Grade-school Lolita: ‘So Sexy So Soon’

Learning about sex from the Internet
Connie teaches health education to the fifth- and sixth-grade children in her school. By the time the children get to these grade levels, they are generally quite comfortable discussing personal topics with Connie and with one another. Still, she meets with the boys and girls separately a couple of times during the sex education course, because this helps them be more open to discussing uncomfortable issues related to sexuality. Several years ago, a comment from one of the boys in the boys-only session gave Connie reason to be concerned. She had been talking with the boys about the idea of sex occurring in a relationship as an expression of deep affection between the sexual partners, when a boy named Gabe jumped in and challenged her by saying, “Well, I think you don’t need to like the person. I saw sex on the Internet. My cousin showed me. They just do it ’cause it’s fun, they like it.” A couple of boys seemed surprised, but a few others said that they had seen it too and that Gabe was “right.”

On the one hand, Connie was upset that some of the boys had access to pornography on the Internet. On the other hand, she considered it a positive sign that Gabe had felt comfortable enough to raise the issue with her, and that other boys in the class seemed interested in the topic. Clearly it had been very much on their minds and they really wanted to talk about it. But how did this comment of Gabe’s affect one of the most basic lessons she had always tried to teach the children — that sex is a special part of a relationship between caring adults? Even though she was a veteran teacher and expert in this area, Connie was stumped for the right response to comments like Gabe’s.

In subsequent years, and because of the now ubiquitous access to the age-inappropriate content on the Internet that many kids are exposed to, Connie decided to change her approach to her first boys-only session. “Early on I ask them what they have seen about sex on TV, in movies, or on the Internet. Last week, every boy raised his hand when the issue of having seen ‘sex’ and pornography on the Internet came up. When I probed to find out more about what they saw, it was clear that two or three of them hadn’t seen real pornography, but I think all the others had! The times have changed very rapidly since Gabe first raised the issue of pornography on the Internet in my class, and the issue certainly adds a whole new dimension of complexity to the work that I do.” Connie’s realization that she had to bring the media and popular culture into her discussions about sex was an important breakthrough. As she began doing this, what Connie learned about how to lead such discussions (described in Chapter 6) can help us all become better able to talk with children about the sex they are exposed to in media and popular culture.

Meeting the challenge
Did any of these parents’ and teachers’ stories sound familiar? As you read, what kinds of reactions did you have? You might be asking, “What’s happening to the world? This would never have occurred when I was their age.” Do you wonder what might be going on with your own children that you don’t even know about regarding sexual issues? Are you thinking, “How is all this going to affect my children’s healthy sexual development as they are growing up? If children at five, six, and seven years old are doing things like this, what will be going on when they are tweens and adolescents?” Or perhaps you feel angry, not with the children who are struggling to understand sex and sexuality, but at the world that contributes so negatively to these struggles. Do you wonder how it got to be like this? Do you worry about what you can and should do?

Each of these stories has a lot to do with sex and sexuality. But they also have implications — that go far beyond sex — for children’s overall development, attitudes, and behavior. For example, we see the beginning of a premature adolescent rebellion as young girls try to figure out how to trick their parents into buying them sexy clothes so they will be popular with the boys. We see a clash of cultures between parents and the media as ten-year-old boys learn lessons about sex from the Internet that undermine the lessons about sex in the context of loving relationships that caring adults are trying to teach. We also see examples of the objectification of oneself and others as both girls and boys learn that how you look rather than who you are determines the value others place on you. Unfortunately, it’s not a very big leap from this kind of objectification to a range of unhealthy emotional consequences such as eating disorders and depression.

There have always been changes in society from one generation to the next. Parents have always noticed how their children’s world differs from the world of their own childhood. But what is happening now regarding sex and sexuality in the media and popular culture goes far beyond the changes that have occurred between other generations in the past. A revolution is taking place that we need to take seriously. It is a revolution that is harming our children and harming the wider community. We must understand this new world in order to help and protect our children. In order to do so, we need to have more information and more skills than our own parents needed. We all want our children to grow up capable of having healthy and caring adult relationships in which sex is a part. This is a more difficult task than it used to be, and we must all work together to find ways to help our children adapt to a rapidly changing world. There are no easy answers, but the first step is to learn about what is going on today.

As James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Excerpted from “So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids” by Diane E. Levin, Ph.D., and Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D. Copyright © 2008 by Diane E. Levin and Jean Kilbourne. Excerpted by permission of Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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