Sexuality and sexual-health education for pre-teenagers, adolescents, and youths must help them avoid risky sexual-health behaviours towards prevention from contracting STIs, HIV/AIDS and unplanned pregnancy. Photo by Trinity Kubassek from Pexels

Family Health and School Education:

Sex education for pre-teenagers, adolescents, and youths, aged 9 and above

In this Sex Education blog post Season 3d, you shall find:

1. What are the aims and objectives of sex education for children, pre-teenagers, and adolescents youths?
2. Why give sexuality education to children, adolescents, and other young adults?
3. Sex, healthy sexuality, and reproductive health education for pre-teenagers, adolescents, and youths
4. The importance and benefits of sexuality education for adolescents and youths

What are the aims and objectives of sex education for children, pre-teenagers, and adolescents youths?

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Sex education for adolescents: Children, pre-teenagers, and adolescents should understand the extent of the use of their bodies in maintaining healthy relationships with the opposite sex. Photo credit: joebudish.com

The aims and objectives of sex education for children, pre-teens, adolescents, and youths is to help them gain the information, skills, and motivation to make healthy decisions about sex and sexuality throughout their lives.

Sexuality education aims to develop and strengthen the ability of children and young people to make conscious, satisfying, healthy, and respectful choices regarding relationships, sexuality, and emotional and physical health. Sexuality education does not encourage children and young people to have sex.

It aims at supporting and protecting sexual development. It gradually equips and empowers children and young people with information, skills, and positive values to understand and enjoy their sexuality, have safe and fulfilling relationships and take responsibility for their own and other people’s sexual health and well-being.

Why give sexuality education to children, adolescents, and other young adults?

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Sex education for adolescent youths: Comprehensive Sex Education (CSE) must put more emphasis on abstinence for healthy sexuality at an early age. Photo credit: ippf.org

Every young person will one day have life-changing decisions to make about their sexual and reproductive health. Teens are still very private people. However, speaking about sex early increases the chance that they will approach parents when difficult or dangerous things come up, including pressure from others to indulge in sexual activities against their wishes.

Again, risky sexual behaviours and sexual mistakes of one’s life are done mostly at the adolescent stage. 46% of students in the US had sexual intercourse with at least one person, and about 6% of students had sexual intercourse for the first time before age 13 years.

In our other related Family and Health Education posts, you will find:

• Sex, Sexuality and Sexual Health Education
• Sex-Education-for-babies-and-toddlers-aged-0-2-years
• Approaches, Forms, and Types of Sex Education
• Sex education for preschoolers and kindergarten children, aged 2-5 years
• Sex Education for School-aged Children, aged 5-8 years

Sex, healthy sexuality, and reproductive health education for pre-teenagers, adolescents, and youths

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Sexuality education for pre-teenagers and adolescent youths. Photo credit: guttmacher.org

Sex education for pre-teenagers

Along with consolidating the knowledge on sex education for school-aged children already acquired in the previous article, pre-teenagers should be taught about safer sex and the use of condoms and contraception with strong emphasis that abstinence remains the best sexual practice to avoid STIs, HIV/AIDS, and unplanned pregnancy. They should have basic information and knowledge about pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and understand perfectly that being an adolescent does not mean they have to be sexually active.

Pre-teenagers should understand what makes a positive relationship and what makes for a bad one.

Children and pre-teens should have increased knowledge of internet-based computer and mobile devices safety, including cyberbullying, privacy, sexting, nudity and pornography, and respect for others in the digital context. They should know the risks and consequences of sharing nude or sexually explicit online photos of themselves or their peers and should observe the rules for talking to strangers and expected actions and reactions if they come across an uncomfortable event or display.

Pre-teens should also understand how the media influences sexuality the way people view their bodies and should be able to think critically about how sexuality is portrayed in the media. This means being able to judge whether depictions of sex and sexuality are true or false, realistic or not and whether they are positive or negative.

Sex education for adolescent youths

 Sex education should treat sexual development as a normal, natural part of human development. Teens should receive more detailed information about menstruation and nocturnal emissions (wet dreams) and should know what sexuality aspects are normal and healthy.

Adolescents and other young people should be shown how to develop a safe and positive view of sexuality through age-appropriate and evidence-based sex education about their sexual health, whether from parents, teachers, health care experts, and educators.

Parents and teachers should ensure that adolescents and youths learn basic information on how HIV and other sexually-transmitted infections (STDs) are transmitted and contracted; how to prevent the infections and unintended pregnancy, and the ability to apply critical thinking, effective communication and collaboration, and decision-making skills to matters related to sexuality. This must include negotiation and refusal skills and methods for ending a relationship.

Developing healthy sexuality is a key developmental milestone for all children, pre-teenagers, and adolescent youths that depend on acquiring knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and values about body image, consent, sexual orientation, gender identity, and intimate relationships.

Sex education to pre-teenagers, adolescents, and youths should occur at home and throughout a student’s grade level education in schools, with information appropriate to students’ age, development, and cultural background.

Sex educators should provide sexuality education information to young children and students that covers healthy sexual development,  gender identity, sexual orientation, having positive body image, puberty stages, affections towards others, intimacy, and keeping healthy interpersonal relationships (in terms of the characteristic difference between a healthy relationship and an unhealthy relationship, including learning and understanding pressure, consent and violence in dating and sexual relationships),  abstinence from sexual intercourse, reproduction processes, use of contraception and condoms, sexual violence prevention, among others, including adolescents and youths with disabilities, chronic health conditions, and other special needs. Abstinence from sex must be prioritized over the different contraception options and how to use them to practice safer sex.

Sex education to adolescent youths should be well-versed by evidence of best practices to prevent sexual intercourse leading to unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), irrespective of the approach or model without degrading societal moral standards and norms while respecting the sexual rights of adolescents and youths to complete and honest information.

Pre-teenagers, adolescents, and young adults should be well-informed about the roles and functions of sex organs during sexual intercourse in the human sexual health and reproductive system – the instruction on anatomy and the physiology of biological sex and reproduction. They should also know that there are other means of reproduction and families get their babies like through IVF, adoption, foster care, or grandparent care.

The importance and benefits of sexuality education for adolescents and youths

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Sexuality education must importantly help adolescents and young adults avoid risky sexual-health behaviours to avoid contracting STIs, HIV/AIDS, or unplanned pregnancy. Image credit: Image credit: africanaarguments.org

It is pertinent to consider the importance and benefits of sexuality education for adolescents and youths having discussed the characteristics and human rights of good-quality sex education and the factors that determine sexual behaviours of children, pre-teenagers, and adolescent youths. Sexuality education delivered within a safe and enabling learning environment and alongside access to health services has a positive and life-long effect on the health and well-being of young people.

Children and adolescents will benefit when they are provided with accurate and developmentally appropriate information about the biological, sociocultural, psychological, relational, and spiritual dimensions of sexuality. These benefits of sexuality education have been recognized by numerous international agreements.

Sex education helps pre-teenagers, adolescents, and youths to understand and value the autonomy of their bodies. They not only understand the basics of the development of sex organs and poverty but also decide against unwanted sexual behaviours and activities. Sexuality education helps young people to critically analyze the powers that determine one’s body image.

One of the benefits of sexuality education for adolescent youths is that it empowers them to understand what constitutes risky sexual behaviours and to decide against committing sexual violence, and how to find help if assaulted sexually. All children and adolescents need to receive accurate education about sexuality to understand ultimately how to practice healthy sexual behaviours.

While it is understandable that societal and religious moral norms go against certain sexual orientation or gender identity, like lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning (LGBTQ+) individuals, sex education avoids discriminating and harassing youths with such orientation or identity, treating them equally with others.

Another importance of sex education is that it can help pre-teens and adolescents with or without chronic health conditions and disabilities avoid unhealthy, exploitive, and other health-risk behaviors with their associated health and social associated problems like unintended pregnancy, contract of sexually-transmitted infections STIs (which may include gonorrhea, Chlamydia, syphilis, hepatitis, herpes, human papillomavirus (HPV), and HIV/AIDS diseases. About 750,000 teens become pregnant in the US each year – 82% of which are unintended. Teenagers and adolescents, and young adults age 15-24 account for 25% of all new HIV infections in the U.S.

Sex education guides young people into freely communicating and discussing sexual-health issues with peers, friends, parents, and intimate partners for healthy sexuality outcomes. Teens and adolescents can also learn to delay sexual initiation when appropriate. Comprehensive sexual health education that teaches abstinence-only for guaranteed and 100% effective method of preventing HIV, STIs, and unintended pregnancy is highly recommended and noteworthy.

Sexuality education is important and beneficial in helping adolescents and adolescent youths to understand healthy and unhealthy relationship patterns. Positive communication, conflict management, negotiation, decision-making skills are required to keep sexuality rights and maintain a healthy relationship as lack of these skills can lead to unhealthy and even violent relationships among youth. 10% of high school students have experienced physical violence from a dating partner in the past year.

Sex Education in Text Seasons …

Eduonwheels has simply continued to deliver the best blog posts on sex education of a similar quality as those of pdf articles and also in Seasons 1, 2, and 3 in texts – the movies of which are seen online on Netflix and other online video-streaming platforms nonetheless. Many research-based pdf versions of sex education articles are available online for expansive knowledge and empowerment.

In Sex Education Season 1 in Text, we defined sex education, sexuality education, and sexual health education and stated the difference between the three concepts in Sexual and Reproductive Health Education. In Season 2 in Text, we discussed the approaches, forms, and types of sex education, and in Seasons 3a, 3b, and 3c in texts; we dealt with sex education for babies and toddlers, aged 0-2 years, sex education for preschoolers and kindergarten children, 2-5 years and sex education for school-aged children, 5-8 years respectively.

This blog content on ‘Sex education for pre-teenagers, adolescents, and youths, aged 9 and above’ is categorized under Family Health & School Education.

Our Health Education system is about creating and delivering impacting and empowering information relating to our health to our amiable readers for good, quality, and sustainable future healthy living – Eduonwheels