ANDaffective and sexual education in schools. The children look at each other and draw themselves. Lying on large billboards, each outlines the contours of a partner’s body, then they swap places. To name emotions, they draw them at belly level, because that’s where they feel. What am I like, who am I and how can I feel good about myself and others? Doing affective and sexual education in kindergarten “means talking about bodies and relationships with an age-appropriate language,” he says Valerie Moretti, pedagogist and vice president of the AttivaMente social cooperative.
Emotional and sexual education in the nursery
«Parents ask us, doubtful: at the age of four is it really necessary to talk about sex? But the real theme is respect and not physical relationships, as they fear”. It’s one of the last taboos that survived it all: affective and sexual education in Italian schools is not done, if not where you choose to call in external experts for specific projects. In Europe we are almost the only ones, with the exception of Poland, Bulgaria, Romania.
After a flurry of bills, and despite the Memorandum of Understanding between the Ministry of Health and that of Education, nothing has changed. We prefer to entrust the matter to familiesas if our children lived unconnected, little monads in the desert of information. Do you study the human body in fifth grade? Just the subsidiary.
The boys are completely unprepared to discover true love
“Knowing it first” the festival on sexual-affection
To re-propose the theme now is “Knowing it first”, the festival on sexual-affection ongoing in Rome until 19 February. «We have launched an online petition addressed to the Lazio Region to ask for allocate funds to primary school emotional education lessonsAnd sexual-affective in secondary school. Furthermore, we would like to open online branches for parents, in order to involve them and encourage them to talk about it with their children» says Isabella Borrelli, who together with Flavia Restivo and Andrea Giorgini created the festival.
“We have collected 35,000 signatures and now we would like to extend the petition and turn it into a bill. We believe it is important to talk about intimacy and love with the little ones to build a culture of consensus. From middle school, in our opinion, sexuality should be tackled in a gradual and positive way: talking not only about unwanted pregnancies or transmissible diseases but also about relationships, about how to feel good in your own body».
Prevention starts in elementary school
Where it is done, sex education has been declined for some time now in a complete way: «Once the approach was more on the functioning of the genital organs, but over time it was decided to resume the guidelines of the World Health Organization, according to which sexuality concerns the well-being of the person, and therefore affectivity» continues Valerie Moretti.
Martina Cecchetti, pedagogist of ALA Milano, a non-profit organization that deals with health protection and social inclusion, knows this well. “We think you should start in elementary school to focus on relationships.” As? For children ALA offers theatrical activities, mime games where they are asked to recognize emotions, or motor activities such as ask to walk depending on how you feel, sad or happy.
«We offer very simple stories for the little ones. We ask, “How are you feeling today?” and we try to work on the emotional vocabulary, often very poor, in order to train them to give the right name to emotions. We do quizzes, we accompany growth. The earlier tools are given from an affective point of view, the stronger the relational competence that is created».
The emergency is the sexuality of the Internet
Giusi Laganà is director of Fare x Bene onlus, present with various projects: «Kids don’t know how to handle failures. They have to understand that being left by someone who doesn’t love us is not an act of treason. On the one hand we need to control anger, and prevent it from escalating, on the other hand not to undermine self-esteem. Already in elementary school we talk about accepting others as they are, with glasses, taller or shorter. But also accept yourself: if we don’t like ourselves, we can’t think that others like us».
The problem is the presumed standards, and above all induced by the web. “Many teachers tell us that as early as 4th or 5th grade, kids access porn sites, and share pictures and videos with others. This is the emergency we are experiencing» points out the psychotherapist Alberto Pellai, who has just published My boy. Letter to the real men of tomorrow (DeAgostini).
The annulment of the discovery of real sexuality
«The Internet is a circuit built on excitement, e shows a violent and abusive sexuality. There is no gradualness, it is as if there were many equivalent doors to open, a click is enough». According to data from the Postal Police, 44 percent of males between 14 and 17 watch porn videos online. If we then add the numerous Instagram pages on “how to” (to then propose sex toys to buy), the result is that «a teenager has a script in his head to adhere to which is the annulment of the discovery of real sexuality.
«The message is purely performance-based and for males it is enthrallingPellai continues. “A third of boys have doubts about their sexual orientation and instead of turning to adults experience it by watching gay porn, which reinforces the answer.” Parents are evanescent, they pretend not to see, they can’t find the right words. «In high school a boy told us he had the “condom fairy” says Valerie Moretti. “She had been talking at home about her new girlfriend, and the next morning she found a condom in the drawer. I think it was a missed opportunity to confront each other».
Pellai claims that one way to communicate is to take a book and read it together: «If the child sees the adult calm, it becomes a point of reference for him. There is nothing more protective than emotional closeness.”
Middle school: the most difficult range
Parents, however, don’t know which way to turn, especially when their children grow up: «In elementary school they participate in meetings, in middle school they don’t» says Giusi Laganà. “Yet already at that age children exchange intimate photos.”
Valerie Moretti reiterates: «They call us the elementary schools, then the high schools. Very few averages, but it is as if a piece were lost». Of the most difficult range, that of the changing bodya children’s novel by Matteo Bussola delicately speaks of the first falls in love that you can’t give a name, Half an apple (Salani).
Protagonists Viola and Marco, who experience a new feeling: “The way in which the male gaze is built towards the female, and vice versa, begins right in the middle school years” the author told us.
Affective and sexual education: what is love?
In high school, the approach of sexual-affective courses changes: we talk about health and well-being, the first emotional relationships (This monster love di AttivamEnte intervenes on the prevention of violence in adolescent couples), of how the body works.
At the Brera high school in Milan the XEX pilot project by Fare x Bene affecting all 1700 students. First step, a questionnaire on what is love. Many express discomfort. «A girl replied that she had been friendzoned, i.e. unrequited but placed as a friend on a kind of waiting list “where there were about ten of us, a kind of condominium”» says Giusy Laganà.
«We ask the older children to represent themselves in a drawing as they see themselves. A student painted herself as a mannequin surrounded by masks.” With teenagers love stories also return, longer, «which we use in our meetings to understand together how to manage a relationship» says Martina Cecchetti.
Insecurities have no age limit: «Kids are exposed to a lot of sexualized information like this to lose sight of discovery, feelings, pleasure, responsibility» concludes Valerie Moretti. “They are afraid of real relationships, of putting themselves on the line to build a couple”.
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