Go See the Principal by Gerry Brooks

Author:Gerry Brooks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2019-04-08T16:00:00+00:00

17

BODY GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT AND SCHOOL

When Private Parts Become Public

A parent I know recently got an email from her child’s teacher informing her that her kindergarten-aged son and two of his friends were caught in the potty comparing their private parts. She was practically ready to cancel his birthday party, or call a therapist for him, or both. But as scary as it can be for a parent, kids’ curiosity about bodies is age-appropriate, and we teachers deal with it all the time in some form.

Many parents consider body parts as a private thing. They may talk about it at home, but suddenly, their kids get up to a certain socialization age when they have time at recess or on the bus to start talking (or showing). Anatomical curiosity is not a sign that your child is horrible.

It’s sad to me when I see a student whose parent clearly hasn’t given him much knowledge about how his body works, or even the correct names for things. I taught fourth grade development classes, and I was just floored by the lack of knowledge students had, like boys who had never heard that hair is going to grow in certain places on their bodies. In those cases, it was often because they lived with parents or grandparents who didn’t know how to talk about bodies and how they grow.

The flip side (although these things are not mutually exclusive) is when kids’ caretakers allow them to watch R-rated movies or use the computer unmonitored, and they bring inappropriateness from home.

I think that society has made sexual conversations and situations completely acceptable at a much younger age than before. The music our students listen to is hyper-focused on sexuality and sexual activity, and our kids are introduced to types of videos, TV, and movies that we would never have dreamed of. Years ago, certain content couldn’t be shown on TV until 10 o’clock at night. Now a child can pull something X-rated up on an iPad at 6 o’clock in the morning while Mom and Dad get ready for work.

My general advice is for both parents to be a little more aggressive when they talk to their young kids about body development and sex. You may not want to talk to your kindergartener about his or her growing body, but would you rather they get the information first from their friends—or from their friends’ mom’s phone?

By that same token, parents need to be more critical about what they expose their kids to. It sends mixed messages when we teach children to respect one another and each other’s bodies and then let them watch mature YouTube stars, or play raunchy music in the car that objectifies women or glorifies casual sex. The people who make money influencing our students contradict the things that we want our kids to believe.

We do what we can at school, although there can be such a sliding scale of where students are in terms of maturity: we’ve got fourth graders with hair on their legs and ninth graders with none at all.

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