“There is growing evidence that premature
exposure to adult sexual images and values has a negative impact on the
psychological development of children, particularly on self-esteem, body image
and understanding of sexuality and relationships (Manocha, 2010). As an
educator and parent I think the early childhood years should be spent providing
a foundation that would be effective in our children being ready and successful
in school. They should not be worried about how they look or learning about
sexualization they are babies.
I have encountered young children who have
been exposed to sexualization in the early childhood classroom. Once I had a
student that used words that referred to parts of a women’s body that children
should not use. He would tell the girls to come and sit on his private area. Another
incident was a student that loved to play with stuffed animals in the quite
area. From time to time I would catch her lying on top of the stuffed animals. Last
year I had a student that would wrap her legs around the pole of the swing and
tell others this is what you do in the club.
Sexualization may contribute in girls
defining their self-worth and popularity in terms of sexual attraction and
their body structure, with a negative impact on self-esteem. I would try to
provide school based literacy programs that have a positive effect on body
images. I would supervise children’s media exposure and make sure it is age
appropriate.
The topic of sexualization in the early
childhood field has informed me about what’s going on with young children.
Before reading the article ”So Sexy So Soon” I really did not know that young
children knew the vocabulary and meaning of different sexual terms that were
used in the article. I will be careful to what I expose my children to through
television, books and other media sources. So I can prevent the exposure of
sexualization in my early childhood setting. Television has the
potential to generate both positive and negative effects, and many studies have
looked at the impact of television on society, particularly on children (Pediatric,
2003).
References
Manocha,R. (2010). The impact on children of
sexualisation in the media.
Pediatric Child Health. (2003). Impact of media use on
children and youth: May-Jun; 8(5): 301–306.
Thank you for sharing this interesting article, I couldn’t agree more that what our children are exposed to daily is taking a toll on their well-being. There are so many mixed signals that it is hard for them to understand and if nobody explains to them about right/wrong then what is going to happen to our children? In school children see the cool groups and the nerds/outcasts and what child is going to pick the later-not many! Children spend so many hours each day under their own care while parents/adults are working on something and they get so involved and forget to monitor what the children are doing-we need to always know what our children are doing in order to keep them protected and full of knowledge.
ReplyDeleteHi Ebony,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog! You bring up some very great and information points and information. You provided some good answers to the examples that you have personally seen in the classroom, all of those were examples of sexualization in young children. I agree that TV has negative and positive effects. I think it's a shame that our young children are being exposed to so much junk at such an early age.
Children do more than we can imagine. In the past I have worked with the "At risk youth" from age thirteen to twnety and yes, I have learned a great deal from them about sex. When working with the thirteen year olds in Southern California, I had two girls that had babies already. Here in Kentucky I worked with high schoolers who would constantly talk about the sex they had on the weekends, these were girls too. It's a sad situation our youth is in, everything to them revolves around sex. This is why early education, prevention, and interventions are important to our children to grow up with the tools on how to stop these things from happening in the first place. This is where we come in, we need arm our children with knowledge.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing! Children are sponges and absorb their environments and mimic behaviors that have been modeled to them. In today's society, children mimic sexual acts and repeat sexual comments that they do not understand fully. When I see over sexualized children my heart breaks because it makes me wonder if they are over exposed to sexual content in the media and/or marketing or are they being sexually abused. Some of the play that children engage provide us as early childhood professionals with valuable information about what type of environments and/or family structures children are exposed too. I have found throughout my career that some families find these sexual behaviors to be ''cute''. So sad that some adults believe that witnessing children loosing their innocence is entertaining to observe. As a society, we should preserve children innocence and allow them to be exposed to healthy relationships that will later on provide them the foundation to participate in a healthy sexual relationship in the future.
ReplyDelete