saw someone say "an 11-year-old isn't even supposed to know what sex is and if you do something horrible must be happening to you and you need to get out of there" like can we be for real for a moment. have some people honest to god never heard 11-year-olds making sex jokes in their life
and let's be honest. if something bad was happening, good sex ed would help them recognize that. trying to shelter children from even knowing what sex is doesn't help or even work, it actually enables abuse. teach them about consent
Hot take: let's not discuss sexual stuff around CHILDREN.
Let's not sexualize children or even think of children & sexual stuff
Don't discuss sexual stuff with CHILDREN.
They cannot consent.
Children cannot consent and I dont know how many times we have to tell you this.
CHILDREN. CANNOT. CONSENT.
people like you are the reason so many kids can't speak up about being sexually abused. go back to the catholic church or whatever. we need proper sex education and this is dire
oh they're literally catholic. that explains a lot.
sex education ≠ sexualization
sex education ≠ sexual abuse
sex education ≠ child endangerment
HOWEVER
sex education = increased safety through knowledge
sex education = decrease in teen pregnancy
sex education = decrease in spread of sexually transmitted diseases
sex education = productive and necessary
Hello! Literally practicing Catholic here! Raised by Catholic parents since birth! I went through things exactly like this as a child entirely because my parents neglected my sex education due to viewing it as 'scarring' and 'inappropriate'! Please fucking educate your kids about sex and what constitutes sexual abuse! Teach them they have a right to refuse! :)
And let's also say the uncomfortable part out loud here: it's not only about protecting kids against older teens and against adults.
The average age for puberty to start is 11-12, but it is normal for puberty to begin between the ages of 8 and 14. Puberty is only considered 'too early' by doctors and delayed with puberty blockers if a girl is 7 or a boy is 8. And while not everyone experiences sexual arousal in the first years of puberty, quite a lot of kids do.
So, as deeply uncomfortable as it makes adults: some 11 year olds have already been getting horny for 3 or 4 years. And while their first explorations of that feeling often happen alone, some of that hornyness will drive those kids to seek out others to experiment.
So without information, that 11 year old may end up having sex with another kid and may get pregnant. That 11 year old may sexually assault a younger kid, not out of malice but out of simply not knowing that you should not do this to others. The idea that these things will not happen if we don't tell kids about sex is patently false.
I know we don't like to think about literal kids getting horny, but if we ignore the fact that this happens, those will kids suffer because of our cowardly unwillingness to face the facts and to give them the information to stay safe and to be safe to others.
For those who want a source on the age at which people can start getting horny:
The sexual response cycle consists of desire, arousal, orgasm and resolution. People experience the cycle differently.
HOOOOOO boyyyyyy.
Okay. I'm trained in this.
You need to be providing age-appropriate sexual education to children from as young as you possibly can.
When kids are really young this looks like "Yes, that's mummy's vagina. Please leave the bathroom because it is rude to be in the bathroom while mummy is using the toilet. Mummy is placing her boundary, sweetheart, and you need to respect that."
"Yes, daddy does have something different to mummy. What daddy has is called a penis. Yes (mummy/daddy's penis/vagina) is the same as you."
You will notice here that I use the anatomical terms for these body parts. That is for a reason. It helps your child if something does happen better be able to disclose, exactly, what has happened to them. You do not want your child trying to disclose using words such as "secret pocket" or "hidden flower" or "willie" as this can obfuscate meaning. Imagine, if you will, Maisie trying to disclose that Coach Asshole touched her sexually by saying "Coach Asshole stuck his stick into my secret pocket," to a teacher or family friend who does not know that those words are euphemisms. Maisie has tried to disclose, but has been unsuccessful because she does not have the language that she needs.
Now, next.
Children, especially girls, can start going through puberty young. Like, really young. I have taught 9 year olds who menstruate. We need to be teaching these children about their bodies. We need to be teaching boys about the bodies of people who menstruate. There is so much misinfomation amongst grown cismen about menstruation because they are not taught it in school.
We also need to teach children about consent and bodily autonomy from as young as possible. This sets them up that even if they do, unfortunately, suffer abuse of this form they are vocal in their protestations and are more likely to disclose than children who have been taught to accept that adults can do whatever they want to a child's body. Granny kissing little Maisie on the cheek doesn't look that different to Coach Asshole calling his girls at gymnastics "Special girls" and kissing/touching them inappropriately, especially to a child (who, usually, have a much less refined emotional radar and both will cause them to shut down and just accept what is happening. You want your kid to be able to say "No, what you are doing/did to my body is wrong.")
So.
How should adults behave around children?
Firstly - my golden rule of interacting with children is If you have nothing to hide, don't hide anything.
This means when you are interacting with children you always do so in an area where you will easily be visible if another adult happens to walk by. No closed doors, try to minimise rooms without windows, have another adult present.
The reason you are doing this is to make it flag as strange and unusual to a child if an adult tries to get them alone. Safe adults do not do that. By making sure you are transparent in your behaviour, the child is more likely to flag something being wrong when someone is not transparent. You are equipping the child with skills to protect themselves.
They will also be more likely to disclose to another adult that an adult was trying to get them alone.
Secondly - No secrets.
(There is a little bit of an exception to this rule but to begin with, no secrets.)
This leads back to transparency. A safe adult will not ask a child to keep a secret from another adult. If Uncle Jeff is telling Nancy to keep "our little secret" when he gives her extra dessert, then Nancy is prone to believe that keeping a secret from another adult is something she's supposed to do when Uncle Scumbucket asks her to keep his inappropriate fondling of her as "our little secret." Children who see secrets as unusual are more likely to disclose that an adult told them to keep something a secret.
This is also important as grooming usually starts as "we need to keep you getting this special treat as our little secret." Uncle Jeff giving Nancy more icecream out of the goodness of his heart looks a lot like Uncle Scumbucket giving Nancy candy and lollies and extra screentime in an effort to get her to like him and Uncle Scumbucket's secrets are going to move on to "Sit on my lap today, honey, but don't tell your mother. Remember, this is our little secret." And eventually to Uncle Scumbucket asking Nancy to keep sexual activities as "our little secret."
You do not want children thinking that safe adults keep secrets.
Thirdly - this ties in a little with secondly but Teach your child the difference between a safe secret and an unsafe secret.
If you are unsure of the difference yourself -
A safe secret:
Does not hurt anybody by the keeping of it, including yourself.
Is usually accompanied by a feeling of excitement
Has an end date where everyone will become aware of the contents of the secret.
A safe secret is a surprise birthday party, a camping trip, a surprise trip to disneyworld, pizza!
An unsafe secret:
Can hurt someone and can hurt to keep
Is accompanied by a feeling of nervousness or dread or shame
does not have an end date. The secret is ongoing.
You can see how Uncle Scumbucket's secret is unsafe, but also how Uncle Jeff's secret is unsafe because Uncle Jeff's secret does not have an end date. Uncle Jeff's secret is unsafe because it is priming Macy to see Uncle Scumbucket's secret as reasonable, which leads back to the grooming discussed above.
Lastly, and this is very important -
'Protecting' children from having access to sexual education actually does them an injustice.
We do not live in a perfect world.
Bad things can and do happen to children, with depressing frequency. Get me drunk sometime and I'll tell you what I'm legally allowed to disclose of the stories where terrible shit has happened to children I have cared for.
Pretending that they don't happen means that if they do happen, children are unable to recognise and respond appropriately. You are making your child less equipped to protect themselves, not more.
Children who are taught age-appropriate sexual education from a young age are so much less likely to be in a situation of sexual violence than those who are not taught age-appropriate sexual education. Children who are taught age-appropriate sexual education are more likely to disclose if something does happen to them, than children who are not.
Protect your kids.
And for God's sake teach them the words 'penis' and 'vagina/vulva'
Also the idea that 11 year olds aren’t gonna want to figure out how the hell babies happen is absurd. And leads to little girls thinking they’re pregnant because they got cooties from a boy kissing her or some shit.
I learned the basics of sex Ed from a book specifically for elementary schoolers. It was fine. I wasn’t scarred. I thought it was hilarious. And you know what I did? I went and told every kid on the block.
Teach your kids age appropriate information so some little shit like me circa 1990 doesn’t make a REAL interesting school bus ride and a lot of awkward phone calls for everyone.
Even if a kid isn't being sexually abused, not giving sex ed to a pubescent kid doesn't give you a protected child, it gives you a vulnerable and easily abused adult in seven years' time. Because the main reason kids are considered unable to consent to sex is a power dynamic/autonomy thing but the second main reason is because they're considered to be still learning about themselves and about sexuality and need time to learn without the risk of being hurt. If you don't let them learn, they don't have the knowledge they need to protect themselves later.
Also, giving Elementary school Sex Education in sex-segregated groups is the worst Idea ever. Not only does it make it very easy to give both Boys and girls very harmful sexist ideas about how they should interact with each other, but it also creates Boys that don't know menstruation exists despite being cognitively old enough to understand how it works AND having agepeers who menstruate. There's a bunch of Reddit AITA Stories about the terrible conflicts that parents who want to "protect' their Boys from learning "too early" about menstruation, get themselves into. Like that stepmother who wouldn't allow her 13yo stepdaughter a bathroom trashcan and a drawer under the sink (for menstrual hygiene supplies) in a shared bathroom, because she wanted to preserve the "innocence" of her precious 14yo boy.
Men who don't know about menstruation (INCLUDING the very basics of some people experience more physical discomfort than others, feel more shame/embarassment than others, bleed more than others, need/choose different hygiene-products than others), are literally incapable of behaving appropriately around people with menstrual-hygiene-needs, and the older a Kid gets, the harder it is to teach him.
Also, the idea that teaching Essential-Life-Skill-related knowledge/education should require "consent" (that children are inherently unable to give due to being children), is both toxic and absurd (as in, children also can't "consent" to learning literacy and road-traffic-safety, but NEED to know Road Traffic safety to stay alive until reaching an arbitrary age-of-consent, and also NEED to know literacy because Part of the information-gathering and cognitive development that is supposed to eventually lead to a Person knowing enough about the world and themself, to be meaningfully able-to-consent to Things, IS near-impossible to get without Reading), but it's also nNot exclusive to Sex Education. To reference Reddit AITA yet again, some monolingual people, including this one grandmother of a mixed-ethnicity child, think that raising a child with two or more languages spoken in the household, is wrong because a toddler is too young to consent to LEARN HER OWN FATHER'S NATIVE LANGUAGE, and "should" "decide for herself" at the age of eight whether she WANTS to be bilingual or not. And somehow didn't realise that this would both lose the Kid an important window of opportunity for the neuroplasticity-based EFFORTLESSNESS of language learning, AND questions whether the child could "consent" to learn to speak at all, even in English.
