will make a big notice here, though, it wasn't the goverment that taught me, it was my parents and that does make a differnce. Just my 2 cents here. Kinda to give you guys a perspective from somone who was educated at a young age.

Although they plan on teaching at age 4, I think i was 5-6 ,but in this case I don't think that much of a age difference matters. :up:
Hi Jeremy. Very good thoughts you have. Me and my wife have taught my son already some things about different things he has asked about. We've believed in the honest approach. But I also believe that it is best taught by me and my wife. Not the public schools. I don't trust alot that's coming out of there these days unfortunately. And I definitely don't want a school to teach my kids the things I should be teaching them myself. I know it is a difficult subject to talk about sometimes. But that's the job of a parent. You sound like you're on the right track.

[JHuschke]

Yeah..that is sick. I'm 15, I never got sex education. I learned it myself.:dead:

[jeremy8529]

"But that's the job of a parent. You sound like you're on the right track"

Speaking of being on the right track, I don't plan on having to give the TALK, in the next 5 years, hehe. Although it is biologically possible for me to be giving the talk in 2-3 years if i started having fun at the age of 13. Tell me I sound like a ghoul, but taking care of children is not something I wont to have to worry about for many many years. :cool:

[Cohaagen]

Yep agree with that. Stupid baby boomer hippies here.

Most of those "stupid baby boomer hippies" are in their mid to late-60s now and retired. Perhaps the reactionary cranks will ponder the causes of social problems more deeply than the first thought that springs to mind, though it's doubtful.

These hand-wringing, teeth-gnashing "what is the world coming to???!!!!" threads are getting really tedious, though I suppose there's always a market for anxious shut-ins.

[Geno_Mariner]

I don't really think sex ed should be applied to younger children :dead: If they say it'd 'make them have safe sex when they're older', ya right, it depends on the individual. Some may have safe sex and some may not :nope: 'bout 13yo or so would be right.

I always asked mum (had no dad when I was in primary school) how babies are made. She never explained HOW, she just said 'it comes from the mummy's tummy' geeez, I was like 10 or older then. Read 'Where babies come from' but no sex diagram. In year 6, we had sex ed. That was when I learnt more about the gender 'bits' (and we were told not to show the diagram of the uterus to the boys. Stupid, if ya ask me. Of course, I 'accidentially' showed the diagram to a guy behind me, he was like OMFG.)
Eventually we had a look on 'Adam's Human Body' (a bloody good CD-ROM), that was when I first saw how babies are made. I didn't get it at first then at a closer look, that was when I realised how it happens. I was like :huh: But in year 7, it wasn't a huge deal anymore. Ain't emotionally scarred here either. But I wish my kid bro wouldn't wave his noodle around (thank god he doesn't do it in public) :dead: (Always avoided nappy change times lol).

[antikristuseke]

Sexual education at 4 is a few year too early in my opinion, but arround age 9-10 it would be right on the money. Concidering the age of sexual concent here is 14, which is too low in my opinion but oh well, starting sex ed any later would be a bit too late. Anyway, as some have pointed out, the basics of sex and where children come from should be tought by the parents, when they find it appropriate, but it doesnt hurt the children to allso learn about it in school.

I think my father explained where children come from and how they are made to me at the age of 6. His answer was quithe thurough so I said something similar to "ok" and then moved on to think about what i had just heard, figured it out, then went on to something else a 6 year old is expected to do.

[XabbaRus]

Yep agree with that. Stupid baby boomer hippies here.
Most of those "stupid baby boomer hippies" are in their mid to late-60s now and retired. Perhaps the reactionary cranks will ponder the causes of social problems more deeply than the first thought that springs to mind, though it's doubtful.

These hand-wringing, teeth-gnashing "what is the world coming to???!!!!" threads are getting really tedious, though I suppose there's always a market for anxious shut-ins.
Do you have children? I do and if anyone teaches them about sex at that age it will be me. I don't disagree that something in the UK has to be done but I don't think teaching the kids at 4 will lower the number of teenage pregnancies.

You have to look at why teenage girls are having babies and most of the time from various programs I have read is that it is to do with self esteem and being loved unconditionally which is what a child does. Therefore it is a sociallogical problem and one that 4 year olds won't understand. At the moment my daughter just knows that a baby comes from mummy's tummy and am happy with that.

Also I think a lot has to do with sex and "adult relationships" at a young age being glamourised in various programmes on TV in the UK at least.

As for being reactionary and "what is the world coming to type of preson" far from it. I just think that these are extreme ideas being thrown out as a quick fix. I don't have the answers as a lot of people don't but maybe we should do is just teach them to say No.....

[STEED]

something in the UK has to be done but I don't think teaching the kids at 4 will lower the number of teenage pregnancies.

I know the answer to teenage pregnancies, stop paying them all those benefits under the sun and watch it fall like a stone.

[jeremy8529]

That's a negative there Steed, here stateside we can just about have a day care in my school, and if they got government benefits, it's news to me.Not that some news would insult me. I think the real answer is human nature, including stupidity in my opinion, and there is nothing that we can realy do to fix it other than perhaps teach about protection. Because honestly, this waiting till marriage bull ****, will not work if you tell the average teenager, as much as you might want them all to wait till marriage, it is as realstic an option as telling us that we should all go to college after highschool and do more with our lives that submit ourselves to manaul labor (that is another story).

[STEED]

That's a negative there Steed

Are you saying telling 4 years olds about sex is right?

Or my remark on teenage pregnancies? On this issue there all drinking £2 to £3 cups of coffee at a time and smoking so much it's like watching the industrial revolution again. Are yes I nearly forgot about the slut in the next street pumping out kids like theres no tomorrow, she has never done a days work in her life. People like that make me sick to my stomach as I have to pay for there stinking life style out of my hard earn money.

[jeremy8529]

No, I was saying that if you take away there benefits that it will NOT stop uncontrolled pregnancy because of the fact that if there is fun to be had, people wont deprive them selves of it, just because of the lack of a state check.

Although, on the topic of sex education at the age of 4, I think that is a little young for the government to be intervene in sex ed, age 10 would be a good time to plant the seed in there minds without being to graphic, and 12-13 (Before puberty starts) tell them the whole shibang, because they will find out on there own anyways.(Better find out in class room than "Oh wow this feels great!" Then notice a little bulge a few months later.

Now if it was up to ME, about 10 years down the road, I would tell MY CHILDREN from a YOUNG age, as soon as it was practical for them to understand. Perhaps as early as 7 or 8.

So in short hand, it might not be the governments place at that early of an age, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with that parent if they tell their children at that age.

Any questions, I will gladly answer.

[Platapus]

<points to a buoy>

Excuse me capt'n, I think we are drifting off course here.
:ahoy:

[STEED]

No, I was saying that if you take away there benefits that it will NOT stop uncontrolled pregnancy because of the fact that if there is fun to be had, people wont deprive them selves of it, just because of the lack of a state check.

Well some years back in Germany I believe when the State bought new rules in saying OK your first child was an error and you will receive benefit but not if you have a second one. Result the teenage birth rate fell, I stand corrected if Skybird points out any thing else.

Find by me if these teenagers want kids but there not getting one penny from the State. I'm sure it will fall as the UK has the worst record in Europe on this one.

Thanks for saying where you stood on the sex advice for 4 years olds, seems us lot here have more common sense on this one than those idiots who would like it too become a fact.

[joea]

In the name of common sense children should live like children and have a childhood. Stop forcing them to grow up fast which only results in a messed up child.
OH YES...!

:up::up::up::up:

Thank god (or whomever or whatever) someone agrees with me.

[sonar732]

On a side note...

My wife works as a surgical technician in a major teaching hospital here and notes that the OB doctors have stated on numerous occasions of having to talk to children as young as 11 because their parents didn't...to little, to late.

Some parents just refuse to talk to their kids and either skirt around the questions or not address them at all. Sad to say, but I don't remember getting that type of talk when I was growing up. Different school districts have different guidelines on what age to teach also. For instance, I had sex education at 6th grade (11/12 years old) while living in the Cypress-Fairbanks School District in NW 'burbs of Houston. They didn't give sex education here in a small school district in Illinois until 8th grade (13/14 years old). Shoot...by that time I remember kids in Houston bragging of their exploits.

[Skybird]

It is the job of the parents in the first to enlighten their kids. The school is just a por surrogate - like for many other social resonsibilities that are parked on the school's shoulders, but should be adressed within families in the first.

A model project in Berlin sends project workers from outside the school into classes to talk with juveniles of age 14+ about sex. It is no good idea to leave that job to teachers who will meet with the same kids again afterwards - it might backfire on them, they may feel handicapped, and often they cannot imagine to what degree the youngster already know the explicit vocabularies and exotic practices. This project is said to perform much better than regular sexual education in schools.


Quote:
From a psychologist's perspective i must say the argument of that charity organisation is pseudo-intellectual excrement making mockery of every serious psychological theory of mental development in children we have.
Does it now (http://extension.missouri.edu/xplor/hesguide/humanrel/gh6002.htm).

No. I think in terms and refer more to Piaget, Badinter, Bettelheim, Psychoanalytical phase-model of developement. Curiosity is one (natural thing). Wether the mind is already fit enough to digest the facts of life "uncovered" is something very different. the right age to start thinking about talking about these things is more in the range of 12 years, I think, 10-11 at the earliest. as a rule of thumb i would say not in elementary school (Germany: schoolyears 1-4) , but with beginning of high school (5th schoolyear following).



Well some years back in Germany I believe when the State bought new rules in saying OK your first child was an error and you will receive benefit but not if you have a second one. Result the teenage birth rate fell, I stand corrected if Skybird points out any thing else.

Sorry, never heared of that, and I also cannot imagine that you mean germany. such statistics would be new to me. and such sanctions by the state would have created an outcry in public that makes it difficult for me to imagine that it ever was official policy. But it's okay, maybe I simply don't know it indeed.

[STEED]

@Skybird it was a good 10 years ago and maybe things have changed.

I have a bad feeling things will only get worst thanks to you know who Skybird. ;)

[bookworm_020]

My Parents answered any questions that I had when I was growing up, but were careful on the detail when I was young (6-10). You don't need to tell them in graphic detail or lie, but if you just say the basics and wheigh up what the kid can cope with it will be better for them in the future.

If you wait till there teens it may be too late