Kids Are Always Learning From The Things Around Them
Your kids are learning all the time even you haven’t realized.But they do.From you parents or from the television.
Millions of kids saw “Toy Story 3″ earlier this summer, and many were frightened by the scene in which the toys are heading toward almost certain death on the incinerator’s conveyor belt. But it was another scene in that movie that made my hair stand on end: When Ken first meets Barbie, and the song “Dream Weaver” (“I believe you can get me through the night”) starts to play. Ken says to Barbie, “Love your legwarmers,” and Barbie purrs, “Nice ass-cot.” There it was: another one of those sexy zingers designed to make parents laugh and sail over kids’ head. Turns out my parental instincts were right.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, sex, and its cheeky cousin, innuendo, don’t go over kids’ head. In fact, the AAP’s new report, “Sexuality, Contraception and the Media,” says exposure to sexual content in TV and other media in early adolescence can as much as double kids’ risk of early sexual intercourse.
According to the report, having a TV in a child’s bedroom is associated with early teen sexual activity. On the other hand, adolescents whose parents limit their TV viewing are less likely to engage in early sex.
As kids get older, the conversations get a little less comfortable (as when my then-10-year-old asked me what a three-way was after he saw a joke on TV about a sexual triangle involving a bicycle built for three). But offering a counterpoint to the exaggerated notions of sex that kids see is one of the keys to helping them develop a healthy attitude about sex.
