Kids Do Disturbing Things… Not All Of Them Are Bad
Kids Do Disturbing Things… Not All Of Them Are Bad
by Bill Knell
Most of the kids I knew when I was one had early puberty and early sexual urges. Maybe it was the fluoridated water? Whatever the cause, these things brought a lot of misery to children and adults alike. The primary reason for that was that parents forgot what it was like when they were kids. Just like us, most of our parents had to do things their parents didn't like in secret. The secondary reason was because parents were trying to have their kids ignore the strongly embedded feelings and urges that came with their bodies.
Instead of ignoring sexual urges, you have to have your children learn how to service legitimate urges that will not harm them or anyone else, and control or guard against those that do. By that I mean things like kissing or touching themselves or others, verses bullying, forced molestation and spying on older siblings when they are nude.
Kids started making out around nine in my neighborhood, and they weren't alone. Thanks to tell-all interviews and books by the former child stars of the popular ABC Network TV series ‘The Brady Bunch' (1969-1974), we now know that the youngest stars (Mike Lookinland as Bobby Brady and Susan Olson as Cindy Brady) had a secret. When the nine year olds had time between filming, they would sneak into the roomy dog house on the backyard set to make out.
The parents of my generation were often part of the NO crowd. Children were taught NO kissing, NO making out, NO playing “clothes off” games like Doctor, NO skinny dipping, NO hand holding and so on. Schools backed them up with the same rules and more. We all did those things anyway and were made to feel terrible when and if we were caught.
Meanwhile, most of our parents smoked, consumed alcohol and some used illegal and dangerous drugs. That was especially true if you had hippie parents. Others were prescription drug abusers and needed a pile of pills just to get through the day. These actions inspired the song ‘Mother’s Little Helper' by the Rolling Stones, and the popular book and film ‘Valley Of The Dolls” (helpers and dolls were valium). If you brought these body abusing habits up with them, they would say things like “don't be like me” or “just because we do it doesn't mean that you should” or “wait until you're old enough to make up your own mind”.
While setting horrible examples through the use of tabacco, alcoholic beverages and sometimes dangerous or addictive substances, they would go off the rails if they caught kids making out, playing “clothes off” games or touching each other. Get a clue! These are embedded behaviors that help kids on their journey to adulthood.
Teenagers have it the worst. Despite all the sex talks, sex education programs and warnings against school rule violations, civil and criminal penalties, it's almost a certainty that teens are going to perform some or all forms of popular sex acts and intercourse before they graduate high school. Girls will likely start between ages 12-16, boys between ages 13-16 and their partners will likely be at least a year younger than them in many cases (according to 2024 surveys and various legitimate sources).
Some parents are fortunate because their teens have made conscious decisions to avoid sex of any kind until they are married or in a stable, adult relationship. They are in the minority. Some children as young as ten or eleven are having intercourse and that's a far cry from playing Doctor. What do we do?
You have to perform an honest assessment of your children or teens to find out what they know, or don't know, about sex and sexual behavior. Then, find out how much experience, if any, they have had with kissing, touching (themselves or others) and actual sex acts of any kind. This will not be easy and you'll probably have to do it by listening to phone or actual conversations, checking phones and other devices for sexting and so on. Demanding access to their social media probably won't work because there are too many ways around that and you can bet your kids probably know them all.
Once you have all the facts, help them set realistic limits on their behavior. Instead of forbidding things like kissing, exploratory nudity and skinny dipping, tell your younger kids they can't do things like that just because they want to…
They need to be sure others that participate with them haven't been bullied, forced or embarrassed into doing them. If you give them permission to do these things, others who participate must have the same permissions from their parents. Since permissions are unlikely to be granted due to embarrassment or puritanical values, sometimes you might just have to let them do things out of your sight without castigating them if you find out.
“Most often, genital stimulation is a normal part of childhood development.” - University of Michigan
Teens and Tweens need privacy. Busting into their rooms without knocking will end up having you find them touching themselves and, sometimes, others (even siblings or relatives, especially if you have a blended family). This applies to boys AND girls. Because many teens these days claim that they have extremely hard to control, legitimate sexual urges, you have to allow them to do what they must to satisfy themselves, save actually performing sex acts with others or having intercourse.
Some tweens and most teens are going to masturbate. I knew a woman who took the door off her son's room and kept saying “Stop playing with yourself!” That thirteen year old boy was later groomed by a fifteen year old neighborhood girl to have sex with her. How? She got naked and helped him masturbate at her house until they finally had intercourse. After they did she got pregnant.
In another situation a mother took all her twelve year old daughter’s stuffed toys out of her room because she was using some to satisfy herself. Unable to find the same satisfaction she had by using her fingers as she did when using the toys, she began having intercourse with boys at thirteen and started using birth control at fourteen.
It's knowing the truth and acting on it, verses trying to stop kids from doing things they've been hard wired to do. Has social engineering caused some of these problems? You bet! For centuries the idea of kids coming of age at 18 or 21 would have been impractical.
Couples got married at 12 or 13 because people had shorter lifespands, generally speaking. In the Jewish Faith, for example, boys became men at 13. That is still practiced, but in a religious sense today. Only after people began living longer and chose careers that required longer periods of education, did so-called “child marriages* end, but not everywhere.
In some cultures they continued, even in America. Right up until the early 1950s Appalachian people (once called ‘Hillbillies’) married in their early teens and routinely married close relatives like first cousins because they didn't know better. Why? Google says, “This was driven by factors like economic hardship, the need for labor, and traditional values that emphasized marriage and family.”
We keep being told that kids, even in their teens, just aren't ready or mentally developed enough to take on “adult responsibilities”. The only time children are allowed to work is when farmers need their crops brought in, so they hire migrant family workers that have children help as soon as they are physically able to do so. I guess they don't count.
I started going to my dad's office on Saturday and some Sundays when I was nine so I would get to spend some time with him. He was in the construction equipment sales, rental and service business. The firm he worked for provided the equipment that built the NY World's Fair, the original World Trade Center buildings and many others in the NYC area which meant he was always needed at work as the vice president in charge of administration. I learned how to operate all the office machines, typed letters, made copies, answered phones and took messages on the weekend to help. No one wanted to work weekends.
His boss was impressed and started paying me $50 each time I came in to work because he said I did the work of two or three of his regular employees. The result was that I had an almost college level education in business by the time I started high school. At 12 I manned the parts department counter when they were short handed and even got to move some of the heavy equipment around in the huge yard they had (I liked doing that because it was fun).
I always had money to take my girlfriend out to eat, to movies, shows, roller skating, bowling and special events. We started dating secretly at 10. Our folks thought we were just going out as friends. I didn't need an allowance because I earned my own cash. Could I do it today? No way! CPS would be at our door.
My final bit of advice is to stop letting people like early childhood, adolescent, teenage “experts” and schools bully you into doing things for and to your children that are based on pretzel logic and unrealistic expectations, living situations and standards.
Kailey Fields offers readers fresh and very human fiction stories that are unique, yet relatable.
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