I CAN’T REMEMBER when I started engaging in sexual activities. I would lie if I said I was educated by my parents.
It’s natural and it just happened.
Imagine doing something without any knowledge thereof, but rather trusting in the next person, hoping they know better.
Sometimes you feel like asking someone older than you to explain the whole thing to you, but they are nowhere to be found. This includes your parents or guardians.
When parents are absent, it forces young people to find solutions elsewhere.
This mostly leads them to consulting their peers. But where do they get proper answers when they’re really stuck? Young people today simply google everything, and take what they find there for the only truth.
Do they even know what to google?
Our children are facing many challenges and we still leave them with no answers.
This puts them through even more peer pressure.
How does a household headed by a teenager cope?
The challenges faced by young people include teenage pregnancy, dropping out of school, HIV, date rape and many more.
It’s time we open the lid and talk about these issues without fear. Denying young people information is a violation of their human rights and this needs to be corrected.
Talking about sex seems to be taboo still. The church goes silent and only preaches about abstinence, forgetting that sex is a blessing from above.
What I am trying to say is if you as a parent are still trying to figure out at what age you should discuss sex with your child, the joke’s on you, and it’s probably too late as they are already sexually active.
If we want to see fewer teenage pregnancies, cases of HIV, date rape, and other social issues faced by young people, we call upon parents to start talking to their children about sex.
Guide them and answer all their questions honestly, without intimidating or judging them.
I therefore support sex education programmes which don’t instil fear in children or stigmatise them as they express and practise their human rights.
