To be confused about DDs sex-ed question?

[CharlieUniformNovemberTango]

This past two weeks DD has been having the Sex Education talks at school.

She's come back with a few queations regarding periods and the general view that she will adopt any children :o

BUT, today, she has 'the Boy talk' and asked about the voice changing etc. Then she said that someone in the class asked about gay sex. The girl asked specifically how gay men had sex.

The teacher replied that she is not allowed to tell them how gay sex happens and that is something thy have to ask their parents.

Is that right? Are they not allowed to tell the children?

It's not a faith school btw (not that I think that should make a difference tbh)

I find it strange that ppl are answering the op by saying 'why would a year 6 need to know about anal sex'. Firstly gay men do not just practice anal sex many couples choose just to use mutual masturbation, oral etc. if children are learning about heterosexual sex then why can they not know about homosexual sex? Sex education is there to protect and aid children, preventing pregnancy and sti's. Gay young boys also need to know about sex and the sti's that they should be protecting themselves from. This is simply discrimination. It is a positive thing for ppl to have sex education at a young age and that includes homosexual sex, it will also help reduce homophobia if homosexuality is normalised to children from a young age.

I can't understand why people say that this sort of thing isn't relevant to their lives when they are 10/11.

If knowing how the Egyptians removed the brain and internal organs of a corpse before mummifying it is considered relevant, then understanding how different people have sex strikes me as being positively run of the mill!

Two odd things about this thread, for me: one is the number of posters who accept that sex education should separate out reproduction from sexuality. Poor kids: the adults raise the topic with them, get them to discuss it, then when a perfectly reasonable question gets asked they get told they're not allowed to answer!

The other odd thing is the equation of heterosexual sex with vaginal penetration, and gay sex with anal penetration. Gay sex is NOT just-like- straight-sex-but-with-added bottoms, and lesbian sex is not just-like-straight-sex-but-with-added-hands.

Surely, if we're going to raise the topic of sex with children in schools, we owe it to them to be prepared to acknowledge that sex is not just for making babies just also for love and fun. And that means kissing and touching each other in ways that feel nice.

Otherwise, we risk just perpetuating the idea that Real Sex is putting a penis into a vagina, and everything else is some kind of undesirable side issue.

Firawla, why is reproduction relevant to their life at 10? It isn't, is it? But it is educating them about something that is going to start being extremely relevant in just a couple of years (for some of them). That goes for the gay kids, too. And for the children of gay parents.

I am actually fuming at the attitude of some posters that what THEY do in bed is mainstream and normal and suitable information for children, but what I do in bed is corrupting and inappropriate and Shouldn't Be Taught.

(Bit off-topic, but I wanted to say how impressed I was that you and your daughter talk openly at her age and she asks you questions knowing she'll get answers. Having taught sex-ed to Y5 for many years, my impression is that it is not the norm and that's sad if understandable.)

It depends what the aim is. If you look at material produced by specialists (FPA for example), it's a staged curriculum which in the primary years covers relationships, puberty and basic reproduction. Orientation, wider sexual behaviour, contraception, abortion, and STIs are secondary school topics.

The 'oh yuck' reaction is still pretty common in primary age children, who can see the need for procreative sex, but would be baffled why anyone would do it for any other reason.

It's rather presumptive to assume that an explanation of gay sex needs to include references to anal sex.

Great posts Devora, completely agree.

My dd asked me searching questions about heterosexuL sex when she was 5- I was very pregnant at the time so I had no escape- I told h- and ahe then told her friends. As I've said before, there are women who still cut me dead in Tesco 10 years later. Her ungodmother is a lesbian, and m best friend is a gay man. So she and her younger brother have asked lots of questIons. Which I have answered. I see no signs of moral depravity in either of them.......

I have just, tonight, had this conversation with dd1 (13). She wanted to know why homosexuals had been banned from giving blood in the past (are active homosexual men still banned btw?)
She sailed through it far more comfortably than the original official 'where babies come from' session back in Yr 5.

Here too, seeker. I think it's COMPLETELY normal for children to ask all kinds of things at this age. My 6yo knows the basics of reproduction (because she asked, and I told her) but has started asking about HOW the sperm reaches the egg, and what me and her dad did to make her grow. Which, I'll admit, I'm slightly struggling with, because her dad and me are both gay, so we didn't 'have a special cuddle' or whatever. It's not easy to find the age-appropriate way to explain this to her in a way that is truthful but not overwhelming, and also won't lead to conversations in the playground that she is not equipped to handle (and will probably get me cut dead in Tesco till the end of time).

Nevertheless, this is her reality, and she has the right to understand where she came from just as much as any other child. I'm sure that will mean that other children in her class will be going home and asking their parents how two women have babies. I'm sure when it comes to sex education, some smart aleck will be asking, "Miss? How did Devorette get born?" And their parents will probably be cursing me that their plans to leave this conversation until secondary school have been blown out of the water by my life choices. But them's the breaks: our children live in this world, and if you decide that your child doesn't 'need' to understand about homosexuality - even when they are asking about it - then you are sending them a very strong message about how you view homosexuality.

Lots of good replies thank you!

I can understand that homosexual sex shouldn't just be defined by anal or hands but I was rather caught on the hop. I'd like to have a bit more of a discussion about sex - for whatever type of couple - isn't just about making babies. I think I will explain that all couples use different ways to feel good. But I'm not sure I want to go into great detail.

It's obviously been playing on her mind. Sex in general that is. I found a picture she drew in her room which was of a couple ( not sure of gender, bizarrely it was a person from behind between the legs of someone else so not explicit body parts)

I remember being younger then her, 8-9 I think, and finding a book of positions in my mums room. I stole it and looked through it with friends in the shed! I never talked with my parents about sex until I was 15 when my mum took me to get the pill. That was just a case of 'you need to be safe' and I knew everything by then anyway.

I just wanted it to be different for us. I want her to ask if she needs to.

Sex for me is a complicated thing very linked to emotions and self esteem. I (wrongly) link it to respect etc and I want to avoid that with her.

On the one hand, I'd like it not to have the heavy emotional attachments as it does with me but on the other hand, I want it to be something she does once she is with a steady partner. But I see the merits in teaching them that sex can be fun and casual between consenting adults. It's so confusing. But more so the emotional side of things for me.

Oh God!

She just came and asked me a question about cat sex and if our boy cat knows he's only humping a leg when he does it....

I'm really paying the price for this open to questions malarkey. It's too early for this :o

Where's my baby gone? Whaaaaaaaa

I remember me and ny friends discussing this question at guide camp. The best solution we could come up with was that they must bang their willies together, in the manner of swordsmen fencing.

That's funny! What a mental picture :)

Charlie: possibly that's the sort of follow up malarkey the teacher wanted to avoid, as it would totally derail the lesson. Teaching a group of children is vastly different to parenting a few, and that is why lessons are planned, and there are underpinning curricula and policies.

After all, would anyone object to a teacher saying in an ICT class, when asked to explain how binary works, saying something like "I can't cover that now: could you ask at home" (or wait until it's covered in the secondary maths curriculum, or look it up).

Oh god- whatever you do don't go into detail about cat sex. Or duck sex......!

Duck sex is brutal! I certainly wouldn't want her to think that's a good way to have a sexual relationship!

Exactly Edith. It's not about hiding things from children it's about trying to keep things at a level suitable for the whole class. Most 11 year olds find the simple reproductive side of sex a lot to take in without adding to that so soon. I think the teacher could have answered "they find ways to have loving relationships, you will learn more about that as you get older"

sorry, haven't read the whole thread. but not all gay sex is penetrative. some gay men just don't like that and there are plenty of other options. I would avoid suggesting that sex is penetration or that gay sex is anal sex, but just say sex is about holding and stroking too, and you don't need a vagina for that. equally, two women don't need a penis to have sex.

Why would anyone be surprised that a child of 11 would ask this question?

They are told the basic mechanics of sex, and of course, they know that men don't have vaginas. It's a natural, curious question. Don't read more into the question than there is.

We have duck gang rapes outside our window in spring "What ate they doing mummy?" "just playing darling. Come away from the window and I'll give you your body weight in chocolate"

I got very shirty and a tad emotional at a parents 'talk' on the sex ed curriculum when my dd was that age. I asked about how they dealt with homosexuality and the reply was "I've never had a child tell me they were worried they were gay". I said that if hey were picking up that it was something they should worry about then no wonder.

I had recently returned from the funeral of one of my own ex pupils - killed himself - had been leading a total double life, gay & out at work in one city, friends & family in home town no idea. He evidently couldn't keep up the deception.

I pointed out to the assembled parents and teacher that statistically about 2 of the children in ths class might be gay, it might be my dd, it might be Jane's ds, how was the school caring for their emotional well being?

IMO It's really not good enough to cater for people's prejudice and embarrassment when there are lives at stake. We teach the facts of evolution while recognising people have religious objections to it, we should teach the facts of differing sexualities in the same unemotional way.

Homosexual attraction is a normal variant, sex has a number of purposes, one of them is to have babies (so penises go into vaginas) but it's also a way for people to show they care about each other which involves a lot of kissing and cuddling and stroking and it doesn't need a penis to go into a vagina for that to happen. It can happen between a man & woman, man & man or woman & woman. It's not rocket science and it's not difficult to explain, it just needs to be done by someone trained and capable. You wouldn't expect a creationist to teach evolution well so why would you expect someone embarrassed about the idea of gay sex to teach human sexuality well?

I think you've taken the right approach OP - but if this is school policy I would urge all parents to challenge it. What if your child is gay? What message about themselves do you want them to be hearing?

A number of years after my school incident a friend of my then dh killed himself because he couldn't come out to his parents - he believed they'd rather have a dead son than a gay son :(

The situation is obviously better than it was - at secondary school all my dcs had friends who were gay or lesbian and out, unheard of in my day - but we need to tackle prejudice where we find it - and schools not talking about gay sex when they will talk about straight sex IS prejudice.

Did most people really only find out about sex when they had sex ed lessons in year 6? I went to several primary schools and in all of them we knew about sex from older siblings or whatever from at least 6 or 7 years old. I remember people piling coats up in the playground one break time in year 2 so two nominated kids could hide underneath and try it.