After the worries expressed in my previous post that IJ was going to be exposed to the finer workings of the human body under the heading of sex education, at school, aged six, I can in fact relax a little. There is no cause for immediate alarm, as first thought.
Thankfully we have a teacher in the family, and I've also checked out the official version of the National Curriculum, so I now have a clearer idea of what to expect. In a nutshell, in Key Stage as part of the Personal, Social and Health Education module they will learn 'the names of the main parts of the body' although in IJ's school the words 'vagina' and 'penis' are not mentioned until the final term of Year 2.
In Key Stage 2, amongst other things, they will learn 'how their body changes as they approach puberty' and in my opinion any teaching is this area has to be a good thing, supplemented with input from parents. And apparently, across all year groups, parents will be informed in advance of the work that will be done in class and how they can help their child with this.
So all is well. I have time on my side. IJ is a very young six-year-old with very little knowledge at the moment on the subject of boys and girls, and we are an all female household which doesn't help. So I have apprached my most helpful and reliable source of information - Amazon - and scrolled down their list of books, and I have settled on this:
A search for 'body parts' brought up some interesting results. I'm not sure who would choose to wear a body part tie:
But clearly there is a market out there somewhere, and I suppose it could be worse. Could it?
NB. You can read a great post on talking to children about sex, over at Iota's blog - Not Wrong, Just Different.
award for you at mine! x
Posted by: Peggy | September 21, 2009 at 01:00 PM
Peggy, many thanks. I'll happily accept it!
On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 1:00 PM, wrote:
Posted by: Rosie Scribble | September 21, 2009 at 01:07 PM
A flip-flap book? Just catering for girls then ;-)
Is there a pop-up for the boys?
Posted by: SingleParentDad | September 21, 2009 at 06:19 PM
Ian (SPD), you are simply outrageous. You probably have one of those ties.
Posted by: Rosie Scribble | September 21, 2009 at 06:56 PM
Oh I remember this well. These days the Teen knows more about rude bits than I do...
Posted by: Tam | September 21, 2009 at 08:43 PM
Love SingleParentDad's comment...
I haven't been to your blog for a while, and when I came over, I found this nice link to my own blog. Thank you!
I'm sorting out my Bloglines, which are out of date, and have added you, to make sure I come by more often. Can't think why you're not on there already.
Good luck with the book! Loved the description of IJ saying Michael was a bit taller than her. Ah, if only it was that simple.
Posted by: Iota | September 22, 2009 at 02:25 AM
We have that book Rosie. It's fine. And SPD is so rude, hee hee.
Posted by: Jo Beaufoix | September 23, 2009 at 01:26 PM