The Sexualized Wall of Messages Facing Our Children

Visualize your child sitting at a table. On the floor around her are thousands of one inch by one inch blocks and each block represents some sort of sexualized message. Perhaps it’s something sexual that she hears from a friend; or some sexual image or content on TV, or on an advertisement. It could be any type of message that has some sexual reference, whether it is fairly innocent and benign or explicit and incomprehensible. But every block represents some sexual message your daughter or son could encounter on any given day.
The first time your child is exposed to one of these sexualized messages, a block is placed on the table in front of her. With her second exposure to a sexualized message, another block is placed on the table next to the first block. With a third exposure a block is placed next to the second, and so on until the row is, let’s say, eighteen inches long. With the next exposure, a block is placed on top of the first block in the first row. This continues with each exposure to a sexualized message. With eighteen more blocks in place, a third row begins. A wall of blocks begins to form.
Got the picture? Now imagine how high the wall would be after just one day. How many sexualized messages--blocks--would be on the table in front of your child? Obviously, the older your child the higher the wall is likely to be, simply because we would expect an older child to have more varied experiences and hence more exposures to sexual messages. So how high would you expect the wall to be after a week? How about a month? Six months? A year? Ten years? If I were a betting man I’d bet that the wall of sexualized messages that your child has been exposed to has disappeared way up into the sky, well out of our sight. So think about this: by the time your child begins to enter puberty he or she has probably been exposed to thousands, if not tens of thousands of sexualized messages. And how many of these sexualized messages will be problematic, not representative of your values system? How many of them will portray women as sexual objects and men as hunters, lusting for sex? How many of them will be heterosexist and homophobic? How many of them will portray sexual intimacy and behavior without any sense of responsibility? How many of them will portray sex as something we can all engage in without having to be in love? How many of them are incomprehensible and just outright confusing to your young child? How many of them come from sources that you would have a problem with?
All this has got to send a little shiver down your spine right? And what will that wall of sexualized messages look like after your child has entered puberty and his or her sexual feelings and desires start being actualized, and peers begin to have more influence on your child than ever before? How high will it be then? And there your child sits, with a gigantic wall of sexualized messages staring her or him in the face. Our job as parents is to help our children make sense of that wall.

The Good And Bad Of Sex

Perhaps the single most important message that your child needs to hear about sex is that just like a coin it has two sides. Without sex, none of us would be here today. Sex creates new life! Think about that. A sperm that’s microscopic joins with an egg cell the size of a grain of sand and about nine months later a fully formed human being about six pounds in weight and nineteen inches long is created. Absolutely amazing! In my opinion, there is nothing more incredible than that fact. But turn the coin over. Sex can kill you. What an interesting juxtaposition that one is; the same behavior that creates a life can also take a life! Turn the coin back over. Sex can make two people who care deeply for one another feel even closer to each other. Physically rewarding intimacy with another person is something that so many of us want and seek, and when we experience it our lives can be thoroughly enhanced. But turn the coin over again. The same behavior that has so enriched our lives can be catastrophic and horrible: witness the devastation of teenage pregnancy, AIDS, sexual assault, sexual bullying, and the like. We want them to be able to make sense of a confusing sexual world and we want them to be able to distinguish between the bad parts and the good aspects of sex and sexuality.

The Sexualized Bully

For me, the scariest trend in child sexual behavior to develop over the past fifteen to twenty years is sexual bullying: children, some as young as 5 and 6 years of age, harassing, intimidating, even assaulting others by using some form of sexual behavior or by provoking another child to use some form of sexual behavior that is unwanted
We are raising a generation of sexualized bullies. As society sexualizes all children through the vast array of prevalent sources of sexual information and influences that are everywhere, those children who have developed bullying personas are learning that using sexual behavior to bully other children is as effective and as rewarding if not more so than using traditional methods of bullying. I get numerous calls from elementary school principals, counselors, and other school staff about young children who are using sexual behavior to harass, intimidate, and strike fear in other children. We virtually never saw these behaviors among such young children fifteen or twenty years ago. But now we are seeing them on a regular basis so if you are a parent beware the sexual bully. 
I have received far too many calls about children who touch the genitals of other children without consent, or force them to touch their genitals in return. There are children who force other children to pull their pants down, children who intimidate other children by rubbing their genitals against them or by lying on top of them. There are children who will forcefully kiss another child’s genitals or force them to kiss their own. We are seeing more and more children who force, intimidate, and/or strike fear in other children by using sexual behaviors. It’s hard to say exactly how prevalent the sexualized bully is, but if you want to get a sense of the scope of the problem you should see the response I get from elementary school teachers and counselors when I discuss the topic. Every time I make a presentation there are multiple cases that are brought to my attention. I would love to see the statistics kept by a school district or state education office on the numbers of student to student sexual harassment and assault cases. I will guarantee you that the numbers at the elementary school level alone will shock every one of us. This is what happens when children have multiple exposures to sexualized messages that are confusing and incomprehensible. The sexual bully has been created as a result and will remain as long as we live in a super-sexualized society.