4thought.tv

This makes me feel angry.

What a shame, her sentiment was good until she brought god into it... trust your own judgement, try not to impose your delusional religious beliefs on your child.

This makes me feel angry. It helped me understand the speaker's point of view.

Personally, being a teenager, i remember seeing sex education videos and i don't feel they are at all inappropriate or wrong. I prefferred being tought these things in school with friends. I would feel it awkward to talk about it with my parents and i don't feel there is anything wrong with them. I think this woman is being pedantic and too protective over her children, though we are all entitled our own opinions.

It reinforced what I already believed.

She has a point. Sex education and sex on TV as well as violence does directly influence teenagers actions. This is what happened to me at my school after sex education. Every luchtime or breaktime conversation suddenly into a who has the longest willy or who's the toughest. Schools should be places of learning,discipline and how to live and set a a good example for others. Teaching sex education to a 14-15 year old with under 12 year old brothers and sisters creates monsters at home. Sex education should be left to parents and parents should be the ones being taught how to teach it.

It helped me understand the speaker's point of view.

The trivialisation of sexual intimacy is an appalling legacy for any child. I applaud this mother's intelligence, integrity and courage.

This makes me feel sad.

This hardly counted as thought at all. More a stream of prejudiced assumptions. She was to be the source of all knowledge and was incontestably right about everything.

It reinforced what I already believed.

I wholeheartedly agree with what you have said. You have spoken nothing but the truth. I hope many parents watched the programme tonight and will now be motiviated to go along to their children's schools to check out sex ed material because in my experience, most parents TRUST that nothing will be shown to their child which could damage them. Thank you for raising awareness.

This makes me feel glad. It reinforced what I already believed.

The speaker was teaching the basic duty of the family is to educate in this area. To this I wholly agree.

This makes me feel glad. It reinforced what I already believed.

I would like to add that I believe that society, and parents especially, must be very wary of adults who WANT to talk to young children about sexual matters. It is right to question their motivation and certainly NEVER take for granted that they are doing it for the sake of educating children. The past has shown all to tragically what happens when the boundaries between adults and children are breeched and talking about explicit sexual matters certainly blurs those boundaries.

I completely agree with the speakers point of view. I am not religeous in any way but agree with her that parents are the childs primary educators and something as intimate as sex education should be left to the parent. I do think there is too much info. at too young an age. A local school had a lesson showing pupils of 10-11 how to put condoms on bananas! The lady in the video talked about explicit animations being shown to young children which could be very disturbing for them. I am also aware that some studies have been done that show the earlier a child is subjected to sexual images the earlier they experience puberty. Obviously there will be the occasional parents who dont want to tell their children anything so if information was available at school for teens then that would be good but up until then it should be down to the parents. For the critics that say what about teenage pregnancy I believe it is the over sexualisation of our culture that is to blame and that too much info too young is also part of the problem.

It reinforced what I already believed.

I agree with Patricia. I also want to make the point that the current C4 series "The Joy of Teen Sex" must be the sickest thing ever screened on free-to-air TV. Youngsters should be taught that sex is for permanent, monogamous, loving relationships, and 16-year-olds are far too young to make these decisions.

I empathise with Patricia's feelings. Parents should have the priority (or opportunity) to introduce sex education to their children first, so that vital moral and emotional issues can be included as essential to the experience. In our experience sex education was delivered to our sons at their school (private single sex school for high achievers) without our knowledge. There was no opportunity for input from parents beforehand. This was some years ago now.
When I brought up the subject, my first son said he had already been 'informed'. Schools must communicate better on this, giving parents the opportunity to opt their children out, as in Patricia's case. videos, demonstrating the biological and physical act have a place but not in isolation. Sex should be part of a meaningful relationship and parents should be rassured that that is part of the teaching process.

This makes me feel very encouraged. It reinforced what I already believed.

I agree with Patricia. Only a parent can know just the right time for information to be given. It's not something which should br taught in a group. Schools should help, encourage and enable parents to give this information, if parents need help. Schools do this in all sorts of other areas and subjects. Why not on the subject of love and sex?

This makes me feel sad.

I am sad to hear that Patricia was not happy with the sex education at her children's school and decided to withdraw her children from it - but happy that she recognises the important role that parents have as educators about sex and relationships. Most parents support school sex and relationships education (SRE) -in one survey 83% per cent of parents of school aged children stated that schools should teach young people about the emotional aspects of sex and relationships, as well as the biological facts. Many parents also wish they felt more able to talk to their children about sex and relationships and value support with this.

The Sex Education Forum believe that parents and schools need to work in partnership to provide the best quality SRE. This can involve parent-child workshops, courses for parents and SRE homework tasks (that can be useful conversation starters). Also really important that schools communicate with parents about when and what will be taught. Examples of how schools are doing this are described here: http://www.ncb.org.uk/sef/practice/parents_and_sre.aspx

Children and young people still tell us that they are getting SRE too late. Parents and schools can provide information in a safe, accurate and age-appropriate way and if they fail in their responsibility to do so children are left vulnerable and may turn to other sources for answers to their questions such as searching on the internet.

Choosing the right resources is important too and it is great to hear that Patricia's school is inviting parents in to be part of that conversation. We also encourage schools to ask pupils for their views on what resources they find useful.

In many respects I agree with Patricia, but are we going to put sex education on hold until all parents are a good as her? Parents are not all equally capable of imparting important information about sex and sexuality within a moral framework. In fact I would suggest that the majority are not, even if the their children were amenable to being taught by them. State education is about entitlement and young people's rights. Schools have a responsibility to ensure all their young people have an appropriate relationships and sexual health curriculum, irrespective of the quality of their parents. If parents still object, they have the right to withdraw their children from their SRE lessons. The overwhelming majority of parents, however, believe their children should have mandatory sex and relationships education - what goes into that SRE curriculum is still up for debate. I wonder of Patricia thinks all SRE should be removed from the curriculum? Would our children be better or worse off if that was to happen?

This makes me feel disappointed.

It's all well and good for Patricia to be saying that loving parents should teach their lovely children about lovely sex. But what about kids without parents? What about kids who have parents who are unwilling to talk about the subject, or are not exactly 'experts', to put it nicely.
And, in this video, not once does she say how old her 'children' were. The first time I did semi-detailed sex-ed was in Year 7 (11-12), where we watched a video about it in Biology. There was part about sex, part about giving birth, all sorts of hilarious things for a 12 year old. It was disturbing, it wasn't 'sexualising' us. The only sex-ed before that was in year 5-6 when they split you into boys and girls and told you about puberty and stuff. I don't know what the boys talked about, but the girls talked about periods.
School, overall, is a more comfortable way to get information on sex. No teenager is going to ask their parents about sex. However, when in school, they can talk about it with their friends without cringing.
All in all, sex-ed in the school curriculum is the only way to make sure that all teenagers have at least basic sexual health knowledge, which they may not have got from home. You can teach your kids your views on sex at home. (By the way, you do watch videos about not having sex until you're in a relationship, and not being pressured into having sex. Just so you know.)

I am very glad that these speakers have rejected the "fashionable" so-called sex education programme for schools, especially Primary Schools. These lessons border on the pornographic and can only distress vulnerable children.

This makes me feel very encouraged.

So glad that Patricia has spoken out and that this important viewpoint has got airtime!
Well done Patricia! Please God Patricia's opinion and the opinions of parents like her will be heard!

It helped me understand the speaker's point of view.

I'm not Catholic, but how rarely we hear Christians having a voice or being respected at all in this nation now. Parental rights have been horrendously erroded to the extent a teenager can have an abortion without her parents knowing or being able to support, despite there being no history in the home of violence or unreasonable parental behaviour. It would be far more appropriate to have a MODULAR form of learning sex education (e.g. an online course)so that pupils can learn what is appropriate to them and their culture and opt out of what isn't. Obviously those soon to reach puberty need to know key facts, but it should not be taught too early. The moral context seriously needs reinforcing as do issues of assertiveness and self esteem - that would help. In addition, we need to be more honest about abortion with young people. I don't mean showing graphic details, but every upper primary child could learn about the development of the baby in the womb in a nice way. This would set a foundation for discussion of these issues at secondary age. As a nation, we kill 20% of our citizens before birth (1 in 5 babies are terminated in the womb). What happens to the mothers when they discover that it really WAS a baby? Isn't that going to mess with their heads? Sex education needs to be more honest in this respect.

Patricia is right, parents have the right, the duty and the privilege to teacher their children in the way they believe is right. It is not the place of government to impose ideological views about sexuality on the population.

I agree, parents must realise that it's us who set the temperature for our children. Good or bad, we are responsible for advancing society or degrading it. Sex education is one aspect which parents should take more responsibility in - otherwise our children are at the mercy of someone else's ideals. Be involved in your child's upbringing, not as a a dictator or a passivist, but as a mentor, a helper, a disciplining guide.

I am delighted such a well-balanced, sane view was given. Explicit classroom lessons on sex are a dangerous experiment which should be stopped. Sex is an intimate thing and must be kept intimate to preserve it's beauty and the integrity of those enjoying it later in marriage.

This makes me feel angry. I don't understand the speaker's point of view at all.

Patricia made an excellent point about the right and duty of parents to educate their children about the truth and meaning of human sexuality, ie that the gift of sex should be saved for marriage. Schools should support parents in reinforcing this message, but instead they undermine it by promoting sex instruction rather than chastity. They treat children like adults and their parents like children.

What a though-provoking and well argued piece. Like Patricia my husband and I have withdrawn our children from sex education lessons at school; as a matter of principle we feel that it is the parents' right, duty and responsibility to impart this information at the right time for each individual child. Children develop at different rates and are ready at different times to receive information about sex and relationships. Furthermore sex education does not exist in a moral vacuum: information should be imparted within the moral and ethical context of a child's family and community beliefs. The state should not seek to impose a norm for sexual behaviour through sex-education lessons. Moral education belongs in the home; the state should not usurp the role of parents as first and primary educators of their children.

This makes me feel very encouraged.

This is very encouraging. Parents are prepared to think critically about all the self-congratulatory conformism which comes at us (parents and our children) through the Department of Education, various sex advocacy groups and the soap operas on TV. Many idealistic people who join Catholic bodies want to do good. In many cases, they become ideological and come to believe that they know adamantly what is good or progressive and we the parents/laity are going to get what is good for us, whether we want it or not.
Our parents did not have to be counter-cultural in order to protect us when we were at school. Why is there this conformism to dumbing down and sexualising our children? Do we have to be made slaves to a sexualised consumer society? The people behind these measures have forgotten that "Hard cases make Bad Law".

This makes me feel confused.

My confusion is that my son went through primary and was never subjected to such a video. I'm all for sex education in schools and that it should cover all sexualities as being perfectly normal, but this seems to suggest that some kids are basically sat in front of cartoonised pornography and that cannot be right. I agree that parents should be teaching their kids about sex, but unfortunately so many can't or won't or have outdated and biggoted views which should really not be passed onto the next generation. It is for that reason we need some standardised sex education for our kids - but it should be factual - not graphic! And it doesn't have to encourage them that it's okay to have casual sex! All sex should be between adults (not adolescents!) who are in a long term, loving and committed relationship. That's why it's called 'making love' and the people involved are 'lovers'!

It strikes me as quite bizarre that people can accept some of our young men and women going off to kill or be killed, sometimes horribly maiming or being maimed, but at the same time insist that others cannot be trusted with sex! Personally, and as an old hippy, I think we had it right. Make Love Not War!

It reinforced what I already believed.

Angry that the euthanasia bill was turned down. Regarding your 4thought slot I feel very strongly that there is no threat in this to anyone who does not want to take the option, they simply let their views be known and that's the end of it. However, I would not like to burden my family. Once I had no quality of life I would support a suicide to see me out of pain. I accept as the gentleman says, that there is an effect on family, but this is so whether it is assisted suicide or not. Indeed the effect is much worse if they have to watch you in pain and without any dignity for any length of time. They have to grieve, but at least I could say my goodbyes and let them know how much they mean to me. (I am not on facebook so cannot respond to any replies to this - sorry)

It reinforced what I already believed.

This makes me feel disappointed.

Children are being 'denied the truth' in a (I'm guessing) secular school environment?
I completely agree that parents have the right to educate their own children on what is right and wrong and allow them to decide when they are old enough. But by wrapping them up in cotton wool and shielding them from things which happen in the real world, you are denying them choices. Surely faith should be something which a person chooses, or which chooses a person, not something you are forced into.

This makes me feel disappointed.

Parents may have the RIGHT to teach their children sex education, but to make an unqualified parent the sole provider is foolish. The parent should only be the sole provider of sex education to children if they know EXACTLY what they're talking about and are willing to give the children the brute facts about rates of contraception failure and such and symptoms of STI, which I assume, most parents lack the fundamental knowledge of.
There are educators in school who have their profession as a sex education teacher, they should be allowed to teach the children what they need to know and deserve to know!

so patricia being a catholic you feel parents are the best people to teach thier children about sex. do you really belive a young single mother living in a councill house with 5 children from 5 different fathers is the best person to teach her children about sex!!! when i was at school some kids were taken out of sex education by thier parents but we all told them about it the next day. so would you rather a teacher teach them or thier classmates the next day who of course only pass on the exicting bits

I was irritated by this piece because of the way it was filmed. I was raised as a Catholic and though I am 'lapsed' I am strongly sympathetic to this point of view about sex education. I am also uncomfortable with the way sex is taught in the schools my son has attended. However, with no slight intended towards this lady, I couldn't help feeling that she had been selected to give this Catholic viewpoint because the filmmakers could portray her as rather frumpy and disapproving. I would have been much more heartened to see a devout and very attractive Catholic blonde in a pink boob tube expressing exactly the same views. Seriously. Stereotyping is all too easy when it comes to religion and sex, and this kind of filmmaking I do not find at all challenging to stuck-in-a-rut thought processes.

This makes me feel angry and disappointed.

this makes me feel safe. i was the woman who was penetrated. now i feel discombobulated.