Teachers in British schools are concerned that children in primary schools have become "very flirty", and have despatched experts to schools to tackle inappropriate sexual behaviour.
Children as young as seven have been interacting with each other in a rather "sexualised" manner with games such as kiss and chase no longer being deemed innocent enough not to set alarm bells ringing.Reports from Birmingham say that the local council's inappropriate sexual behaviour unit has set up eight teams of experts that are being dispatched to schools across the city.
Stephane Breton, a social worker at the unit, said an increasing number of primary and secondary schools believed that they had a problem. He said: "Sometimes you have a whole school where all the kids are very flirty.
"They are seven and eight and they are flirtatious. We go with them and address the issue to make sure they know what they are talking about. We have been to at least eight schools."
Breton said some boys believed that girls wore short skirts to get attention because they wanted to be touched. In other cases, youngsters flirted because they had low self-esteem or to get rid of their anger.
He told The Telegraph the children were being ever more exposed to sexual images and messages through television, magazines and the Internet, which they then copied and thought were acceptable. They were therefore becoming aware of sex at a much younger age.
Penny Barber, chief executive of Birmingham's sexual health charity, the Brook Advisory Clinic, said: "I feel we do live in a very sexualised society. Both young men and women are subject to enormous pressure to be sexually attractive early on.
"They are bombarded with images when they're young. What they don't have is a counterbalance to that which is access to information and confidential advice."
(Source: IANS)
