PARENT’S PERSPECTIVE ON CHILDHOOD BODY SCIENCE

Author: Anjali Nunes | Aug 09, 2017

Today I write as a parent as opposed to a professional. Being a mother of a 6 year old provided me with the opportunity to attend a workshop on ‘Childhood Sexuality’ at her school. I was joined by 28 other parents who also wanted to learn how to handle unexpected and sometimes awkward questions from their children. The workshop was conducted by the effervescent Dr. Nandita de Souza – Director of Sethu Centre where I work as a Speech and Language Therapist. While I have never sat in on any of her lectures on this topic, I still considered myself better in the ‘know how’ on childhood sexuality as compared to my co-parents. How vain and wrong was I!

The first thing I learned was that Childhood Sexuality does not begin with a talk about the ‘birds and the bees!’ It actually begins from the day your child is born and naming each body part as it is, even the privates. The first step is for parents to educate themselves and to look at ‘sexuality’ as body science.

There was a ton of extremely useful and doable tips that we gained from Dr. Nandita’s talk, but my takeaways were these: When a child asks a question, (1) Ask them what they think first (2) Correct misinformation and (3) Share your family values or beliefs. Most importantly, keep you child safe by reassuring them that it’s OKAY to (1) Say stop (2) Get away and (3) Tell someone!

In our present world where evils seem to be more existent than before, I don’t know what I was waiting for! I wish I had attended this talk sooner!

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