Sex education is no joke
And I liked the idea of giving out flip-flops to teenage girls tottering out of nightclubs. It seemed like an appropriate way of approaching vulnerable young women to pass on safety messages.
And I know teenagers often don’t listen until it’s too late, so health professionals are desperate to find new ways of grabbing their attention to get vital protection information across.
But I think passing around squishy willies with smiley faces gives entirely the wrong kind of message.
Sex isn’t just a bit of a ‘larf’.
Well, obviously, I know it can be — but not if you’re only 13, and scared, don’t really know how to say ‘no’.
And not if you don’t understand about contraception or protecting yourself from sexually transmitted diseases, or you’re off your face, or just doing it because of peer pressure.
Teenagers act as if they know it all. But often they know more than they want to know. And they’re surprisingly squeamish, shocked and ignorant about the details.
And the fact that so many of them are getting pregnant, or catching Chlamydia, shows how this generation is still as naïve as ever about the real facts of life.
Teenage mum Kizzy Neal may have a 22-month-old son, but that didn’t stop her feeling embarrassed when a health professional produced six-inch, squidgy rubber willies as part of a talk on Chlamydia screening.
Kizzy, from Paignton, said her first reaction was ‘Ew! Why are those on the table?’ Her second reaction was a fit of the giggles. Entirely appropriate for a 16-year-old girl.
The setting for the workshop was the young mums’ home where Kizzy now lives with her little boy, Kaylib.
She and a couple of other teenage mums attended the talk voluntarily and Kizzy said the Chlamydia screening nurse did a good job, getting them all talking and thinking openly. She found it useful and informative.
“Because she was a woman and we were all girls together we could really ask anything we wanted,” Kizzy said. “It was surprising, really, some of the things we didn’t know about.”
And she said she wasn’t in the least bothered by the Day-Glo sperm key fob, which was another free gift to get over the message about getting regularly tested to avoid infection.
It’s a serious issue. Chlamydia is the most commonly sexually-transmitted infection in the UK, affecting one in 10 people under the age of 25.
As Chlamydia sometimes has no symptoms in both men and women, it can often go undiagnosed unless it leads to complications. In some cases it can lead to infertility.
Kizzy has learned the hard way about risks and consequences.
She was only 14 when she had Kaylib. She is now living in her own supported-living flat with her toddler and admits it’s hard work now she hasn’t got mum around to help her all the time.
And it’s also been tough because she and her family made a decision to be very public and open about Kizzy’s situation, because they didn’t want to be just another statistic in Torbay’s dreadful teen pregnancy figures.
They wanted to help publicise the teen pregnancy problems in the Bay.
That decision has brought its own problems. The whole family has had to endure bullying and name-calling and at one stage thought they would have to move out of their Paignton home and leave the area because of violence.
It’s easy to put Kizzy into a stereotypical box and make all sorts of assumptions about her and her family.
But I’ve spoken to the Neals and been to their home and they are a nice, ordinary family. And one of the reasons they are so ready to speak out is to fight the prejudices and stereotypes.
Instead of judging them, sensible parents realise just how easily they and their children could be in the same situation.
So I can understand why Kevin Neal has weighed into the public arena once more.
He says he was embarrassed when his daughter put her hand in her handbag and produced what he described as ‘a replica rubber penis’.
Most dads would be. Just because Kizzy is a mum, it doesn’t mean she’s not still his little girl.
And I agree with him. The rubber willies were dreamt up by adult marketing men who need to get a serious public health message across urgently.
But it’s not a serious approach and it’s not suitable for teenagers.
Incidentally, while I was writing this my little boy saw the picture of the object in question on the Herald Express website and he thought it was supposed to be a toy dog! And my 17-year-old daughter said: “What the frickin’ heck is that? What’s it supposed to be for? That’s stupid. It just makes the whole subject into a joke.”
