Sex education: Talking to toddlers and preschoolers about sex

Sex education can begin anytime. Here's how to set the stage — and how to answer your children's questions.
Sex education is a topic many parents would prefer to avoid. And if you have young children, you might think you're off the hook — at least for a while. But that's not necessarily true. Sex education can begin anytime. Let your children set the pace with their questions.

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I think this is a useful website for parents to know how to communicate with your child if they ask questions about pregnancy.

Free condoms for teenagers

CHILDREN as young as 13 are being given free condoms in a bid to tackle teenage pregnancy.

Hampshire County Council is offering free contraception to youngsters on some secondary school sites, colleges and youth drop-in centres even though the age at which children can legally have sexual intercourse in Britain is 16.

The council is getting £8,000 of government money to buy condoms over the next year for the county-wide scheme, called Get It On.

The aim is to reduce teenage pregnancy rates. While under-18 conception rates have dropped in Britain, they are still the highest in Western Europe.

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To Educate or Not to Educate?

Comprehensive sex education should be taught at schools nation wide. There are many consequences to students not getting all of the facts which include high pregnancy and abortion rates as well as high STD and STI numbers. There are other countries where comprehensive sex ed. is taught and their numbers on all are lower. It also breaks down what is really being taught in all inclusive sex ed. programs.

The majority of today’s youth are only being told half of the story when it come to sex. Forty-nine of our fifty states have federally funded “Abstinence Only” sex education in their public schools. By only teaching that sex should be saved until marriage adolescents are not being exposed to the information they need in order to make informed decisions about their own sex lives. As a result of this, if young adults do chose to become sexually active, they will not know how to or have the tools necessary to have safe sex of any form. By establishing comprehensive sex education in all schools the youth of America will not only learn about ways to effectively protect themselves from STDs and pregnancy, but also about healthy relationships and decision making skills.

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Best way to stop abortion is honest sex education

The abortion debate frustrates Joan Specht. She has been a nurse at Planned Parenthood in Broward County for eight years, and was a labor and delivery nurse at a Boca Raton hospital before that.

She has helped deliver healthy babies and has helped women who've decided to abort.With the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruling that lawmakers can ban certain abortion procedures, she worries that women's control over their bodies is being chipped away.But she also has another, more pressing concern: that teens aren't getting properly educated to avoid unwanted pregnancies -- and the need for abortions -- to begin with.

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Trust me, I'm a junior doctor

Teenagers know far too much about sex, says Max Pemberton

'And when Mummy and Daddy really love each other..." my mum says, blinking at me with a fixed smile. "Yeah, I know," I interrupt, dreading where this conversation is leading.

My dad, sitting alongside her on the sofa, has an air of contained panic and a strange constipated expression. Mum is holding a booklet. "Sometimes they give each other a special kind of cuddle," she perseveres, swallowing hard. "Yeah, thanks, really," I interrupt again, wondering which of us has turned the deepest shade of red. "And sometimes then what happens is that Daddy's..." her voice falters. "OK, OK, thanks, that's enough!" I scream.

"Basically, your mother and I want to talk to you about..." begins my dad, who was doing well up to this point. I am now rather enjoying their attempts to avoid using any remotely naughty words. "...conjugal relations," he continues, after a lengthy pause. "Making love," she butts in, fearing that conjugal relations sounds like something to do with international politics.

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'Learning about sex is a normal part of growing up'

Research has shown that abstinence-only sex education hasn't worked. That's no surprise, says Simon Blake, who believes young people need more, not less, information and choice.

New American research has confirmed that abstinence-only education doesn't work. The study found that teenagers who had been educated to believe they should not have sex before marriage were, in fact, just as likely as other teenagers to become sexually active.

Hopefully, the advocates of the chastity pledge, both in the US, and in the UK where some recently have tried to emulate the American approach, will now accept that abstinence-only education is not the silver bullet that can solve high rates of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

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Kids need truth about sex

Sharon Swanson, Correspondent

My 13-year-old daughter wanted to see "The Nativity" over the winter holidays. It's spring now, and I'm still dealing with the fallout of my boycott of that particular film. "Mom, did you know that the girl who plays Mary is 15 and she's pregnant too, just like Jesus' mother?" she said of actress and mom-to-be Keisha Castle-Hughes.
"Well, um, there are some major differences between those two," I said, while trying to decide what grounds I would use for not patronizing an ostensibly religious movie that glamorizes an underage girl's pregnancy for publicity purposes.

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Talking to teens can help prevent pregnancy

The studies have been done, and the conclusions are firm as to the influence that adults have on teens as it pertains to sex.Some of thefindings include

n What a parent thinks about premarital sex influences how their teens think about premarital sex.

n What adults in general think about premarital sex affects what teens think about it.

n Adult discussion of sexual values can predict how a teen thinks and behaves sexually.

Parental involvement, parent-child communication, family values and expectations of your children are positively related to delaying sexual behaviors, according to research titled “Families Matter,” the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy’s research of family influences on adolescent pregnancy.

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10pc of male school pupils have had sex, survey finds

About one in 10 male secondary students has had sex, a new survey finds. The number for female students is 7 per cent, according to the study by Mother's Choice, a charity for young mothers and babies, and City University.

The study, which examines local adolescents' attitudes and behaviour towards sexuality, interviewed 1,161 boys and 1,011 girls aged 12 to 19 from 30 secondary schools.

More than 30 per cent of male students believe sex is part of dating but only 15 per cent of female students think so.

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I found this news on yahoo.com.hk today, and I was quite surprised about it. Nowadays, teens pregnancy is a problem around the world, and there are no solution for this problem yet but only educating teenagers.

Teens: Wait for sex

Youngsters warned about the consequences of not waiting

By MARK NEWMAN Courier staff writer

OTTUMWA — The message isn’t one of safe sex; it’s the message of no sex. During a short play they performed Thursday, teens told fifth-graders to be smart.

“Sometimes, teenagers can let romantic relationships move too fast and turn into sexual relationships,” the high schoolers announced. “Sex can have major consequences ... most teenagers aren’t prepared to deal with.”

The Teen Leaders in Action program brought Ottumwa High School students to Douma Elementary School for a lesson about abstinence.

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Educate teens to make better choices

Teen pregnancy. A term that society is all too familiar with. A term that Tulare County is too familiar and comfortable with. Yet, teen pregnancy seems to be commonly overlooked or ignored by most people.

This is unsettling considering that Tulare County averages about 86 births per 1,000 teens compared to the state average of 56.7 births per 1,000 teens.

What is to blame for so many young women becoming pregnant? Personally, I think there are many causes that help to attribute to teen pregnancy. The most important reason is the lack of knowledge young women receive about sex and the dangers that come with being sexually active.

Teens are not receiving all the information needed to prevent a pregnancy, such as contraception.

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Schools handing out morning after pill to under-age girls backed by Ofsted

The controversial decision for schools to provide under-age girls with emergency contraception has been endorsed by education watchdog Ofsted.

The schools inspectorate said that school nurses who administered hormone injections and the morning- after pill to girls who had sex without condoms were performing a "valuable service".

In a report which enraged traditionalists, Ofsted said more schools should provide such facilities as part of moves to cut teenage pregnancy rates.

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Teens attitude about teen sex and pregnancy

Nowadays, teens pregnancy is a problem in the society, I beleive that this is really because most of the teens don't treat sex as a serious thing. They have sex because most of them think that it is funny, so of course they will not care about the consequences of it.

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy recently released its "With One Voice 2007” report, this is a report of how teenagers think about teens sex and pregnancy. There are also adults view on sending the message to their children.

We can see it from the figure, 64% of the teens said they do share parents' value about sex. It sounds really impressing I think, because it is really important that both parents and teens should share their views together in order to send the correct information to the children about sex.

However, 48% have never thought about what their life would become if they got or got someone else pregnant. It is not surprise that they will not think about it becasue they don't really know what will happen as they haven't experienced it before.

Here are the figures

Growing up as a mother

This is a real life story of a mother who was pregnant when she was 14. And without any doubt, she paid the price:

At 14, Anna Gurganus thought she had such "a humdrum life" she couldn't wait to get out of high school.

But that was before she became pregnant and married at age 15. Suddenly, any plans she had came to a screeching halt and school -- along with childhood -- became distant memories.

That was nearly 19 years ago. Now, at age 33, she and husband, Jimmy, have six children. And while they might be considered a success story for staying together, each member of the family has paid the price for being a part of a teen pregnancy.

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