In One County 4% of Children Under Eleven Have Admitted to Having Sexual Intercourse

In Jacksonville Florida 4% of the population of children under 11 have admitted to having sexual intercourse in some form. If this isn't a wake up call to parents then nothing is. It's not the school, your minister, your friends or other family members business to discuss the ramifications of your children having sex.

Do you think that 7 years old is too young to bring up the subject of sex? Well think again because children as young as five can tell you exactly what sex is. Movies, programs and cartoons can teach your child everything there is about sex.

The innocence of children really do not understand the meaning, they only know the actions. It's time to sit down and talk to them about sex.

Children that are 8 years old are more developed then children that were born in the sixties. Girls are starting menstruation as young as 7 years old. Why is this happening? People do not realize that all the hormones that are being injected in to food is causing our children to age faster then we ever did.

In 2007 the Portland school bored was under fire for allowing birth control to be distributed in the schools, without a parents permission, for girls 11 and older.

In 2014, sex education is not even allowed to be taught in classrooms. Abstinence is the only lesson these children are taught. It's not enough. Children are having unprotected sex and do not understand the consequences of their actions.

With pregnancy being the number one fear, it's HIV and STD's that parents should worry about more. 1 in 7 children are infected with the HIV virus and 1 in 4 are carrying around an STD.

What is it going to take America to wake up and see that children need to be educated. It's nice the health department gives out free condoms and birth control but the problem lies in parents needing to talk to their children about using it and how it will protect them.

I would rather have a daughter who is well educated then one who ends up with HIV or and STD and God forbid pregnant at 11 years old. What people don't realize is that a child is emancipated from being a child once she is pregnant and her parents can no longer sign any papers for her. They figure once a girl is pregnant no matter what the age, she is an adult at that point.

In the state of Florida, sex education is not allowed to be taught. They can only teach abstinence. Only half the schools in the United States teach sex education so what happens to the other 50% of children.

Parents can't even teach children to have some respect for authority so do you think they are going to teach their children about the risks of having sex.

Dr. Louise Greenspan, a pediatric endocrinologist with Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco who is studying the causes and effects of early puberty, told a reporter from Youth Radio that making the transition easier for kids means bringing puberty education into schools earlier.

“I really feel like I’m on a mission now to make sure that people understand that teaching kids about puberty in fifth grade is way too late,” she said. (koededucation.com)

If parents are unwilling to talk to their children, then someone has too.

39 out of every 1,000 girls will become pregnant this year. That number is staggering. Some will be from family members and the rest from boys of their age.

For years, Mississippi has had one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the nation. But as a deeply religious state where sex was a taboo subject, there wasn’t much support for teaching about sex in schools.

As an article in the Los Angeles Times details, the issue of sex education has a long and contentious history in Mississippi. A bill that would require sex education to be taught failed in 2009, for example.

But in 2011, the Mississippi Legislature passed and Gov. Haley Barbour signed a law requiring all school districts to adopt a policy for teaching about sex. So what changed?

It wasn’t the data about teen pregnancy - that had been circulating for awhile. In 2009, for example, the birthrate for women 19 or younger was 64.1 per 1,000 infants, compared with 39 out of every 1,000 nationally. What proved convincing, ultimately, was the data about how much money the state was losing because of its high teen pregnancy rate. (Los Angeles Times)

Babies having babies is not a dream it is a reality and it is our job as adults and parents of these children to make sure they have the knowledge they need to stop unwanted pregnancy.

If Half the states in the United States is teaching sex education, then why aren't all of them? Because some silly person said it offends their child?

In 2008 in New Mexico, 93 of 1,000 teenage girls between 15 and 19 became pregnant. Mississippi and Texas follow New Mexico with the second- and third-highest rates of teen pregnancy, respectively.

Unfortunately, STDs (sometimes also called STIs for "sexually transmitted infections") have become common among teens. Because teens are more at risk for getting some STDs, it's important to learn what you can do to protect yourself.

STDs are more than just an embarrassment. They're a serious health problem. If untreated, some STDs can cause permanent damage, such as infertility (the inability to have a baby) and even death (in the case of HIV/AIDS).

About 9.5 million adolescents and young adults (ages 15–24) are diagnosed with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) each year. An estimated four in 10 sexually active adolescent females between the ages of 14 and 19 have an STD.

Information from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study showed that among adolescent females who ever had sexual intercourse, the most common STD is human papillomavirus (HPV), followed by chlamydia, trichomoniasis, the virus most commonly associated with genital herpes, and gonorrhea. (cdc.gov)

From youth of ages 13 to 24 accounted for an estimated 26% of all new HIV infections in the United States in 2010. Most new HIV infections among youth occur among gay and bisexual males; there was a 22% increase in estimated new infections in this group from 2008 to 2010. Almost 60% of youth with HIV in the United States do not know they are infected. (CDC.gov)

In 2010, black youth accounted for an estimated 57% (7,000) of all new HIV infections among youth in the United States, followed by Hispanic/Latino (20%, 2,390) and white (20%, 2,380) youth.(CDC.gov)

My question here is why do any teenagers need to worry about these numbers. If they were educated well they would not be the biggest percentage rate of people with HIV. Groups between the ages of 15 to 25 and 65 to 70 make up the largest group of people to be infected with the HIV virus.

They are being infected and don't even know it. All children that are teenagers should be tested for HIV and Std's regularly.

Just like, God, the bible, the pledge of allegiance, sex education has been removed from most health classes because it's teaching children what they need to know to protect themselves. Do you think it's better for your child to be protected or to get pregnant or even die because they were not given the right amount of education. Parents don't even teach girls about their period or menstruation and they find out when it happens to them, leaving them scared that something very bad happened to them.

In the 70's girls were playing with Barbie dolls. In 2014 they are having sex and Barbies are not even a reality.

I also blame television for the brunt of children knowing more then they should because parents do not monitor what they are watching. Some cartoons like the Family Guy that comes on at 7 in the evening is not a children's cartoon. It would give any child the feeling that partaking in sex is a good thing. Well it is a good thing when your married to the person you are going to spend the rest of your life with.

Parents please educate your children about sex and what the consequences are of sex. If you don't feel comfortable about talking to your children, then let someone else do it but just make sure it is done before they reach 9 years old. This is the age that most girls are starting their periods. Girls at this age can be traumatized by not knowing what is going on with their own bodies but they know all about sex. At this point you should make them aware that they can become pregnant or end up with a disease that there is no cure for.

Sometimes, it may be difficult to reach your teens with health and safety information because they feel invincible or untouchable regarding serious diseases and health/safety concerns. It falls to the parents and/or guardians to educate their teens – it is important that you break through your teen’s outlook of, “that can’t happen to me,” in order to provide them with the necessary facts on precautions, preventions, dangers, and treatments regarding both mild and severe health issues.

If you are embarrassed to talk to your child about sex or don't know how to bring up the conversation, remember these numbers and that should light a fire under your butt. If we fail children at such a young age, imagine how we are failing them as young adults.

You think they won't have sex? Well please think again because they will.

Our world as we live in it, has enough issues going on. Why should we have to worry about our children partaking in a grown up activity at such a young age. Keep your kids educated about all things and they will have enough knowledge to not be involved with what other children are doing. Let them not be pressured by their peers. Talk to them and treat them with respect but tell them what the consequences will be if they partake in these kinds of activities.

1. 3 in 10 teen American girls will get pregnant at least once before age 20. That’s nearly 750,000 teen pregnancies every year.

2. Parenthood is the leading reason that teen girls drop out of school. More than 50% of teen mothers never graduate from high school.

3. About 25% of teen moms have a 2nd child within 24 months of their first baby.

4. Less than 2% of teen moms earn a college degree by age 30.

5. The United States has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the western industrialized world.

6. In 2011, the teen birthrate in the United States fell to the lowest level recorded in nearly 70 years of tracking teen childbearing.

7. In 2008 the teen pregnancy rate among African-American and Hispanic teen girls, age 15 to 19, was over two and a half times higher than the teen pregnancy rate among white teen girls of the same age group.

8. 8 out of 10 teen dads don’t marry the mother of their child.

9. A sexually active teen who doesn’t use contraceptives has a 90% chance of becoming pregnant within a year.

10. Almost 50% of teens have never considered how a pregnancy would affect their lives.

11. Teens had fewer babies in 2010 than in any year since the mid-1940s.

If you are a parent of a teenager and these numbers do not scare you, then you need to get educated as well.

Why are our teens being kept in the dark about the many diseases out in the world that only takes 5 minutes to catch.

If your teenager tells you what to do, then its time to grab a hold of the situation and tell then that you are the parent and if you partake in these kind of activities, this is what is going to happen to you.

Teenagers think it won't happen to them, but it most certainly will and if you are a parent who thinks your teenager is not having sex, then you need to realize that they probably are.