Teenagers

The debate is still on whether understanding of sex and sexuality is leading to early puberty in young children or early puberty has made it necessary to make young children aware of sex and sexuality. What age it is appropriate for such discussion and till what levels?

I see lot of teenagers using the word ‘sexy’ so casually in our Indian society and wonder how well they really understand the term sex while using the slang.

I believe the parents, peers, the media, social institutions and youth culture all play an important role in adolescent sexual adjustment. The role of the internet in adolescent romance is also significant. Maladaptive aspects of sexual development, including sexual risk-taking, disease, unplanned pregnancy and sexual coercion are also to be looked at and taken care off in the current scenario.  Demographic changes in the society, family system, culture, parental attitude and upbringing patterns have also led to a significant impact on adolescent lives.

Being a school counsellor, I get to share problems of lot of young adolescents who suffer from loneliness, helplessness, hopelessness and a growing need to belong to someone special early in life. Earlier, the sense of belonging used to be more in the home environment with joint families. Now as our busy working parents are not able to give more time and secured feeling of belonging, these adolescents feel the need to form all kinds of peer-relationships outside home and on the internet. Economic growth and technological advancements are leading to increased use of internet and mobile phones as a part of our fashionable popular lifestyle.

The global culture is also responsible in setting trends of mixed cultures and changing global lifestyles. Also, we must not to forget that our children take us as role models in every aspect. So whatever we do or say in front of them has an impact. They pick up things from their environment very quickly and think ten times faster than their past generations.

An increased rate of divorce and failure of marriages is setting up a wrong example for these adolescents as some of them also prefer to have live in relationships and settle abroad rather get married and get into the conventional ways of bringing up families.

With so much of awareness and exposure that media gives has also lead to increased rate of sexual practices in young children early in life and malpractices leading to various problems. It is quite visible that the starting of a romantic peer relationship is at a much early stage now. When I hear students at the age of 11 or 12 years talking about crushes, boyfriends, girlfriends, gossip about hook-ups and breakups, I am shocked. They are getting into a lot of attention seeking behaviours such as changing hairstyles every day, working on their looks, body language, piercing, tattoo making and much more to get not only popular in school but impress their opposite sex also.

All this indicates that due to more exposure from everywhere, they are in the current scenario of starting up early with sexual peer-relationships also but because of less awareness of the same, they may end up early also and sometimes in bad state. Mostly the teenage depression cases are due to the problems they face in their peer-relationships which they get into early and break up early as well, which make them moody, irritable, disturbed, frustrated and sometimes even suicidal.

Looking at current scenario, I think the adults of the society need to be more vigilant and aware of their young ones’ behaviours, attitudes and accept them as a part of changing culture and lifestyle. My question here is, when our children are so aware, why should adults  pretend to remain ignorant of all these things? Why hide and escape from accepting the faults of these adolescents? Why not rectify them by giving them more support and teaching them to take responsibility.

Let us allow our children to share with us and make them have healthy discussions without any fear, embarrassment, anxiety or shame.  We may feel at times that our kids are not normal to behave so maturely at a young age but it is high time that we realise that the age has changed. It is for us to decide who will answer them and in what way they seek their answers.

Lastly, by talking about all these things we will in no way promote such behaviour. It is our moral duty as adults to give them right direction and talk to them with a friendly approach so that they are more likely to take healthy decisions for the rest of their lives.                      

(Views expressed by the author are personal)