Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
IF you're the mother of an early teen, you might want to sit down for this one.
Experts from two sexual health charities in the UK are calling for compulsory sex education to be given to children as young as four in order to help cut underage abortion and sexually transmitted diseases rates that are at an all-time high.
When I first started reading the report from the Guardian News Service I practically had to pick my chin up off the floor but as I kept on reading I have to admit that although I don't agree with it, I can see where they're coming from.
In the words of Julie Bentley, chief executive of the Family Planning Association: "This is not about teaching four-year-olds how to have sex ... it's like maths - at primary school children learn the basics so that they can understand more and more complex concepts at a later stage."
She added: "Parents are concerned that if they are told about sex they will go straight out and have it but the research shows the complete opposite. They have sex later and when they do, they have safer sex."
If that's true then mandatory sex education for young children is definitely a good idea but age four is just ridiculously young and surely 10 or 11 years would be a better place to start.
Even that seems like a preposterously young age but sadly we really are living in a world where the young are trying to grow up far too fast and don't fully comprehend the consequences of their actions.
Last year some 4,376 abortions were carried out in the UK on girls below the legal age for sex. That's an average of 11.9 a day, and 163 of those were for girls under the age of 14 - a staggering 20 per cent increase from the previous year's number of 136.
The statistics are frightening but sadly not all that surprising and if you're a parent that is sitting back and saying 'that wouldn't happen with my child' then you need to think again.
Over the last year I've been completely stunned at what goes on right under our noses in many of the schools here in Bahrain and you only need to walk around the malls at the weekends to over-hear girls as young as 13 or 14 talking to each other about what happened with their boyfriend the night before.
The boys of the same age can be heard comparing one girl's assets to another or boasting that they went all the way with so-and-so.
Why the young are in such a hurry is beyond me and even more frightening is the fact that they're doing so even though they're receiving sex education from a young age at school. Whatever they're leaning isn't enough and it's up to parents to pick up the shortfall.
It seems to me that not enough parents sit down and really talk to their children to find out what's really going on.
It's still such a taboo subject for so many that they're loathe to bring it up and discuss it. Add to that the fact that the young don't want to talk about it with their parents and it turns into a Catch-22 situation; parents think their children (yes, a 13-year-old is still a child) are too young to think about such things and children think it's totally uncool to talk about it with grown-ups. But just because we think they're too young doesn't mean that they're not talking about it and acting on it when the parents aren't around to witness it.
If we really want to do something about it we have to learn not to make it such a big deal to talk about.
When a child realises that it's no big thing and they can discuss it when they want to, they'll stop thinking of it as a rebellion against adults and might think more seriously about the consequences of their actions.
If you look at the problem with underage drinking in the UK compared to that of somewhere like Spain or Italy, you'll find that the problem in the UK, where the young aren't supposed to drink until they're 18, is far higher. In Spain and Italy, where the young are introduced to the odd glass of wine as a social thing from a younger age, they don't have as big a problem with it.
The same is generally true in all things - If it's not a big deal then it loses its cachŽ.
Whether we like the idea of our young learning about sex or not, it's time we realised that they need to know the facts in order to learn why they should hold off as long as possible.
And, if they're going to do what they're going to do ... at the very least we need to make sure they understand the importance of protecting themselves. But at age four? I don't think so!
