StevePerryHair wrote:Melissa wrote:StevePerryHair wrote:There are parents who object to it though. I just have to ask why???
Because they think it condones kids having sex

. We hear that at work. Funny thing is a lot of them are having it already, despite what their rose-colored-glasses-wearing parents wish to think, lol.
People are really naive. I have no problem with teaching abstinence as an option. I mean that is what I am preaching to my kids while they are young teens. But that doesn't mean they will do what I think they should, and I still believe they need to learn everything. Including the scary things, because they DO exist and they are happening. There are kids who aren't having intercourse but are doing everything else, and have the assumption that since they can't get pregnant, it's okay. Im glad the school teaches them ALL the ways they can catch the diseases. I think a lot of parents are naive on that too though.
Honestly, nothing the school does or doesn't do is gonna affect a kid's conduct. It starts and ends with the parents, as it should.
My parents were very cool with me, never tried to dig into my life at that age for the most part, just encouraged me to be responsible in general etc. I never even had "the talk" with my parents. But my parents were interested in my life in the right way (eg they cared about what was going on, weren't too wrapped up in work or too negligent to care or never in the house when I had girls over) and respected my autonomy. They wouldn't come down the basement and "check" on me if I had a girl over or shit like that. Out of that mutual respect, I always made sure if we were gonna go "watch a movie" down there (

) that they would get to meet the girl first and get to know her past a handshake. The respect and leeway they gave me made me police myself and make good decisions - I didn't run around fucking a buncha girls in HS even though I woulda liked to as every 16-year-old would. I respected myself a lot more because my parents cared about me making good choices, but gave me the respect I needed to figure out for myself that wasn't what I wanted to do. I know it's a tough line to tread for parents and it doesn't work with every kid, but IMO I think it's great to shoot for that area of hands-off respect but also communication of expectations.
Too much policing and the kid's bound to go the other way, but by the same token, absentee parents and the kid is also bound to do riskier and dumber shit at that age. I saw both ends of the spectrum among my high school friends. Kids definitely don't give a shit what school tells them, although it MAY be able to scare them a bit.