EDUCATION
in sexuality
“As
a separated parent now, I wonder if I can be a good
educator for my kids on matters of sexuality.”
A.B.
The family becomes the first environment for the development
of a child’s sexuality. Parents have a particularly
important role. Their most important educational task
is to create a loving family atmosphere. More than words,
the daily witness of respect and tenderness between
spouses can create an environment in which children
are able to grow up and go through the phases of their
sexual development with serenity.
Right from birth up to 3-4 years old, a child’s
sexual identity is being formed, copied above all from
their own parents, especially the parent of the same
sex.
This parent should also try to encourage the child’s
identification process by their constant presence, avoiding
authoritarian attitudes that can lead to a refusal of
their person.
For children’s healthy sexual development, they
need the presence of both parents. Thus, it is important
that husband and wife are careful not to be domineering,
but give due importance to the apparently weaker parent
or the one who’s less often present, trying to
support their partner and to give them their rightful
place in the eyes of their children.
Sometimes, however, it happens that a parent finds himself
alone, single-handedly facing the responsibilities for
educating his/her child. The other partner can be absent
or far away. Nevertheless, each one possesses within
himself/herself both dimensions of masculinity and femininity.
They are like hidden resources which love for their
children can unexpectedly help release. To tap these
resources can be tiring, but not impossible: pain often
opens up new paths in one’s mind and heart. What’s
important is to make sure that loneliness doesn’t
become a motive for closing up in oneself, or binding
the child to oneself morbidly and making him a scapegoat
for one’s insecurities or doing so to take revenge
on the absent partner.
It is also helpful if a child has adult reference points
who are different from his parents (and often of his
own sex) with whom he can identify, like a grandfather,
a grandmother, an uncle or an aunt, a priest, a psychologist,
a doctor, an educator, a family friend—people
in whom the child can see the action of an educating
community, which doesn’t leave them alone.
An important part of an affective and sexual education
is to avoid the indirect conditioning that fosters in
a child the idea that he/she has to adopt a stereotyped
male or female model that undermines his/her freedom
of expression and out of sync with his/her pace of growth.
Parents can help by sharing with their kids memories
they have lived in their own childhood, and above all,
sharing with them on the greater world that awaits them,
once they complete the different phases of psychological
and sexual development, so as to lessen possible anxieties
in the child’s present state. Children need help
to understand that sexuality is a journey, made up of
meaningful phases, certainly, but above all, that it’s
oriented towards the full human development of a person,
and therefore, of his/her ability to relate to others.
Maddalena Petrillo Triggiano
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Based on statistics, young boys usually have their first
alcoholic drink at age eleven-twelve. They are able
to acquire these drinks despite its being illegal to
sell such drinks to minors, for it’s easy for
clever kids to present fake IDs that belie their true
ages. Also, they have many friends who are only too
willing to “initiate” their young friends
into this activity. We know this happens in many places
all over the world, one just has to look at teenage
blogs recounting experiences of getting drunk.