That's a really good question. One of the things we have found, from the perspective of health in general, is that sexuality has to be brought into the conversation in infancy. When we are seeing our patients as they go to preschool and toddler groups, we should be talking about sexuality at that point so that it's not a taboo subject for parents. The American Academy of Pediatrics, and I'm sure the Canadian academy as well, fosters this in pediatricians and family medicine physicians to try to really make sure that parents understand that if they make a child's sexuality a taboo subject, the child is at greater risk of being exploited, because they don't know what may happen to them.
One of the things that have been spoken of is to follow the model of bringing sex education—I'll call it sex education but I'll try not to call it sex education—into the school system under a different rubric. One system is bringing it in under computer safety, in computer classes, so that you're talking about how to be safe in the online world and in the off-line world. That is one way that parents will accept pretty readily, because they do want their children to be safe in that setting.
The other way to bring it in from the perspective of helping children to be safe is to bring it in within physical education, helping them understand that in order for children to be completely healthy, they need to not be overweight or sleep-deprived. If they are going to be adequate students, they have to have these parts of their lives under control. Another component of it is Internet use, because Internet use in general can really distract children from their ability to study well, and they become very driven at times, if they become addicted to Internet behaviours, to include video gaming and pornography.
If one uses that model, one could then begin to say, “These are the five most common things that will detract from a child's academic performance.” Really focusing on the role of the Internet and the content in there is another way that isn't really so much about sex education. It's about education. It's about how your child can be a better student. How can you help them be more productive in their online behaviour so that it doesn't distract them from what they're trying to learn?
It's really about how you frame the messages to parents, because parents are afraid of the whole issue of “Don't take away my teaching my child about sexuality”, but parents teach their children about sexuality hardly at all.
Consequently, the school systems do have to be more mindful of alternative methods of bringing that kind of information in.