My daughter had her first sex ed class when she was 10 – she (and I) were shocked

“How was your day?” I ask Jemima, my daughter who just turned 10, after I picked her up from elementary school. “Hmm, not fun,” she said, grimacing. “Why this?” I ask. “We had our first PSHE (personal, social, health and economic) lesson and it was really embarrassing. They talked about breasts and private parts. Two girls ended up crying and the boys continued to laugh.

Digging a little deeper, he was shown detailed diagrams of the male and female reproductive systems with labels indicating the correct terminology, including the word “vulva”, which I hadn’t even really heard of until a date embarrassing. My daughter tells me it made her uncomfortable and I can totally understand why.

This lesson, I learned, was about the changes in their bodies during puberty and covered both boys and girls. I suppose this is of course completely natural, but my daughter was quite shocked to see photos of developing bodies. The girls sat on one table and the boys on another.

Over the next few lessons, this group of nine and ten year olds (she is in grade 5) will cover menstruation, baby development in mammals, and embryo/fetal development during pregnancy. These are all important things, of course, so I don’t know why hearing about this first lesson made me nauseous. Maybe I’m just a prude.

“Can you ask if we can learn separately from the boys next time?” » asks my daughter. I message a few other moms I know with kids the same age. A teacher friend assures me that everything they learn in 5th grade is age appropriate. According to her, this is all part of the national program. Another, echoing my thoughts, said she was unprepared for the level of detail of the course. “Do they really have to know all this?” she sends a message. “I’m not even sure I know all of this.”

Another friend, who has Scandinavian roots and practically grew up in a sauna, tells me that her children learned everything years ago through a biology book and lots of conversations. “What are you worried about?” she asks.

What indeed? And the one who has a daughter in 6th grade says that “they already had a lesson on the dangers of penis photos in her class”.