A devastating look into teens’ sexual lives (not for the faint of heart).
What floors me is that there are tons of parents out there, including parents of teenagers, who have no idea what’s going on. I know what’s going on (well, I have a reasonably good idea) and I don’t have a teenage daughter. What’s their excuse?
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Tanya adds: The advice on curbing this behavior in your teen? “Alot of the experts we talked with said, ‘You have to parent today…double time.’ ” Like with so many of life’s problems, the solution is often to do twice as much of what was missing in the first place.
I realize that many people feel they don’t have a choice in the matter, and some in fact don’t. But the average child today starts their life out in full-time daycare. As parents, we spend more time than ever at a job that our children can’t even relate to. (We’re bank proof operators or acturial scientists.) That means, not only do we not know what they do all day, but they can’t imagine what we do either. And this sets a pattern for the long-term relationship between our kids and us.
My daughter just finished her first year of preschool. Away from me just six hours a week, I could hardly believe all the things I was not in the immediate know about. Just six hours a week and she chose a new favorite colour without me. She decided skirts were better than pants but not as good as dresses. She’d established that boys are bad because they hit and girls do not. And her idea of a really fun game is one where you get to stand on a chair and wave your arms. She made all these decisions without me around. Next year she’ll be up to 11 hours a week and I’ll have so much more to keep on top of. I think all this preschool stuff is to get ME ready for kindergarten.
When she’s 12 and being confronted with choices girls her age are faced with, here’s hoping I’ll have done a good job establishing solid communication and trust. Pink or purple? Not life altering. Holding hands or oral sex? A bit of a big deal, wouldn’t you say?
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I have heard that one of the things covered in sex ed classes from junior high up is how to use a rubber dam for oral sex, in order to prevent getting an infection. No wonder kids are so sexually active, if the adults teaching them are giving them the green light.
Planned Parenthood has a book that they use in US that somehow ends up in a lot of public schools that tells your children how to have sex, that it’s perfectly okay and natural (basically anytime anyplace with anyone you want), and vast amounts of information on birth control and abortion. This book is used for fifth graders as part of their sex ed. I’m very alarmed by how much we are pushing our kids into sex as a society. I’m nauseated that pro- choice seems to mean that they have free license to teach your kids about abortion (how wonderful they think it is and that baby is just a blob of tissue) and I’m not allowed to say anything about it. I’ve got a 1 1/2 year old son and a 3 month old daughter and I’m already concerned about these things. As a society, we want our kids to be sexually responsible but it’s not what we’re teaching them. We really set ourselves up so that we have to work extra hard just to keep our children safe these days.
I think that the sex education being offered in North American schools is the primary reason for the growing number of parents who are choosing to home-school. I know that one of my daughters is keeping close watch on her children’s school; once they transgress a certain line in sex ed, she will be home schooling as well.