TEACHING CHILDREN ABOUT SEX: QUESTIONS PARENTS ASK-HOW DO WE HANDLE THE DIRTY JOKES FROM SCHOOL?

How do we handle the dirty jokes from school?

When children are about six or seven they start to giggle at ‘dirty’ words like ‘underwear’, ‘penis’ or ‘naked’. Early dirty stories do not necessarily have a sexual component but the child gets a kick out of telling them. The next stage is to find excretion and sexual functioning hilariously funny. There are now some sexual overtones. Swear words become incorporated in the stories and even the unfunniest of stories causes the child to fall about with laughter. It is interesting how little dirty jokes have changed over the years. Today’s nine year old laughs at exactly the same things as his grandparents did and for the same reasons. Dirty jokes are an early sign of the child’s growing independence and preparation for the adult world. Sometimes the jokes are defiant and rebellious but most often they are geared to shock the ‘stuffy’ adults around him. Often they laugh because everyone else is laughing (it is simply a social pursuit) even though they may not really understand the joke. All of this is a part of growing social confidence and enjoyment and acceptance of becoming part of a peer group.

With all this in mind it is possible to stay calm and to put dirty jokes into perspective. By all means enjoy a joke with your young children, if only to show them that you know what they are on about and that you are not dead from the waist down. Dirty jokes, if they are not actually harmful or worrying your child, are simply a passing phase and will do no harm.