"Spectator" Conference for Personal Problems

Sex Instruction for Children

[The SPECTATOR Conference offers to readers a service of advice on personal problems an which they would like impartial help. The Editor has appointed a Committee composed of two medical psychologists (one man and one woman), the chief pathologist of a London hospital, the head-mistress of a large elementary school, and a priest of the Church of England. All questions are referred to them in common. Readers' inquiries, which are dealt with in strict confidence, should be addressed to the Conference on Personal Problems, qo The SPECTATOR, 13 York Street, Covent Garden, W.C. 2.]

"My small son of three years old is beginning to ask questions about how he was born. I should very much like to ask you what I should say. Should we wait till he is older before saying anything ? "

It is good that you should be considering this problem so soon. It is just at this age that you can win your son's

confidence and be of lifelong service to him by avoiding the mistakes that most people make. If you had left it till later all our advice would have had to be remedial : but now you can give him the best introduction to the part which he himself will have to play in life. You have the chance of letting him feel that people deal with him fairly and do not try to evade his questions.

1. There is no danger at all in telling a child everything he wants to know on any subject which interests him. Very often people expect that knowledge will come as a shock to a child. There is no information which, if it is given in a straightforward and natural way, exactly when the child himself wishes to know it, can cause trouble or discourage the child.

2. On the other hand, there is great danger in treating him as if there were things he could not be expected to understand.

Many children feel very gravely the fact that they are without knowledge ; and if certain knowledge is forbidden to them they have a very heightened sense of insecurity in life. It is always harmful, for example, if children are not sure whether they are boys or girls and are left in doubt on this question in their early years. Their uncertainty reflects itself in later life in many abnormalities ; they find it hard to undertake their sexual role with confidence when they are adults.

3. There is never any need to volunteer information or to take it that a child ought to know something which he does

not spontaneously ask about. And here the first real point in sex instruction arises. you should always try to answer a child's own problem, see what he wants to know and tell him as much as suffices him. It is far the best, for example, to ask him what he thinks the answer is, tell him where he is right and give him the information he is wanting where he is wrong. You must look on yourself as if you were consulting together rather than as if he knew nothing and you knew everything.

We know several cases in which parents, with the best intentions in the world, have done great harm to their children by insisting on telling them everything about sex, whether they are interested spontaneously or not. One "modern woman," who thought herself entirely without repressions, took her daughter aside when she was eleven or twelve and told her the facts of sex life with such strain and insistence that the girl was frightened of the subject for many years after. It is not so much a question of what she said ; the same things might have been said with no danger at all. The mischief came from the fact that she made a special occasion of it and spoke in such a way that her own lack of ease was communi- cated to her daughter. It is very important to realize that children are not interested in any of the problems over which we are worrying ourselves ; nor do they wish to know our own opinions or to be initiated into Our own problems.

4. Wherever the relation between parents is disharmonious we can be sure they will have a difficult task in answering their children's questions naturally, and in a helpful manner. They have not solved the problems in their own life and, unless they are careful, they will convey problems to their children rather than solutions. The golden rule in any case is to find out precisely what the child is puzzling over and not to wish to say more or less than will satisfy him. If this course has not been taken and children have grown up with their natural interest thwarted, or turned away from sex as if it were a forbidden subject, it will be necessary to re-educate them ; and it would be better that the re-education should be given by someone else, teacher or doctor. It is still of vast importance that these children should feel confident that they have the knowledge that will help them, and the longer they are kept in artificial ignorance the more difficulty they will have in adapting themselves to their sexual Tole in later life. Even where parents do not feet able to answer their children's questions themselves they should not leave their children entirely without guidance.

5. The whole problem of sex instruction is shockingly mis- managed in our own age. There is not one child in a hundred who has sufficient confidence in his parents to ask them all the questions in which he is interested ; and parents themselves are generally so bothered and perplexed that they shelve the whole subject. Even where they have been impressed by the necessity for reassuring their children's minds and keeping their natural interest growing in any direction to which it naturally turns, they are still content to leave their children in ignorance, and to let them grope with no orientation, seeking what they want to learn along by-tracks and in misguided ways, finding out for themselves through painful and even disastrous experiences, and perhaps never gaining any peace of mind through their whole lives.

When children have been treated in this thoroughly un- trustworthy manner, it is no longer possible to wait until they ask questions. They have been taught that questions must not be asked, or they have been given false answers that are not of the slightest use to them. They fear the subject and have decided in themselves that perhaps it would be better not to know anything about it. In such cases there is par- ticular need for re-education. But even here it is of no use to thrust information on them. Our procedure must be to encourage their interest and to get them to ask questions again ; not to tell them what they have ceased to believe they can find out, but to make them feel they can find out anything they wish to know. More hangs on the question of sex instruc- tion than is generally dreamed of. The suppression of the child's interest and of the natural growth of his knowledge can often be held responsible for maladjustment in business, in social relations, in career and especially in marriage.

One of the signs of thwarted puzzling over questions of sex* is a particularly restless curiosity on other subjects. Children in this case often seem to be pursuing their parents with questions and saying to themselves : "They don't know the answers to my questions, or if they know them they are not treating me fairly : they are keeping them back from me." But the same suppression can also issue in a quite different type of behaviour. The child may become stupid ; he may refuse to ask any more questions because he has already been let down, refuse to answer questions himself and shut off his interest in everything that happens round him. Something is very seriously wrong if a child of four or five is not asking questions on where he came from, what are the differences between boys and girls and all such puzzles.

6. Although we are forced, in our own civilization, to treat this question of sex instruction as if it were a special question, we should remember that this is the very error which we are trying to avoid. No child whose questions meet with a proper response will continue to ‘worry and bother or direct his interest in this direction more than in any .other. What is important is that children should find security and freedom of expansion in all their interests ; and should have reason to feel complete confidence in their parents. ALAN PORTER.

The Conference will be pleased to answer any questions which parents would like to ask. •We have been holding up an ideal, but we know fully that many difficulties present themselves in practice.