Sexting in a small Colorado town..and possibly more
The news that over 300 high school students, some even in 8th grade, were involved in a sexting ring. No surprises that the root of the “sexting ring” was the football team. There really is no crime here because it appears as they all did this voluntarily. Each state is different on this but what is most important is to ask the question why is this happening?
Another recent case was the prep school boy and a young girl who said she was raped. The young man will serve some time. What is fascinating is that he told the judge that the frat boys referred to the girls as cum-buckets. It appeared as if they all looked at women as just objects more than anything else. Why?
I heard of a story that happened more than 5 years ago of a young girl who had a party and asked her parents not to come downstairs while everyone was over. The mother decided to do it anyway and found everyone downstairs naked, sitting in a circle and her daughter in the middle giving some boy a blowjob. Why?
Social media is pervasive and kids are impressionable. From the movies to the selfies to the ads that portray sex in a way that isn’t necessarily real. This all comes down to educating kids. Our kids went to a school where sex-ed starting in 5th grade and continued all the way thru high school. Different topics based on the age but in the middle school it was the head of the school who taught it. It makes an impact when there are open conversations because sex is a conversation. Not everybody wants the same thing.
There are conversations now taking places on college campuses about what consent means. It is amazing how many don’t know. Sex education needs to start young. We talk to our kids about drugs and alcohol. We should talk to our kids about sex too. We should not be shielding our children from the topic. My friend started a crisis-text line that is available 24/7 to help kids in crisis. Maybe someone should start one for sex education.
Sex is out there on the web in force and based on what happened in the town in Colorado, there wasn’t a lot of conversation going on. Decades ago people would laugh and say that they heard about sex from their older siblings or a kid at school, but now they heard and learned about it on their phone. Probably not the best place for an education on sex.
Comments (Archived):
Important to have the sex talk, and combine morality into it. Not guilt, but common sense. Texting photos of your body is pretty dumb. My wife was a birth control salesperson. Ironically, in my family my father was a health teacher-so being open about sex was easy. (my sex talk came on overheads ha, today it would probably be a powerpoint)
It is important and it’s important that it is done in the right manner and sequence. My son goes to a NYC public school and they teach HIV/AIDS education in the 6th grade and sex education in the 7th grade. They also leave out much of the stuff that is relevant to kids today. As points says, morality should be included, but so also should kindness and respect. When kids learn about sex on their phones or from porn that is what is glaringly absent.
truth. I had girls, and they had flip phones. They didn’t have a smart phone until the iPhone 4. By then they were in the later stages of high school.
glaringly.
Thanks for posting. I just emailed our middle school to ask what our school does. Thank you!
Smart.
I think a better idea is to band together and ask legislators to consider changes to the law so that time is not wasted ruining a kids life over this activity which is actually quite benign and innocent.
Perhaps if sex wasn’t so much of a taboo in the US, parents educated their kids. But teaching SexEd to kindergarteners might be a tad premature. Kids always learn about sex from different avenues. I learned from a book when I was somewhere at around 14. But I come from a country where having sex in high-school was only for the “mature” girls. The rest of us didn’t even bother. The problem, I think is when kids/parents objectify sex and especially the sex partner. While it’s mostly boys/men who do this, women do it too. Different in religion vs. secular life, in some cases sex is purely for procreation, while in other cultures it’s purely for recreation. Living in the Metro NY area I read countless stories of women sleeping with a different person every night. They sort of making it into a sport.So, t me as long as sex is about having a connection with another human being and that’s what kids learn they will respect their sex partners, will try their best to not hurt them, get them pregnant. But, of course, for this, women have to learn about the consequences and respect their own body and yet not be scared.This is not about the smart phones, though our new devices make it easier for parents to lose control over their kids. But you still have to try. And I believe everything starts at home with the parenting and lots of conversation.
.My Perfect Daughter just got married to a fabulous guy. I hope she comes home from Thailand where she and her husband are having a spectacular time.http://themusingsofthebigre…She is 26 years old and is working for her second startup while running her own company on the side making sleep masks. http://www.temperowe.comAt every step of her life, she has known exactly what was expected of her. Not by accident but because her Southern magnolia mother and her Neanderthal father told her. I know her father, me, and he is a Neanderthal. I used to feel sorry for her growing up.I used to ask her boyfriends, “What are your intentions toward my daughter?”It was a game at first but it became deadly serious when a new boy arrived on the scene as he waited for the inevitable question because she was always MY daughter. The boys used to wear their encounter with her father as a badge of courage.Their mothers used to tell me they liked me forcing them to articulate their intentions. Some other Dads started to do the same thing.There was never a chance that any of the things that you describe would have ever happened in my household. Not ever. I would not have allowed them. Period.The duty of raising a young lady today is a sacred duty. I was not terribly good at it but she makes me look good. We parents have to stay in the game.In the game of life, we are not “playing” but we are “participating.”JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
I used to ask her boyfriends, “What are your intentions toward my daughter?”We are different in that respect. I would never ask that question. I’d rather know about his family (and size them up) and also how motivated he is, whether he has any psychological problems, his career goals, whether he has any mood disorders (I realize I mentioned this twice) (and a few other things). I don’t care at all how he is in the sack. With the exception noted below.One further thought and I feel that I am lucky in this respect. Both of my daughters are very attractive. But not so attractive that they will end up having an obsessive boyfriend and will end up as a subject on 48 Hours or Dateline because some guy stalked them. I am serious about that by the way. The super super good looking girls seem to always get the guys who go after them for their looksand somehow end up with the defective or obsessive spouses. Or the ones that bail when the girl gets older.
That the laws were written (and never changed) to even consider giving lifelong scarlet letters to kids that sext is absurd. Ruining some kids life over this makes so little sense there is no explanation other than it being untouchable politically as to why it still works that way. What about the “harm” of being on megans list or prison? To any sane person that harm seems 10000x greater than whatever they think they are trying to prevent. A kid can beat the living pulp out of another kid in a fight (causing real damage) and most likely nothing will happen to him. Where are the laws against that?Each state is different on this but what is most important is to ask the question why is this happening?A better question to ask is why does this matter at all in this day and age? Why is viewing someone naked at that age so forbidden (other than by definition) when we all know that it is going to happen and there is little that can be done to prevent it at this point? Maybe it’s the opposite and the forbidden fruit is what people want more of. Unlike drugs or overeating which causes obesity, boil it down to what is the real damage here with this type of behavior?This is what I call something that is wrong “by definition” rather than something that is wrong because it actually is proven harmful in some way scientifically (as opposed to something that psychologists might say which is dubious).Also great harm is being done to kids by making them think they have done something wrong by even doing this. Imagine the fights that go on and the parental discord in households to parents whose kids get caught up in this. The finger pointing the shame and so on.
The stigma that this will carry is utterly absurd