My name is Nathalie and I have been working for several months as a pedagogical employee at SKO at the BSO group at Het DOK with children between 7 and 10 years old. I deliberately chose this age group because of the high degree of independence and the level of development. I also really like that you can have real conversations with the children. But I wasn't exactly prepared for a situation like the following\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recently the children in the group got to work creatively after lunch. The tables were filled with colored paper, pencils, markers, glue, you know. And during one of their pleasant conversations, suddenly words that caught my attention, whereupon I decided to crawl a little closer. And guess what\u2026 the children had received a very literal lesson at school about 'Spring fever'. Yeah sure it's what you think it was about sex education. And that was accompanied by a lot of giggling! Because yes, it is and remains a subject of embarrassment<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After hearing the topics discussed in class, it became clear to me that the classes were quite extensive. With a lot of giggles and shy looks, they tell me about the video they had seen showing how intimacy came about. And I must confess that I was also a bit shy that they, at that age, could tell me such stories and with so many details. Since 2012, primary schools have been obliged to pay attention to sexuality education, but are allowed to give substance to this themselves (sexual formation.nl, 2019). It is said that it is good to give children sex education at a young age. Children are then much more open to learning such norms and values. The older children get, the more complicated they often find it to ask questions about sexuality. Providing information at a young age ensures that children become familiar and familiar with the rather emotionally charged subject at an early age and that they are better able to deal with it later in life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because I have never really thought about this theme around this age, I did some research online. After reading myself into the rationale behind this early approach, I actually kind of agreed with it. Especially given the digital age and the access that children today already have to such information at a young age. I mean, just look at the video clips that are being made these days and the lyrics that appear in songs that you often hear the kids sing after the groups as well. Informing children in good time about what is and is not appropriate and what is or is not appropriate can prevent children from becoming embarrassed about the subject later in life and not knowing how to act when a sexual situation arises. Consider, for example, sexual harassment. And I believe that we as pedagogical employees can play an important\/signaling role in this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the hours that the children are at the BSO, where nothing is actually required but a lot is allowed, I notice that the children feel very free. I notice this, for example, through conversations they have with boyfriends\/girlfriends about who likes which boy\/girl and who is dating or not. At these moments, there is an opportunity as a pedagogical employee to join in on the conversation and thus find out how the children deal with this. You can then give them the right guidelines so that the theme can be discussed throughout the year and not only causes giggling children, during that one time that sex education is discussed at school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Greetings,
\nNatalie<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ik ben Nathalie en ik werk sinds een aantal maanden als pedagogisch medewerker bij SKO op de BSO groep bij Het DOK met kinderen tussen de 7 en 10 jaar. Ik heb bewust voor deze leeftijdsgroep gekozen vanwege de grote mate van zelfstandigheid en het ontwikkelingsniveau. Ik vind het ook erg leuk dat je echte […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1526,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sko-oegstgeest.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sko-oegstgeest.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sko-oegstgeest.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sko-oegstgeest.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sko-oegstgeest.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sko-oegstgeest.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sko-oegstgeest.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sko-oegstgeest.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sko-oegstgeest.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sko-oegstgeest.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}