Teaching sex health about investing in first 1000 days

Meredith Akuhata-Brown

Opinion

Some topics really are enter-at-your-own-risk topics, but I couldn’t resist sharing some insights from over 20 years of teaching sex education and now puberty in our local schools.

Our region continues to have some of the highest rates of sexually transmitted infections and we are often the front runners for chlamydia, gonorrhea and now syphilis.

I have been involved with “SHAG” Sexual Health Advisory Group for a number of years, and we have recently reconvened to discuss our future in the sexual health arena.

I have also been involved with the Suicide postvention collective.

Much has changed in the sexuality curriculum due to an increasing push to understand more deeply our LGBTQIA, non-binary, gender-fluid and diverse communities. The first step to affirming diversity is to create visibility and promote awareness.

Te Hiringa Hauora say “the first 1000 days of a child’s life lay the foundations for their entire future”. So, the focus is on investing in these first 1000 days, and ensuring parents feel secure and understand their children’s wellbeing depends on adults’ wellbeing.

When I was a child, I can recall wanting to be a boy mostly because, in my naivety, I thought I wouldn’t get sexually abused and urinating standing up seemed awesome. I was termed a “tomboy” and all was fine, no one suggested to me that I should transgender and I was not given drugs or counselling, it was simply who I was comfortable being.

Times have changed and being relevant to these changes appears to be of the utmost importance if we are to be more inclusive and understanding. But it seems that if you hold on to traditional family values of a mum and a dad and promote such notions like if you have a penis you’re a man and if you have a vagina you’re a woman, then you are being exclusive and ignorant.

Raising children in a hostile world is tough, especially for those of us who choose a faith-based belief theology. True teaching from a faith-based foundation means everything is about love. Reading opinions and views, it’s obvious the tension around beliefs and traditions and what is deemed “normal” are more intense due to the differing information we can share or believe in. Conversations face-to-face around contentious topics are becoming rare, I think, due to fear of aggressive reactions.

I believe that parents should be a voice

that their children trust the most and, of

course, parents should make the most of their role and teach their children about puberty, including sexuality.

With the ongoing assault on what family values are based on in an increasingly secular world, no wonder parents feel overwhelmed and often disengaged from the school curriculum, especially from sexual health.

Who should decide the appropriate age to teach children about sexual themes?

I believe most parents want to ensure their children aren’t exposed unnecessarily to sexual messaging that might remove the beauty of innocence.

Sexual health education is a huge responsibility and, therefore, it is vital that we engage with our communities before we see a small group pushing secular ideologies and an agenda.

Adolescence is a time when questioning sexual identity is part of growing up and there are milestones that generally capture what is deemed “normal”.

On reflection, my years of teaching sexual health promoting abstinence and commitment was welcomed and, when talking about relationships and sexuality, students enjoyed the different opinions and concepts that promoted critical thinking.

Children are being indoctrinated around gender, it seems we now create more labels to create inclusion when we should just teach the golden rule “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.