How to talk about sexuality with your children?

 

Addressing issues of sexuality with children is not easy. The school evokes these subjects, but often in a biological way. Parental counselling, on the other hand, must be adapted to each age and personality.




But how to "talk about all this"? At the beginning of January, the series Sex Education exceeded 40 million views in less than six weeks of broadcasting on Netflix. In a comic fashion, a teenage son of a sexologist uses his mother to advise his classmates, for a fee. In real life, if boyfriends and girlfriends are a source of information, it is up to adults, parents and teachers, to usefully clarify things.




What is the situation in France? The Ministry of National Education provides advice to teachers on its website, under the heading "Student health". It says that it is a question of "helping to prepare pupils for their adult lives... sexuality education is based on the values of equality, tolerance, respect for oneself and others. It shall ensure respect for the consciences, the right to privacy and the private life of each individual." In concrete terms, in primary school, it is up to the school teacher to manage to include time for sexuality education. And in middle and high school, the ministry asks for at least three annual sessions of sexuality education.

The place of parents

"Some children are interested, alone or through games with friends, while others are unaware of any questions about it."

Patrick Doucet, sexology teacher

On the parents' side, educational practices vary considerably according to social backgrounds, cultures and individual backgrounds. "Instead, are we asking how to talk to adults about children's sexuality," says Patrick Doucet, a sexology teacher in Montreal and author of La Vie sexuelle des enfants? (Ed. Liber). "A taboo persists around this issue, as if real children are chaste and pure and stay waiting for puberty in order to experience sexual chills," he says.




However, in order to talk to children about sex, we need to identify what has already been addressed, and the questions that this poses to the young person. "As happens in adults, the disposition to sexuality is above all individual. Some children are interested, alone or through games with friends, while others are unaware of any questions about it." Obviously, continues the sexologist, each age is different: "6-year-olds may have an imaginary focused on games of a sexual nature, but these are not anticipated experiences, planned, as in 16-year-old teenagers."

Raise the issue of consent

How can parents react? Some games are a source of concern for many of them. But the games of 6-year-olds have nothing to do with those of 11-year-olds or older, and the information to be given must therefore be radically different. "With these children, we must, in any case, raise the question of the consent of the other," advises Patrick Doucet.




At the age of 11, on average, young humans are confronted accidentally or not with pornography and discussions about sexual practices. "At that age, sex education until now focused on reproductive biology, while children ask themselves other questions: act in itself, orgasms, sexual dysfunctions...," explains Patrick Doucet.




As a result, over the past decade or so, with the rise of YouTube and social networks, porn has become a source of information." Recently, one of my students, referring to her teenage viewings, said to me: "I wasn't going to ask my mother how to do it!" It is up to the parents, then, to take back the hand.