Sad but kids nowadays need sex-ed

THIS week my oldest sons (twins) celebrated a landmark birthday. They were 40. Good grief. Where did all that time go? I still remember wheeling their pram through the pretty streets of Norwich, where they were born (although, since we moved to Manchester when they were only six-months-old, they both regard themselves as super-cool Mancs).

Any-hoo, there’s nothing more emotional than seeing your children reach their fifth decade. It makes you feel even older than a landmark birthday of your own. And watching my two beloved boys growing up, one now married with a young daughter, the other getting wed this summer, has astonished me at the way time transforms our attitudes to childhood.

Take this week’s Government announcement that even fouryear-olds will now be given sex and relationship advice in school. WHAT? (was my first reaction). Our granddaughter is four. The idea of a child that tiny needing to be warned about inappropriate sexual advances over the internet is anathema to me.

And yet… my boys were only primary school age when I advertised in a well-known magazine (The Lady) for a nanny. I stupidly named my children and gave my telephone number. The next day I received a call from a man purporting to be one of their teachers. He was suave, wellspoken and convincing. He told me my boys were obviously reaching puberty and needed guidance. The conversation rapidly descended into a grotesque gavotte, with this pervert talking about young boys and sex, and me, flabbergasted and confused, trying to change the subject.

When I banged the phone down I drove straight to my kids’ primary school and brought them home early. I never told them about it but it left fear and a nasty taste in my mouth that I can still remember.

In a recent conversation with a close friend she told me her 11-year-old daughter has been receiving extremely graphic sex texts – “sexts” – from a boy of her own age. My friend dealt with this by calling the boy back and threatening to tell his parents. The threat worked but for her daughter this horrible, lascivious text message will probably be the first of many the poor girl will get as she goes through her teens.

But my little Ivy? My sweet, innocent, four-year-old granddaughter? Does she really need to be warned about the dangers and potential horror of social media?

I’m afraid the answer is yes – although it makes me sad and angry to write this. I feel so sorry for young parents today: their children will be exposed to internet sexuality while they’re still reading Enid Blyton.

We must do something to protect them and, athough I hate the idea of the innocence of my grandchild being tainted by warnings about sexual predators, I suppose we must somehow find the language to tell them this is now a sad and horrible fact of 21st-century life.