When should you let your little girl in on the intricacies of sexual development and its attendant complexities? The debate on the appropriate age for teaching sex education to young females rose up again this week, when we stopped for a bite at the city centre outlet of a renowned unhealthy-food restaurant chain, during an impulse window-shopping session.
While we all 'sort of' agreed that the task was most aptly suited to the little lassie's immediate family in the first instance, it still begged the question of 'when?'.
As S, R-2 and I munched on flaming salsa wraps, burgers and assorted chip portions I regaled them with an event that took place while I visited some relatives who had two pre-teenage girls.
Coming from a traditional African society, most subjects that touch on sexuality in any degree are easily considered highly taboo - of the Don't ask, Don't mention, Don't see, Don't hear, variety.
As such, you do not get any constructive guidelines on what happens when, how and why, during your childhood years. By the time you know what's what it is way too late for any sex education class to make any lasting impact on your ideologies and responses.
At least, that was the way I saw it.
So there's me and my audience of two little girlies and their middle-aged mum, with the stage all set for the BIG STORY. Earlier on, she had voiced some concern over her girls' abilities to fend off the not-so-harmless advances of members of the opposite sex.
And she had good cause to worry, in my opinion, as apparently she had discharged this duty by informing the curious eleven year-olds solemnly of the risk of conceiving as a consequence of suffering a boy's 'touch' on their person.
To me, that was taking immaculate conception to a whole new level! I set about changing all that the first chance I got.
R-2 and S remarked on the delicacy of giving voice to this aspect of a child's development and the importance of getting the message across in the right way. As a child, this was not one of the topics that R-2 had been exposed to growing up in her native New Zealand. For S, the repressive atmosphere of the francophone African country of her birth meant any curiousity about sexual development on the child's part indicated a budding sexual perversion which was strongly discouraged - sadly enough, it was the same story with my country-folk. Nevertheless, we three stuck to the belief that, in this respect, the parental guidance we had received was sorely lacking in breadth and depth.
To my two friends, the age of five was much too young to have tender ears filled with the stark realities of the human development cycle.
The funny thing was, at that age I already had a fair idea what the drama was all about albeit from inappropriate sources and with objectionable conclusions. So clearly, I disagreed with their position on the right age for a real up-close, personal and adult conversation with your little girl on the significance of the birds and the bees principle.
And then S asked how I was going to give a young child in her pre-teens the 'heads up' on the imminent changes that would, naturally, throw her off balance on impact.
That's when I let them in on the steps I had taken (with the pre-teens earlier mentioned), and would most likely rely on again, to accomplish this object:
Rustling through my suitcase, I reached out for my pack of Always sanitary towels when it suddenly occurred to me 'that' was a good starting point for the evening's exercise. On sighting one of the little angels in the living room I waved one sealed towel in the air and asked if she could identify the item I held.
Predictably, she replied in the negative, so I settled down to tell her the story of the egg and the busy tadpoles. As she got more and more into it, her sister joined us and they both drank in every careful explanation I threw their way. The trick was to make it as interactive as possible in order to gauge their reactions and preconceptions, and straighten out any inaccurate beliefs on the subject.
But first, I forbade their mum from interrupting or offering helpful suggestions as this tended to put my pupils on the defensive. It was a school session for little girls only and that precluded older girls who had passed through this module class from having their say!
The story goes something like this.
"Normally, a young girl below the age of eleven can not make a baby and that is because her body is not able to produce baby eggs and house them safely. And then from the age of twelve, in most cases, a change takes place within her and suddenly her body is quite excited to prepare for a lovely baby.
This happens as a part of changing from a little girl to a grown-up and the little-girl body wants her to be happy and prepared for life's changes.
So what does it do? It runs around and first builds a fine baby-egg and then it starts the serious work of completing a cushy-cushy house for the baby-egg so it does not get injured as it wanders about in the womb for about two days usually. The changing girl-body usually builds the baby-egg once a month, but if it gets really really excited it can work double-time and produce two fine baby-eggs.
The eggs are happy, the cushy-cushy housing is secure and the body is just singing all day long because it was able to build something so great and wonderful. Now, if after 24 hours the girl-body does not receive any friendly guests, it gets a bit bored and decides to return things back to the way they were. And so it goes about re-decorating by mashing up the baby-egg and pulling down all the cushy-cushy furnishing in the baby-egg house i.e. the womb. And then it throws them all away.
Thus, all these mashed-up pieces have to go out of the girl as the body does not want them anymore. So she bleeds all this out in a wee-wee fashion till all the mashed up pieces are gone. This time the wee-wee is a bright red colour as the furnishing is made up of body cells and body cells turn bloody when they are mashed up. The cushy-cushy furnishing is quite much and sometimes the red wee-wee runs for three or more days.
When a little girl gets wet with wee-wee she is not very happy because it is sticky, smells a bit off and makes her lovely clothes wet. The red wee-wee does the same because the wet marks give the clothes a red colour and makes them look dirty. The little girl then has to have a wash and get a new set of pretty clothes to wear but that does not solve the problem because the wee-wee that is red does not stop for running for three or more days. This would surely get the clean set of pretty clothes soon dirty.
And how do we solve this? The little girl needs some accessory that would keep her body from getting sticky and her clean, pretty dresses from getting dirty. This is a very useful item called a sanitary towel.
So, the first time she has red wee-wee running she needs to tell a grown up who would show her how to place the towel to catch the red wee-wee and keep her clothes clean and dry. It is only the red wee-wee that needs to be caught in the towel as the little girl will still be able to wee-wee clear liquids into the loo as before. If clear wee-wee is caught in the towel it fills it up quickly and makes the little girl sticky and wet.
After the first time, the little girl can tell when the red wee-wee would come again as her body finishes the design of another cushy-cushy baby-egg housing and builds another baby-egg after 28 days usually. So the little girl knows that she can count 28 days from the day of the first red wee-wee to find out what day she would see the red wee-wee run next.
And that is the change that takes place to show the menstrual cycle the changing body of a little girl goes through".
To say my little angels were fascinated would be a big understatement. They stared at me throughout the narration with wide eyes and I could barely catch a breath and move on to the next stage of my story that involved the baby tadpoles before I was bombarded with questions.
I made sure to include them during the narration by trying to find out what actions they would have taken if they had not received proper information in this regard. Their responses ranged from ignorance to simple actions, with some bizarre steps thrown in. I gently pointed out why these responses might be just a tad absurd in the circumstance and we were able to have a laugh about it.
It felt like an ideal moment to give a quick show of putting a towel on a pair of panties for them to see how it was done.
At this stage S and R-2 looked at me quite thoughtfully, I reckoned. So I asked if it would ever have occurred to them to break down the details in a similar manner. The general consensus was that they would gloss over the whole subject of the reproductive cycle and leave the nitty gritty to be handled by their little girls' teachers in school or the more knowledgeable of their peers. The whole aspect of hygiene would, of course, be dealt with at home to stave off any public exposure which might cause personal embarrassment to a little girl.
I, for one, would not be leaving a single aspect of this exercise to any impartial third party educator.
R-2 was interested in discovering my method of delivering the lesson about sexual relations to my prospective little girl. I was delighted to recount the episode with my little pre-teens at the next stage of our lesson on sexual development.
The next post retells the story of the baby-eggs and the baby-tadpoles in its relative context.
p.s. - N says I should baldly state that the red liquid is blood and reduce the molly-coddling (as eleven is a stable age to understand the facts of the cycle).
For five year old girls though, it could be just a little too heavy to learn they would bleed - albeit for a short stretch of time - in the not too distant future.
While we all 'sort of' agreed that the task was most aptly suited to the little lassie's immediate family in the first instance, it still begged the question of 'when?'.
As S, R-2 and I munched on flaming salsa wraps, burgers and assorted chip portions I regaled them with an event that took place while I visited some relatives who had two pre-teenage girls.
Coming from a traditional African society, most subjects that touch on sexuality in any degree are easily considered highly taboo - of the Don't ask, Don't mention, Don't see, Don't hear, variety.
As such, you do not get any constructive guidelines on what happens when, how and why, during your childhood years. By the time you know what's what it is way too late for any sex education class to make any lasting impact on your ideologies and responses.
At least, that was the way I saw it.
So there's me and my audience of two little girlies and their middle-aged mum, with the stage all set for the BIG STORY. Earlier on, she had voiced some concern over her girls' abilities to fend off the not-so-harmless advances of members of the opposite sex.
And she had good cause to worry, in my opinion, as apparently she had discharged this duty by informing the curious eleven year-olds solemnly of the risk of conceiving as a consequence of suffering a boy's 'touch' on their person.
To me, that was taking immaculate conception to a whole new level! I set about changing all that the first chance I got.
R-2 and S remarked on the delicacy of giving voice to this aspect of a child's development and the importance of getting the message across in the right way. As a child, this was not one of the topics that R-2 had been exposed to growing up in her native New Zealand. For S, the repressive atmosphere of the francophone African country of her birth meant any curiousity about sexual development on the child's part indicated a budding sexual perversion which was strongly discouraged - sadly enough, it was the same story with my country-folk. Nevertheless, we three stuck to the belief that, in this respect, the parental guidance we had received was sorely lacking in breadth and depth.
To my two friends, the age of five was much too young to have tender ears filled with the stark realities of the human development cycle.
The funny thing was, at that age I already had a fair idea what the drama was all about albeit from inappropriate sources and with objectionable conclusions. So clearly, I disagreed with their position on the right age for a real up-close, personal and adult conversation with your little girl on the significance of the birds and the bees principle.
And then S asked how I was going to give a young child in her pre-teens the 'heads up' on the imminent changes that would, naturally, throw her off balance on impact.
That's when I let them in on the steps I had taken (with the pre-teens earlier mentioned), and would most likely rely on again, to accomplish this object:
Rustling through my suitcase, I reached out for my pack of Always sanitary towels when it suddenly occurred to me 'that' was a good starting point for the evening's exercise. On sighting one of the little angels in the living room I waved one sealed towel in the air and asked if she could identify the item I held.
Predictably, she replied in the negative, so I settled down to tell her the story of the egg and the busy tadpoles. As she got more and more into it, her sister joined us and they both drank in every careful explanation I threw their way. The trick was to make it as interactive as possible in order to gauge their reactions and preconceptions, and straighten out any inaccurate beliefs on the subject.
But first, I forbade their mum from interrupting or offering helpful suggestions as this tended to put my pupils on the defensive. It was a school session for little girls only and that precluded older girls who had passed through this module class from having their say!
The story goes something like this.
"Normally, a young girl below the age of eleven can not make a baby and that is because her body is not able to produce baby eggs and house them safely. And then from the age of twelve, in most cases, a change takes place within her and suddenly her body is quite excited to prepare for a lovely baby.
This happens as a part of changing from a little girl to a grown-up and the little-girl body wants her to be happy and prepared for life's changes.
So what does it do? It runs around and first builds a fine baby-egg and then it starts the serious work of completing a cushy-cushy house for the baby-egg so it does not get injured as it wanders about in the womb for about two days usually. The changing girl-body usually builds the baby-egg once a month, but if it gets really really excited it can work double-time and produce two fine baby-eggs.
The eggs are happy, the cushy-cushy housing is secure and the body is just singing all day long because it was able to build something so great and wonderful. Now, if after 24 hours the girl-body does not receive any friendly guests, it gets a bit bored and decides to return things back to the way they were. And so it goes about re-decorating by mashing up the baby-egg and pulling down all the cushy-cushy furnishing in the baby-egg house i.e. the womb. And then it throws them all away.
Thus, all these mashed-up pieces have to go out of the girl as the body does not want them anymore. So she bleeds all this out in a wee-wee fashion till all the mashed up pieces are gone. This time the wee-wee is a bright red colour as the furnishing is made up of body cells and body cells turn bloody when they are mashed up. The cushy-cushy furnishing is quite much and sometimes the red wee-wee runs for three or more days.
When a little girl gets wet with wee-wee she is not very happy because it is sticky, smells a bit off and makes her lovely clothes wet. The red wee-wee does the same because the wet marks give the clothes a red colour and makes them look dirty. The little girl then has to have a wash and get a new set of pretty clothes to wear but that does not solve the problem because the wee-wee that is red does not stop for running for three or more days. This would surely get the clean set of pretty clothes soon dirty.
And how do we solve this? The little girl needs some accessory that would keep her body from getting sticky and her clean, pretty dresses from getting dirty. This is a very useful item called a sanitary towel.
So, the first time she has red wee-wee running she needs to tell a grown up who would show her how to place the towel to catch the red wee-wee and keep her clothes clean and dry. It is only the red wee-wee that needs to be caught in the towel as the little girl will still be able to wee-wee clear liquids into the loo as before. If clear wee-wee is caught in the towel it fills it up quickly and makes the little girl sticky and wet.
After the first time, the little girl can tell when the red wee-wee would come again as her body finishes the design of another cushy-cushy baby-egg housing and builds another baby-egg after 28 days usually. So the little girl knows that she can count 28 days from the day of the first red wee-wee to find out what day she would see the red wee-wee run next.
And that is the change that takes place to show the menstrual cycle the changing body of a little girl goes through".
To say my little angels were fascinated would be a big understatement. They stared at me throughout the narration with wide eyes and I could barely catch a breath and move on to the next stage of my story that involved the baby tadpoles before I was bombarded with questions.
I made sure to include them during the narration by trying to find out what actions they would have taken if they had not received proper information in this regard. Their responses ranged from ignorance to simple actions, with some bizarre steps thrown in. I gently pointed out why these responses might be just a tad absurd in the circumstance and we were able to have a laugh about it.
It felt like an ideal moment to give a quick show of putting a towel on a pair of panties for them to see how it was done.
At this stage S and R-2 looked at me quite thoughtfully, I reckoned. So I asked if it would ever have occurred to them to break down the details in a similar manner. The general consensus was that they would gloss over the whole subject of the reproductive cycle and leave the nitty gritty to be handled by their little girls' teachers in school or the more knowledgeable of their peers. The whole aspect of hygiene would, of course, be dealt with at home to stave off any public exposure which might cause personal embarrassment to a little girl.
I, for one, would not be leaving a single aspect of this exercise to any impartial third party educator.
R-2 was interested in discovering my method of delivering the lesson about sexual relations to my prospective little girl. I was delighted to recount the episode with my little pre-teens at the next stage of our lesson on sexual development.
The next post retells the story of the baby-eggs and the baby-tadpoles in its relative context.
p.s. - N says I should baldly state that the red liquid is blood and reduce the molly-coddling (as eleven is a stable age to understand the facts of the cycle).
For five year old girls though, it could be just a little too heavy to learn they would bleed - albeit for a short stretch of time - in the not too distant future.
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