by Lara Rhyne

Created on: July 18, 2008

Abstinence only education would and could be effective if children were given this education starting at a younger age. Fact is, by the time 8th grade hits, half of the student body has given into exploring each others' bodies in quiet corridors of the school, each others' homes, cars, and any place they can be alone together. Any great influence is lost by this age! The education MUST come earlier if indeed effectiveness would be reached.

Sex is a taboo word and action in the majority of children's homes and classrooms. The first thing that needs to be done the talking about sex in an age-related way starting with children as young as four years old. This is the time children have discovered that they are a certain-gender. It is a major part of their identity that they must reconcile with at various points of their growth. Parents need to talk with their children openly and respectfully about the sexual changes that they are going through and not allow the changes to be shunned or become taboo. If spoken about openly, the child learns that it is safe to talk with their parents and perhaps others about such things.

From first to fifth grade, children grow and mature from hanging out mostly with their own gender to have sexual feelings typically toward the opposite sex. This is the time when children have so many questions, fears, concerns, and confusion about themselves and their peers raised from the changes going on inside of them. This is also the great time in which the value of abstinence can be very influential to children. Sharing with children the consequences of sexual acts can have a profound influence on them, ESPECIALLY if parents at home are teaching their children a similar thing. Consistency is key and the parents are a huge part of a child's education. The school can only do so much. If a parent does not teach and model the value of responsibility to society, what makes us think the child will know about this value or about actually putting it into practice? What is taught at home has a huge impact on students of any age.

As children grow and enter middle school, the range of sexuality is great! Some girls and boys are still playing with dolls and trucks, while others play with one another by touching each other inappropriately in the school hallways. The value of abstinence should continue to be taught throughout middle school, in every grade, somehow and in someway reinerating the importance of staying sexually pure. For some, this will mean not having sex at all, for others it will mean having sex with one partner in a committed relationship.

There has been limited resources or ample encouragement to provide sexual education more than approximately three times from grade school to high school. If indeed an education system somewhere upholds a sexual education curriculum which upholds the value of abstinence from the age span of children ages four to 18, then those students who are trained in that way will have a better success rate of staying sexually pure for a longer time. Even if the age of the student body's first sexual intercourse experience was raised a year or two, it would be worth it and seen as being effective to some degree!

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