Parents, Help Your Daughter Make Sense of Sex
Is this pilot scheme planned for six secondary schools in Oxfordshire, a positive tool in the struggle to tackle unwanted pregnancies, or does it go a little too far? There has been fierce condemnation from various quarters, most rigorously from Parenting groups.
Oxfordshire County Council have defended the scheme by saying "Our commitment is to reduce the number of teenage conceptions in Oxfordshire so we're looking at the most effective ways of doing that.
" The Local Authority added "This will provide an extra level of contact for those young people who think they have taken a risk and don't want to approach a doctor or a pharmacist".
Naturally Parents are worried knowing that their child may have the option of discussing their sexual practices with someone else and in some cases receive the contraceptive.
Reports over the past few years have criticised Parents for not taking responsibility for their Children's Sex Education, so what can Parents do to connect with their Daughters and discuss this issue openly? In my experience many schools struggle with this issue and many teachers are just not equipped with the skills to teach this subject.
What most young people know about sex is learned from their Peers and in a lot of cases the information they have is incredibly wrong.
We have to accept that Sex is still difficult for many people to discuss, and talking to a child about it with any degree of coherence is difficult for most lay people.
I feel that in the majority of cases the task is best left to Parents.
Parents must become comfortable with the topic of Relationships, and Sex being a part of some relationships will crop up at some point.
There are courses for Parents that will teach them how to talk to their Child about these issues, there are Life Coaches who can help them through the barriers and enable open discussions between Parent and Child, they can help Parents to talk about this issue, just like any other issue.
My advice is to talk to children about Relationships from an early age, about all the different kinds of relationships we have in our lives, Family relationships and Friendships.
If the conversations about how we connect with each other are discussed early on, then when it comes to the time for the "Sex" part, there will be an existing understanding which will make the discussion much easier and comfortable for all involved.
Oxfordshire County Council have defended the scheme by saying "Our commitment is to reduce the number of teenage conceptions in Oxfordshire so we're looking at the most effective ways of doing that.
" The Local Authority added "This will provide an extra level of contact for those young people who think they have taken a risk and don't want to approach a doctor or a pharmacist".
Naturally Parents are worried knowing that their child may have the option of discussing their sexual practices with someone else and in some cases receive the contraceptive.
Reports over the past few years have criticised Parents for not taking responsibility for their Children's Sex Education, so what can Parents do to connect with their Daughters and discuss this issue openly? In my experience many schools struggle with this issue and many teachers are just not equipped with the skills to teach this subject.
What most young people know about sex is learned from their Peers and in a lot of cases the information they have is incredibly wrong.
We have to accept that Sex is still difficult for many people to discuss, and talking to a child about it with any degree of coherence is difficult for most lay people.
I feel that in the majority of cases the task is best left to Parents.
Parents must become comfortable with the topic of Relationships, and Sex being a part of some relationships will crop up at some point.
There are courses for Parents that will teach them how to talk to their Child about these issues, there are Life Coaches who can help them through the barriers and enable open discussions between Parent and Child, they can help Parents to talk about this issue, just like any other issue.
My advice is to talk to children about Relationships from an early age, about all the different kinds of relationships we have in our lives, Family relationships and Friendships.
If the conversations about how we connect with each other are discussed early on, then when it comes to the time for the "Sex" part, there will be an existing understanding which will make the discussion much easier and comfortable for all involved.