The Sexualization of Early Childhood

The sexualization of young children is an ongoing problem. With all of the technological advances we have become increasingly aware of the opportunities for our children to be exposed to sexual media whether it be through the internet, television, magazines, text messages, and other avenues. While there are so many ways that children can be exposed to this kind of paraphernalia, there are ways that we as educators and parents can keep ourselves informed about the possibilities of exposure and prepare ourselves and our children for what they are (unfortunately) inevitably going to come into contact with.

Some of the examples I have experienced as a professional are just hearing about stories through the news. I remember hearing about a story of a third grade girl attempting to perform oral sex on a boy in her class and just thinking where is this coming from? I also remember hearing about teachers engaging in sexual acts with students. When I hear about this it is most disturbing to me because we are the professionals that are trusted with the care and education of children. One other experience I thought of was one when I was in 9th grade in high school and there were a group of girls and boys who went into the auditorium of the school and were performing sexual acts and at the time I had little to no idea what these people were even thinking about in terms of doing this at such a young age.

I think the best thing that we can do as educators is to remind parents that even though our aim is always to protect our children and the innocence that they have that we must monitor what it is that our children are exposed to in our presence and be diligent about talking to other parents whose homes our children might want to visit because we will be trusting someone else to keep them safe. We want to reassure ourselves that those parents will also have the same goal in mind. We must realize that in this day and age that our children will be exposed and think about ways in which we can prepare ourselves and them for these moments. We must remind ourselves not to pass on our own discomforts to our children and be willing to have conversations with them that will be difficult about the things that they are seeing and experiencing in their world.

I think my personal awareness has been widened. There are a lot of things which I make a choice to be realistic about and this is one of them. I feel that this is something that is happening in our society and I feel that ignoring it is really dangerous to the children that I serve. I believe that we must become increasingly aware of the things that our children watch, hear, experience when they are out of our presence. We can only take responsibility in teaching them what is safe for them and why. I hope that we can continue to become more and more aware of this increasingly prevalent issue.