Are all school nurses now encouraging teenage girls to have the contraceptive implant?

Oh. My point is that even in this back of beyond part of the world, the messages can be decently delivered. So your school nurse has no excuse.

Still interrogating poor dd aged 15.....

They saw close up pics of stds. Male and female genitals. Also had some stats re age groups and incidence of stds though she can't remember any of it and they weren't given any documents.

Also the nurse did an activity with them where the class had to wander about shakinghands after a boy and a girl had been slipped a bit of paper saying they had a STD. Afterwards they were told that everyone who had shaken hands with that boy / girl or anyone who had been in contact would have that STD. ( hope that makes sense!!)

it may sound draconian but i think close up pictures of herpes lesions and descriptions of it from people who have it and the facts of just how many 'normal' looking people (including their genitals) carry it would have been more encouraging of condom use for me than vague you can catch an std, here's a list of stds etc. it seemed alien and something a different kind of people had and dealt with.

show them close up images and symptom descriptions of all the different diseases and give them the stats of how many carry what because they're actually quite terrifying when you look at them - some of them are epidemic, especially amongst young people. and not only are they easier to catch for women many seem to have more devastating effects upon women than men.

yep idohopenot - and there could be a history of hormonally triggered mental illness in the family that they know nothing about. bipolar for example can be triggered into emerging for the first time by a big hormonal event. if your child was having hideous headaches or bleeding non stop (which happens to some) and developing anaemia etc etc. you'd no nothing about what was really going on with them.

what doesn't happen from the sex ed i've seen at three different secondary schools is a detailed study of stds as in knowing what they are, what they look like, what they do to you, which ones are never recovered from, which ones can show no signs or symptoms on the person you're having sex with but can they are still contagious etc etc.

instead of disease being a vague idea they need to learn what each disease is, how prevalent it is - eg. 1 in 4 people aged 14-25 are carriers of disease X. you know?

give them the bloody facts graphically and in detail. it's surprising but this does not happen.

Maybe that's what they should be telling the girls in school.

I don't imagine that would get a very positive response

girls catch stds far more readily than straight men.

I don't think you're over reacting at all.

My daughter had sex education recently and says that while they were told that while the implant is a popular option, the only option to prevent infections was to use condoms.

In terms of STDs the risk groups go

male to male
male to female
female to male
female to female

Women who exclusively have sex with women have very low incidence of STDs

STDs more easily passed boy to girl than vice versa.
Girls more likely to be having sex with older boys/men. That is the other thing - on another thread on here apparently it is fine to give implants but not talk to girl about relationship and if it is coercive / abusive then do something or think about doing something.

i personally feel that for implants you should have to be 18yo or have parental consent. it's not like the pill - it has long lasting effects that cannot easily be reversed. and when they're handing hormone contraceptive to girls do they even know their medical history re: migraines plus hormonal contraception equals horribly increased risk of stroke. or are they just taking a child's word for it that they're ok to take it and then giving it?

this is reckless. there is no way they perform invasive medical treatments on boys that could have serious side effects and consequences yet with girls it's now the norm and from as young as 13 without parental involvement? it's wrong.

It is horrifying that they are praising the scheme for cutting teen pregnancies but are completely ignoring the almost guaranteed rise in STDs. These stats are notably absent.

A friend of mine had the implant recently and it was awful for her; she is a grown woman who could make this decision having looked at all the facts first. She ended up having to have it removed, a procedure which took 40 minutes of pain. I would be furious at a school happily implanted my young daughter with something like this.

YANBU about the implant. Girls are not fully developed and no one really knows the long term effects. But more importantly condoms should be the main form of contraception among teens IMO. Not sure why this thread is so anti boys though - I mean they can get STDs too so it is not in their interest not to use a condom.