Actually, I should have titled this post, "Keeping it real about tween sex," because that's the age some kids begin having sex, according to Melissa Peskin, PhD, a researcher I interviewed for my latest UT HealthLeader article, "It's Your Game...Keep It Real." Millennial kids begin experimenting with sex in sixth, seventh and eighth grades, long before many parents expect. An estimated one in 10 sixth-grade students has initiated sex. Yikes! It gets worse. Kids who initiate sex at an early age are more likely to have unprotected sex and become pregnant.
“Texas has one of the highest teen birth rates. If we can work on delaying teen sex, it is possible we can help reduce that rate,” Peskin says.
Motivated by the statistics, Peskin and her fellow researchers at The University of Texas School of Public Health developed a classroom program to prevent teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Instead of relying on textbooks and lectures, they embraced videos and computer games, creating an interactive program that captures the fragmented teenage attention span.
The program—called It’s Your Game…Keep It Real—is helping delay the age middle school kids start initiating sex, which in turn lowers their risk for teen pregnancy and acquiring STDs. In fact, students who didn’t participate in the program were 1.29 times more likely to initiate sex by the ninth grade, according to Peskin and her colleagues’ study of 10 low-income middle schools in Southeast Texas.
What a great program! I am so glad to see it making a difference in our community.
But what I also took away from my interview with Peskin, was the importance of talking to your kids early about S-E-X. And I mean early, early. Don't wait until voices start changing, or it's time for training bra shopping. Sit them down sometime between the ages of Dora and Justin Beiber (or Thomas the Train and Batman movies for boys), and talk about it.
Experts say an age appropriate book about sex helps.
My two cents: a glass of wine never hurts either.