Sex Education: 6 books for children and parents
How to respond to a child the question of how he came into being is a master's business, although at first the answer “from my mother’s belly” quite suits him. But psychologists warn those who want to feed children with talk about storks and cabbage before high school: if you don’t talk to your child when he has a first interest in his own body (namely, five years old), you can provide him with sexual complexes and taboos all life. Books to help cope with complex issues, a great many. Perhaps even more than necessary. More recently, provincial parent committees have eagerly taken on this literature, ready to find pornography in any image of the genitals. However, the scandals around books about the sexual education of children arise not only because of hypocrisy - not everything that is printed is equally good and can really be given to children. We selected the best books for the first conversation with the child about sex, which were published in Russia and which can be found in bookstores and on the Internet.
"Encyclopedia of sexual life for children 7-9 years. Physiology and psychology"
Christian Verdu, Jean Cohen, Jacqueline Kantan, Gilbert Tordzhman
This encyclopedia, prepared by a serious team of French authors (including gynecologist Jacqueline Cantan, obstetrician-gynecologist and former chief physician of the gynecological clinic at the medical faculty Jean Cohen and psychomatologist Gilbert Tordzhman) was the first sexual revelation for a whole generation of Soviet children - those thirty years old today Neither Pernilla Stalfelt’s books, nor the overt scenes in Game of Thrones scare everyone. It turned out they were incredibly lucky, because since 1994 the encyclopedia has not been reprinted. Meanwhile, the best book about sex for children is simply not written. Here, it seems, everything is thought out: for example, an ideal balance is maintained between the physiological details of conception and childbirth and social information about the life and role of the family. Excellent illustrations are realistic when it comes to characters, and sketchy when you need to portray childbirth or fertilized eggs. Not the father and mother become the heroes of the story about the appearance of the child, but Aunt Nicole and Uncle Jacques - the book is suitable for single-parent families. Although the main message here is absolutely traditional: "The main thing is that men and women love each other and love their children."
"Where did I come from? Sexual encyclopedia for children 5-8 years old"
Virginie Dumont
The books of Virginia Dumont for adolescents provoked outrage at the Ural Parents' Committee - up to the accusations in pornography, the result, however, not discovered. Except for Dumont’s very French attention to the details of intercourse, there’s nothing to be afraid of. The book for children 5-8 years old is completely innocent and designed exactly for that age when difficult questions are asked every minute, and at five years, advanced psychologists say, it’s very important to easily and simply explain to a child what sex and sexuality are. The illustrations are charming, and it seems there is not a single question to which Dumont did not find the answer: how her mother lives in her tummy, how a baby is born, how boys and girls grow into men and women. If the book has French specificity, then it appears in some comments incomprehensible to traditional Russian society: for example, it is desirable that the pope is present at birth, or, in order to start a family, it is not necessary to register the marriage.
"How I was born"
Katerina Janusz
Katerina Janusz, an expert in the field of sex and relationships, has been conducting a column on sex in various newspapers and magazines for twenty years and is famous for books on female sexual fantasies and female orgasms. In addition, she is the mother of five children and the author of books about pregnancy and feeding. So, it would seem, why would not she write the perfect book about sex education for children. For our readers, the book seems ideal, since there is nothing shocking at all for even the most chaste parents - the act of conception shamefully takes place under a blanket. Not to find fault with the illustrations of Mervi Lindman - they are really adorable. There are touching details, such as an explanation of why baby’s tummy doesn’t have sandwiches on his head when his mother eats. Janusz is even too bashful and sins with the vocabulary of "faucets" and "holes", a first-person story "before I was born, I was a tadpole" and other equivalents, without which psychologists advise us to do without. She is silent about what happens after birth: one page, where dad feeds the baby from a bottle and changes his diaper. No breastfeeding and talk about family values. Surprisingly, they are not enough.
"Where did I come from? Everything as it is without deception and even with pictures"
Peter Mail
Before he moved to Provence and became famous throughout the world for books about how he lived well there, Peter Mail wrote educational books for children and teenagers. Also, by the way, with great success - his debut, published in 1973, the book "Where did I come from?", Telling young children about the secret of their origin, has sold more than two million copies and is now considered in England the absolute classics of the genre. Here we must pay tribute to the artist Arthur Robinsas - it was he who invented to make "Dad and Mom" from the story of Mail the couple of cute and very recognizable English fatties, as if from a British comic strip. Mail approaches the case in a manly way: it skips a part about how mom and dad met and fell in love with each other and describes the act of conception very physiologically: “A man moves a penis into a woman’s vagina. And these parts that are most sensitive to tickling are rubbing against "It’s as if you scratch where it itches, only that is even nicer. A woman and a man move back and forth faster and faster, because for both of them it becomes more and more pleasant and more pleasant." Interestingly, in the Russian edition of 1991, which can now be easily found on the Internet, there were no bills, and in the modern English bedding scene was cut out. But something was added - in America, the African-American edition is now particularly popular, where father and mother and their offsprings are repainted in a delicate brown color.
"Book of love"
Pernilla Stalfelt
Psychologists and educators dearly love Pernilla Stalfelt, parents unanimously hate them - for their primitive style and themes that they would prefer not to talk with their children. But the Astrid Lindgren Prize is given for a reason. Having caused a lot of controversy after its publication, today the “Book of Love” has become a bibliographic rarity - we seem to have left in the past any attempts to conduct enlightened conversations with children on difficult topics. The undeniable advantage of the books of Stalfelt is that they are all addressed to children. It would be nice if they got directly to them, bypassing their parents. Ridiculous little men from love stumble over dogs and fly away into the clouds, shy of admitting their feelings, jealous and babbling absurdities. Here there is a picture illustrating same-sex love, and a cursory story about the "tap" and "hole". It seems that there are no taboos here, but the dignity of the books is not that - in fact, reading the Stalfelt books with children, one discovers that her freedom to talk about the complex coincides with the most difficult questions that parents do not know what to answer. And besides, these books are incredibly like.
"From diapers to first dates. What parents need to know about the sexual education of their children"
Debra haffner
In 1998, when Debra Haffner released the first edition of her encyclopedia of parental sex education, she was President and CEO of the US Sex Education and Information Council. Fifteen years later, she prepared a book for reprinting as a priest of the unitary church as a dignity. And in the preface to the reprint he writes that although the world has become much more disturbing over the years, young people, on the contrary, have become responsible and have learned to watch their sex life: the number of teenage pregnancies and abortions, as well as cases of sexually transmitted diseases in children have decreased. A significant role in changing the situation was played by this book, where there are answers to all the difficult questions of the sexual education of children and adolescents. What to do if a child touches himself for the genitals, and how to fight (if you fight) child masturbation, when and how to explain where children come from, how to react to sexual games, how to explain a divorce and talk about adoption, how to create a healthy relationship to your own body. Irreplaceable book - let's not pretend that we all know this ourselves.