to be uterly depressed watching The Hospital

[Fibilou]

The last episode was on sexual health in teens. The kid are just so clueless, the "safe sex" message just doesn't seem to be getting through.
"how many partners have you had this week" "4" "did you use a condom" "with two I think"

"do you wear a condom" "only if the girl asks"

There was a bloke that thought chlamydia was a "rite of passage" and didn't seem at bothered about his genital herpes when he was told it couldbe "managed".

And no judgement, no telling them to stop shagging anything that moves, completely unprotected. Perish the thought someone might tell them they're doing something stupid. All the HCPs just trottedout platitudes about it being "very common" and "not to worry about it".

I know it's only a TV programme and was only a tiny fraction of teenagers so not representative of all teens/young adults but I found the ignorance and lack of interest in their sexual health really shocking. And a bit of a damning indictment of our sex education classes

I caught some of that and turned it off in despair - how can teens be so clueless - they have been let down badly by parents and schools if they can get to that age without knowing the importance of safe sex.

YANBU. I decided a long time ago that sex education for DC was primarily my job as parent. Sex education at school can't be relied upon solely. The 'you don't know where they've been' message, judging by the irresponsible types in that programme, is very important to get across if you want to protect your own children.

Chil1234 - quite. Good for you.

Of course it's every parents' responsibility...it's outrageous that people might think otherwise.

I think sex education is all f*cked up in this country. It's illegal for children below the age of 16 to (a) have sex and (b) buy fireworks or cigarettes.

Yet they do both. However, only with regard to sex do we try to teach them about it at increasingly younger ages, all in the name of "protecting" them.

Why don't we teach kids about fireworks or cigarettes, in order to protect them?

Simples - because we know that by so doing we will be encouraging them to buy them and "experiment" therewith.

Oh but hang on....

Why can't sex education be done by trained people? Why do they rely on the teacher to do it?
Why can't a company get called in by a school and do a 'show' and then have some serious guy in a white coat tell them that their bits will "fall off" if they don't have unprotected sex.

They have actors going around doing Shakespeare plays, why not 'sex education'?
And no it's not porno

I meant "they have to have protected sex" to stop their bits falling off.

I'd shown them a graphic video of childbirth, stitches and everything.

I would show them pictures of STI's. I would give them condoms.

What shocked me was the girls semed to have so little self worth and aspiration that a text from a boy saying 'be here in 10 mins or you're chucked,' was taken seriously. And responded to. So you know that if he has that much control, she is certainly having sex with him. Contraception doesn't figure.

Smallorange, yes that's it exactly or even show a 'play' about the girl you mention above and then maybe the kids will show how it cheapens them.

Y Touring, Loudmouth and Black Cat theatre all do sex education shows, Ripeberry. Unfortunately, you get some schools whose attitude is like this

BarmyArmy

Even when I was at secondary school (early ninties) we had lessons on the dangers of smoking, drinking, fireworks, crossing the road etc.

The thing is, young teenagers are very often more inclinded to believe their mates on these topics - regardless of how daft the things they come out with may be. They also think that they are immortal, invincible and that these things only happen to other people. It's a bloody difficult issue.

It was utterly depressing. I went to a 'top 10' uni, but even there I was amazed at friends who would have unprotected sex, even with people they barely knew. They were all incredibly lucky not to catch anything, though one did end up having a MC.

I think AIDs is seen as something very remote, and not a real danger. Definitely time for a big campaign I think.

Binge drinking also has a lot to answer for.

We seem to have more of a problem with feckless teens than other countries.

I think it is partly that we send off kids on their own much earlier than other nationalities.

I lived in the states and there were never gangs of kids hanging around street corners (mind you it was probably too hot/cold some of the time, likewise, France, there are inner city gangs but it isn't common in the touristy places. And family and/or friend get togethers are more common (without the accompanying amounts of booze that Brits always include in any 'do').

So, imo, the fact that Brits booze alot means you want your kids out of the way so you can do that (eg at weekend bbqs). Secondly we send them off to have fun with their friends, sleep-overs, taking the bus into town (ie hanging about the streets)that other nationalities don't do.

If going out meant going to the swimming pool with mum, dad and grandparents, or the cinema or whatever and not sloping off with your equally irresponsible friends their behaviour would be quite different.

I encouraged my kids to go off and have fun with their pals but now feel it was partly to get them out of the house so I could do what I wanted wihout interruption.

Also, if the community contributed to keeping an eye on children, as they seem to do on the continent, it would be less pressure on parents

"The thing is, young teenagers are very often more inclinded to believe their mates on these topics"

Which is, of course, school gate gossip is ineffective: unlike those teens, adults rarely listen to the ill-informed opinions of their friends, and are careful to instead get accurate information from qualified professionals. That's why the MMR-causes-autism rumour burnt out so quickly and had so little effect on vaccination rates: adults aren't inclined to believe their mates and insubstantial media stories, so rapidly got information from doctors and other health care professionals.

No, wait...

The same's true of school admission processes: fortunately for their children, people never listen to what their neighbour's Auntie Flo says about how even though the council says order of preference is not part of the admission criteria everyone knows it is, and the clear statements in the council admission information have precedence.

No, wait...

There's an almost inevitable tendency for people to trust "people like us" (with an extra round of "you don't understand unless you've experienced it" for fun). Why condemn teenagers for the same thing?

Wrote the above in a rush - I was trying to put forward views on why kids end up like those at the hospital. And attempting to make the point that we in the UK push our kids away too soon and absolve responsibility at the first opportunity.

Big generalisation, of course.

tokyonambu

What made you think I was condemming them? I was stating a fact. Yes, there are plenty of other groups who act in just as much of an illogical manner. This does not alter what I said.

There are also teenagers who have more sense and either use condoms or keep their legs crossed.

I couldn't do that job though. i'D WANT TO THROTTLE THEM ALL.

I was picking up on "oung teenagers are very often more inclinded to believe their mates on these topics". I don't believe the "very often" and I think TV programmes like that are porn for Daily Mail readers ("youth of today are scum"). It's so far out on the edge as to be meaningless, and rather like filming in a pupil referral unit as a reflection of suburban comprehensives. Most teenagers are delightful; the media at the moment has an interest in saying otherwise.

My parents never had the sex talk with me. Everything I knew came from school, friends and books. Looking back it's strange because they are very open, liberal, communicative people so why they never spoke of sex is a mystery to me. They were raised quite strict catholics and I presume the topic was totally taboo at home so they just didn't know how to handle it with their own children. My sisters and I are all mothers now and I often wonder if my parents think it's weird how we got to this point without them ever telling us anything about it. Did they just assume school would do it?

Having said that, I knew not to sleep around and didn't. So I don't think parents not talking about it is necessarily to blame. teens don't take risks and put it about through lack of information - more like lack of self-esteem.

Although that school's objection did seem to have been rooted in the fact that in the first show they'd had performed the "gay" aspect of the topic was represented by dramatised male rape, for an audience of 12-15 year old girls.

And then (given that it was a girls' school) "the ban had led the actors to skirt around important issues like HIV and anal sex" which seems odd as if those girls were having anal sex (with anything that ran a risk of transmitting HIV) it would presumably be in a heterosexual relationship. If the theatre group weren't covering anal sex exept in the context of gay relationships then perhaps they are the ones who need to look at their assumptions (or hang out on MN on a Friday night more...)

It does seem to be rather common to assume that the sine qua non of male homosexuality is anal sex, and the sole setting for anal sex is male homosexuality. Religious bigots use their worries about anal sex (and it is, unambiguously, a more effective vector for disease transmission than other practices) as a lever to inveigh against homosexuality per se.

It would be fascinating, albeit stuffed full (fnarr fnarr) for opportunities for selection bias and self-reporting errors, to know how common anal sex is various settings. It might well turn out that it's as common in heterosexual as homosexual settings.

I found the attitude of the teenagers and young adults on this programme shocking. The thing that struck me the most was not the lack of education but the lack of self worth. It was truly depressing.

What pissed me off beyond belief was the generalisation of teenagers and young people, "Teenagers these days don't care/ are uneducated/ don't want to do anything for themselves/ are lazy etc."

It drives me mad.

You don't think your first paragraph ("lack of self worth") and your second ("generalisation...teenagers these days") might be related? Successful teenagers are told their qualifications are worthless and their education dumbed down; unsuccessful teenagers are told they're feral. At risk of sounding like Kinnochio ("A Labour government") a lot of this demonisation happened under Labour. One major problem has been a child protection culture which means that children operate completely isolated from adult supervision, plus (as someone said upthread) a desire by too many parents to socialise with other people of their own age without children being involved.

I watched this programme just last night and was completely horrified that there are some teenagers about who are so utterly clueless. It was beyond belief.

The boy who had showed up for his 5th HIV screening and he only looked about 20 if that was very scary.

Also the boy diagnosed with herpes who didn't seem remotely bothered. Worrying.

I had little sex education at home, little at school, obviously playground banter but I got most of my info and advice from the normal girls magazines and I managed to do ok for myself. FFS its not rocket science.

My dd's sex education at her school was very comprehensive. I remember a text she sent me at lunchtime which made me laugh 'mum they just showed us herpes in sex ed OMG am never having sex ever lol'

But Barmy makes a good point - all teh sex ed and guidance in the world isn't going to do any good if you just let your kids go wherever they want until silly o'clock. My dd is not allowed out at night, at all. I am quite strict with where she goes and what she does.

"I think AIDs is seen as something very remote, and not a real danger. Definitely time for a big campaign I think."

I would be interested in seeing the current levels of infection in the under 25s. I'm certain I heard that it is on the increase for the first time in years.

The rate of heterosexual AIDS infection is quite low, simply because the chances of transmission at each sexual encounter are low and rates of AIDS are very low in the UK. Unfortunately, the massive advertising campaigns that attempted to prevent stigmatisation of at-risk groups by implying that AIDS was a major risk to everyone had the unintended consequence of rebounding when heterosexual AIDS didn't become a major epidemic. The reservoir of the disease in the UK is diffuse enough, and transmission difficult enough, that it isn't spreading remotely as quickly as was feared at the outset. And groups of people who are promiscuous tend to be promiscuous in quite closed groups, which isn't anything like the risk (if everyone in a group sleeps with everyone else, but few of them do so outside the group, the risk of infection is much lower).