I'm always late to the party

Let's not sexualize children or even think of children & sexual stuff

Don't discuss sexual stuff with CHILDREN.

They cannot consent.

Children cannot consent and I dont know how many times we have to tell you this.

sex education ≠ sexual abuse

sex education ≠ child endangerment

HOWEVER

sex education = increased safety through knowledge

sex education = decrease in teen pregnancy

sex education = decrease in spread of sexually transmitted diseases

The average age for puberty to start is 11-12, but it is normal for puberty to begin between the ages of 8 and 14. Puberty is only considered 'too early' by doctors and delayed with puberty blockers if a girl is 7 or a boy is 8. And while not everyone experiences sexual arousal in the first years of puberty, quite a lot of kids do.

So, as deeply uncomfortable as it makes adults: some 11 year olds have already been getting horny for 3 or 4 years. And while their first explorations of that feeling often happen alone, some of that hornyness will drive those kids to seek out others to experiment.

So without information, that 11 year old may end up having sex with another kid and may get pregnant. That 11 year old may sexually assault a younger kid, not out of malice but out of simply not knowing that you should not do this to others. The idea that these things will not happen if we don't tell kids about sex is patently false.

Okay. I'm trained in this.

You need to be providing age-appropriate sexual education to children from as young as you possibly can.

When kids are really young this looks like "Yes, that's mummy's vagina. Please leave the bathroom because it is rude to be in the bathroom while mummy is using the toilet. Mummy is placing her boundary, sweetheart, and you need to respect that."

"Yes, daddy does have something different to mummy. What daddy has is called a penis. Yes (mummy/daddy's penis/vagina) is the same as you."

You will notice here that I use the anatomical terms for these body parts. That is for a reason. It helps your child if something does happen better be able to disclose, exactly, what has happened to them. You do not want your child trying to disclose using words such as "secret pocket" or "hidden flower" or "willie" as this can obfuscate meaning. Imagine, if you will, Maisie trying to disclose that Coach Asshole touched her sexually by saying "Coach Asshole stuck his stick into my secret pocket," to a teacher or family friend who does not know that those words are euphemisms. Maisie has tried to disclose, but has been unsuccessful because she does not have the language that she needs.

Now, next.

Children, especially girls, can start going through puberty young. Like, really young. I have taught 9 year olds who menstruate. We need to be teaching these children about their bodies. We need to be teaching boys about the bodies of people who menstruate. There is so much misinfomation amongst grown cismen about menstruation because they are not taught it in school.

We also need to teach children about consent and bodily autonomy from as young as possible. This sets them up that even if they do, unfortunately, suffer abuse of this form they are vocal in their protestations and are more likely to disclose than children who have been taught to accept that adults can do whatever they want to a child's body. Granny kissing little Maisie on the cheek doesn't look that different to Coach Asshole calling his girls at gymnastics "Special girls" and kissing/touching them inappropriately, especially to a child (who, usually, have a much less refined emotional radar and both will cause them to shut down and just accept what is happening. You want your kid to be able to say "No, what you are doing/did to my body is wrong.")

So.

How should adults behave around children?

Firstly - my golden rule of interacting with children is If you have nothing to hide, don't hide anything.

This means when you are interacting with children you always do so in an area where you will easily be visible if another adult happens to walk by. No closed doors, try to minimise rooms without windows, have another adult present.

The reason you are doing this is to make it flag as strange and unusual to a child if an adult tries to get them alone. Safe adults do not do that. By making sure you are transparent in your behaviour, the child is more likely to flag something being wrong when someone is not transparent. You are equipping the child with skills to protect themselves.

They will also be more likely to disclose to another adult that an adult was trying to get them alone.

Secondly - No secrets.

(There is a little bit of an exception to this rule but to begin with, no secrets.)

This leads back to transparency. A safe adult will not ask a child to keep a secret from another adult. If Uncle Jeff is telling Nancy to keep "our little secret" when he gives her extra dessert, then Nancy is prone to believe that keeping a secret from another adult is something she's supposed to do when Uncle Scumbucket asks her to keep his inappropriate fondling of her as "our little secret." Children who see secrets as unusual are more likely to disclose that an adult told them to keep something a secret.

This is also important as grooming usually starts as "we need to keep you getting this special treat as our little secret." Uncle Jeff giving Nancy more icecream out of the goodness of his heart looks a lot like Uncle Scumbucket giving Nancy candy and lollies and extra screentime in an effort to get her to like him and Uncle Scumbucket's secrets are going to move on to "Sit on my lap today, honey, but don't tell your mother. Remember, this is our little secret." And eventually to Uncle Scumbucket asking Nancy to keep sexual activities as "our little secret."

You do not want children thinking that safe adults keep secrets.

Thirdly - this ties in a little with secondly but Teach your child the difference between a safe secret and an unsafe secret.

If you are unsure of the difference yourself -

A safe secret:

Does not hurt anybody by the keeping of it, including yourself.

Is usually accompanied by a feeling of excitement

Has an end date where everyone will become aware of the contents of the secret.

A safe secret is a surprise birthday party, a camping trip, a surprise trip to disneyworld, pizza!

An unsafe secret:

Can hurt someone and can hurt to keep

Is accompanied by a feeling of nervousness or dread or shame

does not have an end date. The secret is ongoing.

You can see how Uncle Scumbucket's secret is unsafe, but also how Uncle Jeff's secret is unsafe because Uncle Jeff's secret does not have an end date. Uncle Jeff's secret is unsafe because it is priming Macy to see Uncle Scumbucket's secret as reasonable, which leads back to the grooming discussed above.

Lastly, and this is very important -

'Protecting' children from having access to sexual education actually does them an injustice.

We do not live in a perfect world.

Bad things can and do happen to children, with depressing frequency. Get me drunk sometime and I'll tell you what I'm legally allowed to disclose of the stories where terrible shit has happened to children I have cared for.

Pretending that they don't happen means that if they do happen, children are unable to recognise and respond appropriately. You are making your child less equipped to protect themselves, not more.

Children who are taught age-appropriate sexual education from a young age are so much less likely to be in a situation of sexual violence than those who are not taught age-appropriate sexual education. Children who are taught age-appropriate sexual education are more likely to disclose if something does happen to them, than children who are not.

Protect your kids.

I learned the basics of sex Ed from a book specifically for elementary schoolers. It was fine. I wasn’t scarred. I thought it was hilarious. And you know what I did? I went and told every kid on the block.

Respectability is a trap.

The best trick the devil ever pulled was convincing leftists that that we could earn fundamental human rights if only we tone policed ourselves hard enough.

no amount of control over your children will completely seal them away from having a body and from the culture that surrounds them, including its sexual sides. if you don't teach your 4yo what a vagina is, they're still going to have a vagina. if you pretend sex doesn't exist, they're still going to see that racy movie poster around the city and overhear that woman at the restaurant make a sex joke and see that funny video online their classmate found.

when you do not teach children about genitals and sex you have not succeeded at keeping children away from sex. I was a teacher -- i promise they still know and still have questions! and having them know without safe channels to ask and learn about it makes it way more likely that they will form their own distorted ideas of what sex is and absorb the sex shaming culture around us.

even without the threat of sexual abuse, education still creates the antibodies we need against the sex shaming and misogynistic parts of our culture that will otherwise work against our physical and mental health and promote alienation from our bodies and emotions.

luckily we now have a wealth of scientific research proving the benefits of teaching sex ed since early age.

As someone from a hot country that's regularly on fire, here's some tips:

WATER IS YOUR FRIEND! WATER! IS! YOUR! FRIEND! You can transfer SO much heat into this bad boy! You cannot cool down without water!

Wrists under the cold tap. Splash your face and the back of your neck. Fan yourself.

In some countries you can buy a little handeld fan with a water sprayer.

Damp tea towel around the neck. Stick an ice pack in there on hotter days.

Half fill a water bottle with water, stick in freezer. If you use a bottle with a straw, make sure it's lying on its side with the straw side up and out of the water. When frozen top up the rest of the way with tap water and off you go.

Desperate to cool off? Wet T-shirt. Sit in front of a fan. This will nuke it, just don't get hypothermia and don't fall asleep like this.

Cold showers are also your friend in summer. Some people get psyched up by these. Personally, I sleep like a baby, so I'm good to have them before bed. Just keep in mind that it takes a bit of time for the cool to circulate, so your body will tell you that you're colder than you actually are. I find that when I have cold showers I need to step out of the spray when I think I'm cold... I'll just wait, and thirty seconds later the temperature has evened out and I actually need to step under again. Rinse and repeat until you maintain coolness even after stepping out for a bit.

If you can't do cold showers, turn the cold shower on anyway and just stick your arms under. When they're cold, lift your arms up above your head. The sensation of cool blood draining into your body is fucking weird and kinda unpleasant but less unpleasant than being hot.

Feet in a tub of water with ice. Blood naturally flows to your extremities when hot, so take advantage of this. If you don't have a tub of ice water, sticking a wet rag on your feet in front of the fan works too, it's the less powerful version of the wet T-shirt.

Drinks lots of water but make sure that water has electrolytes as well. Stay in the shade.

Keep air circulating. Fans don't actually cool rooms down, they just help transfer heat from your body to the moisture on your skin or the air via evaporative cooling.

Block north facing windows early in the morning so the sun doesn't get in. If you're in the northern hemisphere, this is opposite for you. Keep in mind that if your home is brick, the bricks will still heat up and slowly release heat into your home even after the sun goes down so this will only do so much.

If it's hotter inside than outside, close all your windows but two, making sure they're on opposite sides of the house/unit you're in. Point a fan out of one window, making sure that the doors between the rooms with the open windows are all open. This will help create a mini pressure system in your home, pulling cooler air in and pushing the hotter air out via the fan. Bonus points if you can get that fan high up where the hot air rises; even within a single room the top is much hotter than the air by the floor. Adjust the amount of open windows based on how many fans you have, but generally you want more windows with fans open than windows without fans to keep the pressure correct.

Obviously, use your common sense for these. Not everything WILL work for you, just use the stuff that does and adjust what needs to be adjusted. Some of these will be impossible to use in the workplace but others you can still use. Others are best used at home. If humidity impacts your ability to use any of these, get a dehumidifier if that's an option, or use more ice instead of evaporation.