FINAL TSTO Lesa Dec 14.pdf - Flipbook - Page 13
Secondary school corridors and change rooms are the sites for
excitement and despair about friendships, bodies, belonging,
and being loveable. By the end of high school about half of all
young people will have had sexual intercourse.2 Some schools
run programs that give young people a chance to make informed
choices and think about values around this part of their lives.
Finding out what your school is teaching is a good way to get the
conversation going at home.
... excitement and despair
about friendships,
bodies, belonging, and
being loveable.
Screen time — the third lesson
It’s hard to trace the effects of TV and movie talk on children’s
understanding of sex and themselves. It’s even harder to assess
its effect on parents and how we react to sexual matters. We can
try to make sure kids know the difference between TV beauty and
real beauty, TV love and real love, but it’s just as hard for parents
to know what’s true about TV-presented dangers for our kids. In
fact we can use TV and other media to start conversations and
share opinions and values. We can use it to talk about whether the
stories are like real life, or a beat-up.
Most concerns expressed about children and media
seem to be about pornography. There is little doubt:
pornography does have a negative effect on young
people’s sense of what is ‘real’ and acceptable in sex and
relationships.3
Online relationships — the four th lesson
Mobile phones, Internet chat and social networking sites
like Facebook mean kids are more likely to get closer,
sooner, with someone they are just getting to know. They
can also share photographs. The technology helps us
feel connected and supported and it’s fun. But young kids
need to know that any photos or video taken with phones
or webcams could become public the moment they are
sent (for more on this, see: Parenting in the digital age:
Texts and Social Media, page 49).
The question is not whether children will learn
about sexuality, rather, what and how do we
want them to learn?
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