OK, don't teen magazines have health columns anymore? Part of my sex ed came from health advice Q and As from YM, Teen (RIP) and Seventeen.

this makes me think of the episode of 'Law and Order: SVU' where these rich 13 year olds were having oral sex parties. sick....

Re: Sure doesn't reflect me when I was 12! :O
 

Can you tell us what you are talking about, or link the thread?

Well, that and of course my parents. Don't parents ever sit down with their kids anymore and talk to them about sex, puberty, and all the other stuff that made you all awkward and embarrassed when your parents discussed it with you? As much as I hated "The Talks", it kept me from having sex at 12. Wow, things have changed a lot in 10 years. Back when I was that age, I really didn't know of anyone who was having sex.

Re: Re: Sure doesn't reflect me when I was 12! :O
 

Middle schoolers play this game http://www.sex-bracelets.com/


Here is an article http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/12...x.bracelet.ap/

Unfortunately no. Parents don't talk to their kids anymore. My parents never talked to me. Fortunately I had great sex educators and I knew what I had to know and I made my decisions as an adult and not at 12.

My mother decided at 20 that she wanted to have the talk with me. I told her fine, let's have the talk. She still chickened out.

My mom didn't really talk to me about anything. She gave me one of those "changing bodies" books when I was 10 and that was pretty much it. She made me read it myself. Any questions I had weren't answered until I started reading teen magazines. Health classes didn't really mean much, since it was mostly about periods. However, lots of my questions were answered about AIDS and other things when Magic Johnson announced that he's HIV+ There were lots of newspaper and magazine articles about AIDS and AIDS research. It was also around the 10th anniversary of the discovery of the AIDS virus, so I guess that added into it.

Re: Re: Re: pre-teens and teens having sex
 

I know Illinois has these kind of laws too. I remember going to the doctor when I was 17 to get antibiotics for a routine tonsilitis (I had it alot, but just barely not enough to have my tonsils removed...) and they had to call my parents to get permission to see me and give me penicilin...I'm thinking...I'm 17 and I have a sore throat and I need parental permission for that, but I could be 12 and go get an abortion and not need parental permission for that...how screwed up is that???

Thanks laidbackfella :) (p.s. nice advice you give over in the other forum!).
LeslieAGD, I didn't have time to search earlier as I had to go and meet someone to look at a house for nexy year, but the articles laidbackfella linked were bang on what I was referring to.

ETA: and through the links of one of those links... I learnt cranberry juice is to women what pineapple juice is to men.

Munchkin, you are right about cervical cancer being more of a risk for women who were sexually active early in life. It's because the organs are developing rapidly up until 17 or 18 and any trauma on them (like sex) can cause mild dysplasia. Mild dysplasia unmonitored can develop into cancer (hence why doctors will scare the everlasting hell out of you if you ever return an abnormal Pap test). Not to mention that I'm sure these 12 and 13 year olds are not going to the gyno.
I at most wanted to make out with a boy at that age. Not that I did. Kind of shy at that age. :cool: Sex was something much older people did. My mom gave me tons of books to read when I was 6 or 7 that explained things from a biological and social perspective, and I really think real information (not playground talk) is better than keeping your kids in the dark. They're going to be curious and they're going to find out anyways, so it's not wise for parents to pretend sex doesn't exist.

fyi: i never had 'the talk' with my parents. growing up in a christian school, i slowly learned things about sex. it is weird, cause i went to summer school at a public high school when i was 15. a class i took was 'life management skills'. the section about sex was going to last about a week. my mom had a special conference with the teacher before hand to get me special permission to work on something else in another room during the sex stuff. most of my childhood, i was thinking that sex was some awful thing.
i didnt even go on my first date until i was almost 19.
i guess parents figure that if they are too scared to talk to the kids about sex, then getting the child scared of sex is easier. it wasnt the best thing for me. cause i had the these warped ideas about sex. i think that it is better to be frank about sex with your kids.


a warped idea that i had about sex at 14 years old:

it doesnt matter if there is a guy present or not, if you have an orgasm, then you are pregnant..:rolleyes:

For as long as I can remember my mother has been very open with me about sex. I remember a girl at my grade school telling me that kissing was sex so I went home and asked my mother if that was true. She sat me down and we had a shortened version of the birds and bees talk. Then when my older sister had the real birds and bees talk with my mom she came back, told me and totally screwed it all up. So my mother ended up having to give me the same speech a couple days later. Even now that I'm older my mother and I are still very open about the topic. My mother knew when I lost my virginity (at 18) within about a week. And I credit her openess with me for the more open attitude I have about sex.

This is not really a *new* thing. My godmother (who is also my aunt is in her 70's and rather infirm now) was under this mistaken impression when she was younger. ::shudder:: granted this was 48 years ago..but she told my uncle that although she loved him she didn't think she could have sex with him ever if they married and explained why. His reponse was "you need to talk to my mother!!!!" It seems my aunt's *COLLEGE!!* roommate had been told by her boyfriend that oral sex was the way you had sex, and of course the roommate told my aunt. These were college women in the 1950's!!!

Misinformation, LACK of information is the danger. If parents are unable or unwilling to share information, a young person will get information from whatever source they can. Saddly the information will be inaccurate, false or even dangerous.

That reminds me of a story...
A friend of the family (she's in her 70s now) called her mom on her wedding night and was absolutely hysterical. The mom calmed her down and then asked, "What is going on?" The girl said "Mother, he tried to stick his...his.... thing inside me." Once the mother stopped laughing she said, "Honey, you better let him and I'm pretty sure you'll like it." and hung up the phone. Apparently she thought sex was just rubbing up against each other and didn't involved any sort of penetration (like Ken and Barbie, maybe?). Ahhh to be so uninformed. :)

Hokay, there's a lot of misinformation going on in this thread.

1) Just because your parents didn't talk to you doen't mean that all parents don't talk to their kids.

2) A minor is not able to get an abortion without parental consent in the vast majority of the country. Waivers can be granted by the judiciary in the event there would be an imminent threat to the child's life by informing their parents.

3) Kids in junior high having sex have irresponsible parents. That's all there is to it. My parents were far too nosy for me to ever get away with much more than kissing.