AIBU to support age-appropriate RSE teaching for 6 to 9 year olds?

[JohnnieFedora]

RSE is being taught to the kids at our school,and some parents are complaining and saying they'll remove their kids. We're talking 7/8/9 years.

Why do parents not want their kids to learn about their bodies, how they will change, relationships etc in ahe appropriate way???

Anyone would think they're teaching the kids how to give blowjobs or something.

A parent at our school was questioning why a 7 year old needs to "know these words (vagina, ovary etc)" or hear about periods. People are weird.

They're literally just body parts and hello - you literally exist because of someone's menstrual cycle so let's not pretend it's some "adult" taboo subject 🙄

YANBU but I’ve had friends shocked that my 7yo knows that periods exist 🤷‍♀️ and we just had a chat about puberty as she was asking about when she would get boobs!

Provided it is age appropriate.
There are also some contentious issues right now, and I would want to know what the school were planning to say.

What does the R stand for in RSE? I'm assuming not Royal!

We've always been very open in our house groom a young age, just because that's the way we are with everything. But, I'm not sure choice should be removed from parents. 6 is quite young for many people and I don't see that it's essential to know all that info at that age if parents aren't comfortable with it. 6 year olds aren't getting pregnant or starting periods.

The R is for relationships.

I voted YANBU

It’s fine if it’s age appropriate and accurate. My school had an outside agency come in to do some RSE which turned out to be high inappropriate

Maybe they would prefer to teach their kids about these things themselves in their own way. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.

Some people are so weird even about being naked infront of their young kids and vice versa. I have a friend who hasn't seen her own son naked since he was 6 years old.

Its not just that - i do think a lot of parents are concerned about transgender and nonbinary being fed to them and it creating confusion and planting ideas.

So some semi-rational concerns - others just being weird and insecure!

I told my DD about periods when she was 2. She followed me into the bathroom when I went to the toilet and asked why I had a pad in my knickers. So I explained. She also knows the words vulva, labia and vagina. They are parts of her body why shouldn't she?

What do you mean by inappropriate? I am interested what people see as suitable or not.

They presented heterosexual relationships as the only type of relationship.

Our 9 year olds were told that women and men can be pregnant

My 8 year old son came out of school and announced proudly 'Today we learned about periods, so I know how everything works. I know why I won't have breasts. I know about puberty. And I know why sometimes your wee is red mummy.'

I was just glad someone else explained it in terms he could understand to save me trying!

The parents at my school that remove their kids from pshe lessons usually have their own agenda. These children have said things like god gets angry if men and men or women and woman marry, and you go to hell if you have a baby when you aren’t married…. I suspect they often want to keep their children from having open, liberal conversations and force their own beliefs in first.

I was very concerned at DS's first school that the school presented it very defensively with a link to the outside agency providing it. A small amount of digging proved they were very TWAW.
If schools/teachers think it's that important that seven year olds know "vulva" before they know "tibia" or "fibula", they should do it themselves to make sure the job gets done properly and appropriately as they know the pupils best. I really don't like these dodgy money grabbing one-size-fits-all outside agencies with political agendas being pushed on my kid who is too young for critical thinking yet.

You've talked to these kids about men and men marrying a lot, have you? Can I ask why you felt the need to do that? Because honestly it's never come up at my house in a single playdate. 🤔 It also very rarely comes up in my classroom and even the most Conservative Christian student I ever met, whose mum didn't want her reading Howl's Moving Castle, has never ever said anything like this. Let alone knowing multiple children coming out with this sort of thing.

Our school holds a meeting about PSHE and what they will teach. This year a mum with a child in year 2 hadn’t read the info sent out and had a dog with a bone that the school was going to teach their kid about trans people. They explained that isn’t on the curriculum but it didn’t go in. She also said that teaching the children terms such as ‘vulva’ would take away their innocence.

A couple of other parents were not happy that same sex couples are mentioned in ‘what a family might look like’ teaching. I pointed out that there are a number of children in the school with parents who are in same sex relationships.

Knowledge is power. Kids need knowledge. The more RSE the better IMHO!

Perhaps trans ideology - where RSE was, for awhile, co-opted to push an ideology that was less that factual and the content hidden from parents - has got something to do with parents wanting to provide this information for themselves.

It is no longer relevant for me, but I would pull my kids out of RSE if I thought there was any chance they could end up being put on the road to a trans identity.

That’s the point though, it wasn’t on the curriculum and they sent a link to the curriculum and the learning materials that would be used in each class- none of it mentioned anything to do with trans people but she just wanted the opportunity to rant.

If it was a genuine concern surely she would have read what was already shared?

The school usually prep the parents in advance with exactly what they will be covering, even sharing the resources beforehand. What will they be teaching that the parents are not happy about?

The issue is some parents won’t teach these things appropriately(stereotypes, myths, prejudice etc.), or worse at all. We’ve had y6 girls completely unaware of the mechanics of periods and terrified of them. One thought that once they start, you keep bleeding forever. That leaves children vulnerable in various ways, which is not good enough.

It is if their way is "don't tell them anything, they don't need to know", or "God will punish you if.." or " that's unnatural". There's a lot of reasons this shouldn't be left to parents

The youngest recorded mother was 5 years old!

Relationships.

I removed my DD from the lesson because the teacher couldn’t tell me what she was going to tell the class. I wanted to know what age appropriate messages my child was going to be told and she didn’t know! Bonkers.

I’ve always been open with DD and used the correct names for body parts. My child was actually getting very stressed about it all. It was built up to be quite a ‘big thing’ by the school. DD hated the lessons and told me that the boys in the class were behaving badly, with lots of sniggering. I didn’t want her to find out about puberty, sex and periods in such a shitty environment. So I pulled her out of the class, bought a great book and we read it together at home.

I’m a firm believer in ‘if a child is old enough to ask a question, they’re old enough to get an answer’. I also believe if a child hasn’t asked, they’re not ready. My child fell into the latter camp.

I was also annoyed when I talked to her about periods - I had gone through menopause so she’d never ‘seen’ me having a period - and the teachers had already told her and shown her tampons, sanitary towels, etc. I was given no heads up that that was going to happen! She was 8. I don’t know why schools think that sitting in a classroom with 30 kids is a good place to find out this stuff. As her parent I want to be the one that talks to her about puberty, sex and relationships first. So, yes, I pulled her out of the class, but I told her everything at home in private so she could ask questions without feeling silly. It worked much better that way for us.