Parents should be gatekeepers for their kids

Parents should be gatekeepers for their kids

By Rita A. Widiadana

JAKARTA (JP): Sex education, or more politely health
reproduction study, is a delicate and debatable subject for many
parents and teachers alike.

Today, nobody, including parents, can hardly keep children and
teenagers away from the flood of information, including on
sexuality, from the vast array of media.

Pornographic books, magazines, tabloids, television, cinemas,
home videos and the Internet are all available as potential
sources of information for a young audience to get in touch with
sexual issues.

To counter the negative impacts of the deluge of uncensored
media for unprepared young readers, parents, teachers and adults
are expected to act as gatekeepers.

It is high time to banish the old and misleading perception
that sex education deals only with sexual intercourse techniques
and as something that should be excluded from children's life-
long educational process.

Some parents share their concerns and stress the need for
proper education on sex, health, ethical and moral values for
their fast growing children to prepare them to face a tough and
challenging world.

Nurchamsiah, a mother of three teenagers, asserts it is
parents who have the first responsibility to teach their children
their roles and set standards of behavior for them.

"Sex education is one of the important elements in a child's
physical and emotional growth as well as the development of
social skills needed in adult life," she says.

Most children are lucky to have attentive and affectionate
parents who are able to communicate their concerns and their love
without being too be involved in their children's lives,
especially when they reach the critical teenage period.

"Modern parents must be wise and broad-minded when discussing
various topics, including school lessons, relationship and
sexuality with their children," says Nurchamsiah, also a child
psychologist.

Sexuality is something to be taught to children from their
early years in a natural and scientific way.

"Sex education is a step-by-step dissemination process in
accordance to a child's age, intellectual and emotional
maturity," she says.

During their early years, children can be told the functions
of their body parts. Teenage girls must be taught about
reproductive health, including menstruation and pregnancy.

Deprived of an opportunity to learn the proper concepts of sex
and health from their elders, children usually fail to learn from
the peers or other people and they could engage in irresponsible
sexual experimentation.

Idham, 43, an executive and father of two boys, says it is
important to equip both girls and boys with the right information
on sex, love, relationships, moral and social values.

Sex education here so far has only stressed the need for girls
to prevent unwanted pregnancies and lessons on the reproduction
system, while boys are secondary targets.

"In fact, boys are more vulnerable than girls. They mature
later than girls of the same age while at the same time they are
easily distracted by various things, including alcohol, drugs and
sex," he explains.

Sex education is urgently required by young boys to prepare
them to become responsible husbands and fathers.

"Boys enter several phases, physically and emotionally, before
they reach adulthood. Therefore fathers are the right people to
show them the process and to accompany them during these
difficult periods," Idham explains.

It is difficult for mothers to explain wet dreams,
masturbation or sexually transmitted diseases to their sons
because most mothers either do not have firsthand experience or
are too embarrassed to talk about the subjects with their sons.

On the other hand, fathers are the right models as they can
share their experiences and they probably know exactly how to
overcome problems when they appear.

Dessy Kairupan, 39, a mother of two teenagers, believes
parents must be the first teachers for their children.

"I always try hard to equip myself with adequate knowledge on
child development and how to raise kids properly," she says.

All theories on raising children seem easy, but practice is a
different matter.

When her son and daughter were very young, she found it easy
to raise them. But when they reached critical ages (between 12
and 17), life became more difficult for her and her husband.

"As parents, we wanted them to become nice teenagers. But
Jakarta is a very tough city with a dangerous environment for the
young," she says.

Dessy tells how she was once startled to find her daughter,
then 14 years old, watching a pornographic video in her room.

Her daughter said she was just curious and wanted to know more
about sex because her friends always talked about it and she
claimed to be too afraid to ask her parents.

"I was angry at myself because I was too late to give her the
needed information. As a result, she looked for other sources,"
Dessy recalls. "We must act as their confidants so that they can
rely on us and talk to us honestly about their problems," she
adds.

Chatarina Wahyurini from the Indonesian Planned Parenthood
Organization (PKBI) says parents must realize that their children
need more information from them on everything, including
reproductive health and sexuality.

"It is part of children's physical and emotional development
process, therefore they have the right to obtain adequate
knowledge and information on these important issues," says
Chatarina.

Since the l980s, PKBI has been active in providing training,
running seminars, discussions on reproductive health for
teachers, students, parents and other interested parties in
several provinces in Indonesia.

Through such meetings, it has been revealed that the majority
of Indonesian parents have little knowledge of reproductive
health.

Many parents are embarrassed when explaining about sexuality
to their children, according to Chatarina. Sex education or
reproductive health education deals not with sex techniques, but
it is thorough education on the functions of the reproductive
organs, health, gender roles, moral and religious values, and
behavioral teachings.

PKBI is currently organizing health reproduction programs
included in extracurricular activities for preschoolers,
elementary school students, teenagers in Indonesia's 24 provinces
including Aceh, North Sumatra, West Java, Central Java, Bali,
Kalimantan and Sulawesi.

"Our target is to increase parents and teachers' awareness on
the importance of providing the right information on sex to their
kids. It is a long process but we must start it now," she says.