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Last week my six-year-old…
(hold on, let me stress this. He’s SIX YEARS OLD!)
…said to me quite nonchalantly as I was doing the housework: “Mum, my willy tells me when a girl is hot.”
Maybe it’s the way my brain works, but I wondered first of all when he began referring to girls as “hot”.
Despite me pointing out there’s nothing wrong with having girls as friends, he usually pulls a face and protests that he doesn’t like girls. He’s that type of kid. So I’ve always assumed he doesn’t really see girls as anything other than an annoyance from the playground.
So I started with the question: “What do you mean ‘when a girl is hot’? Where have you heard that term before?”
He shrugged: “On the telly. And it means I like them.”
We’re pretty strict when it comes to what the kids watch, and try to keep to age-appropriate films/TV shows. But you can’t police everything they see and hear. Their favourite songs include I’m Sexy And I Know It and Bruno Mars’ Locked out of Heaven – with the lyrics “Your sex takes me to paradise”.
And thanks to the latest advert for Amazon TV, Blake has been repeating “Fast And Furious SEX” recently.
So I tried to bear that in mind as I asked: “How does your willy tell you?”
“It goes up,” he giggled.
Now bear in mind just a few days before this little chat, Brodie confessed to me that he knew Santa Claus didn’t exist – and I thought that was hard to stomach, coming from my eight-year-old. I mean, these boys are my BABIES. Up to now I’ve enjoyed the magic of seeing the world through a child’s eyes. Innocent eyes. And I didn’t think those days were coming to an end so soon. They’re only halfway through primary school for Chrissake.
But already I’m having discussions with mums whose boys are asking questions about their bodies, about how babies are made, even about what the word “sex” means – before their age has even reached double figures.
“I’d rather give my boy the right information than misinformation – which could get him into trouble,” said one friend. And she’s right.
I’ve always joked that, as they got older, all I had to do with my sons was encourage them to keep it in their pants.
My mum favoured vague responses or “I’ll tell you when you’re older” when I raised the issue of the birds and the bees as a youngster. She was too embarrassed to have ‘the talk’ with me, so I learned what I could from friends and books.
But these days children are growing up in a highly sexualised world, and we see daily reminders that failing to respect women and forming the wrong impressions about sexual freedom has heavy consequences for boys – and the men they become.
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So I guess it’s time I start talking about sex. To my six and eight-year-old.
Just a little bit for now.
So they don’t land themselves in the headteacher’s office for too much willy talk.
When do you think sex education should begin?
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