Your own children may not make for the guilty parties (not your darlings, surely), but these days there’s very little respect afforded to what were once justifiably authoritative figures in educators. What this means is that apart from the specialist academic knowledge teachers impart to learners, the learners take away less by way of life lessons and the likes from their teachers. So basically it’s your responsibility to have “the talk” with your kids – it’s your responsibility to talk to them about the birds and the bees.
They’ll hardly listen to what their Life Orientation teachers have to say with the reality being that they’d rather listen to their stupid friends. It would have been okay if all they did was listen to their stupid friends and it ended there, but it doesn’t. Teens are experimenting with things like drugs, sex and alcohol much earlier on in their lives, and young adults are making use of things like this app here to find some no strings fun, so you’d rather they have the right information from a source that only has their best interests at heart – you so that they can make informed decisions in the future regarding dating.
Sure, it’s not an easy task, but it’s one that needs to be completed nevertheless.
There are a couple of approaches which will make it an effective exercise though and you’ll notice that I said it’ll be a more effective exercise and not an easy exercise because these things are never easy, any which way you look at it. For a loving dad for example it’s hard to imagine your daughter – it’s hard to imagine what will always be your baby girl experimenting with sex.
I found it quite funny when I first read it myself, but it was a very informative book that gets the message across well. I don’t quite remember the title or the author, but it was indeed a book that explained the birds and the bees very well. “When a loving husband and wife decide they want to have a child,” one paragraph read, “they hug in a very special way…”
It then goes on to explain exactly how they “hug in a very special way” and since I couldn’t contain my urge to burst out laughing I can only assume the kids who’ll be reading this will also laugh out loud. Make them read it out loud to you if you can get your hands on such educational material and laugh with them if you have to.
Of course, back in my days, we were a lot more prude when it came to sex education. Nowadays nurses can do demonstrations using dildos or fake pussy models, showing how to use condoms, tampons, and more. Some might consider it graphic for teens however it does help dispel many of the issues present in unsafe sex.
Anyway, you should encourage your child to ask you questions if there’s anything covered that they don’t quite fully understand and want clarity on. Naturally, there may be some shyness that comes to the fore, so you’ll then have to be assertive and take it upon yourself to explain things.
It’ll all get easier as you go along though and the discomfort suffered by all parties involved will diminish as it becomes clear that the aim is only to impart some valuable information to the souls you love most in your life.
At the end of the day, you want them to be equipped with all the information they need to keep them safe from the pitfalls of all the hormones that come with puberty, even though ultimately the decisive choices will lie in their own hands.
