Little girl at my work obsessed with the concept of sex

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

There is a child at my work who makes me uncomfrotable. Her name is Tanya. Tanya is a member of the tutoring center that I work at. She is about 8 years old. And surprisingly vulgar for a little girl.

For one thing, she is completely obsessed with sex. Here is a typical dialogue I have with her.

Tanya: Do you have a girlfriend?

Me: No. Now, let’s get started on math. Can you tell me what six times two is?

Tanya: If you had a girlfriend, would you have sex with her?

This kind of alarmed me. I don’t want to have this conversation. I feel its kind of dangerous- what if a “concerned parent” overheard the dialogue and took it completely out of context? Its just asking for trouble. So every time she brought up something like this, I’d just pretend we were talking about multiplication problems. Now granted I’m not completely unresponsive to her. I just don’t feel its appropriate to have a conversation about sex when we should be working on math. Especially when she is asking me sex related questions LOUDLY. Other kids hear the word ‘sex’ and start giggling. All it takes is one utterance of the word ‘penis’ and I’ll have a riot on my hands.

Today I was fortunate in that my group of children did not include her. However, a co-worker Fred did have the misfortune of being the recipient of all her questioning. Here’s some of the dialogue:

Tanya: How many brothers and sisters do you have?

Fred: I have two brothers

Tanya: So, counting you, that’s three kids. So your mom must have had sex three times, huh?

Fred:I don’t think this is appropriate discuss…

Tanya: You think she had sex more?

A part of me is cracking up inside about this, but another part of me is extremely nervous about the situation. Now I know she is mainly doing this to get a reaction out of us, but it kind of wierds me out how vocal she is about this. For example, at one point Fred had to excuse himself to the restroom.

Tanya: Wow Fred is sure taking a long time in the restroom!

Me: Let’s not worry ourselves with that. Let’s read this paragraph out loud…

Tanya: You think he’s doing something else in there? Like other than going to the bathroom?

Me: Like what? (suddenly realize what she’s implying, quickly try to change the subject) Errr come on we are getting behind in our lessons here

Tanya: Oh, you know…

:eek:

2

I know nothing about nothing, but I have read that the preoccupation of sex in adolescents points to sexual abuse. Can you talk to your boss, alerting him/her to Tanya’s behaviour? Or perhaps bring the subject up to the parents? If you do the latter, make sure you have documentation from the other workers who have been affected, you don’t want any acusations towards yourself.

3

Well, that’s why I’m nervous about saying anything. But I will bring up the fact that she says a lot of inappropriate subject matter- I wouldn’t be surprised if the managers are already aware of it.

4

Definitely talk to your boss about this. Something’s not right here.

5

I always thought it was pretty normal for kids to be chatty about this subject. Let’s not just jump to sex abuse here…

6

Maybe, but at age 8? Kids that age might be chatty about sex with their peers, but to an adult? It strikes me as odd to say the least. I wouldn’t jump right to the conclusion that the girl is being abused, but something sure doesn’t seem right there.

7

I can understand that an 8 year old may be unusually well educated about sexual matters and not have the social skills to keep quiet about her knowledge but I think that a girl of that age should, by rights, know very little about male masturbation. I too would be worried.

8

Yes, it must be something terrible, rather than the mischievous curiosity of a little girl who’s watched more than one episode of Oprah.

9

Well, let’s not hope for the worst. You know how kids can be, they learn one or to things about a subject and suddenly they are an expert and want to show off how much they know, perhaps her parents gave her the ‘birds and the bees’ talk a little too early in life. If there is no sexual abuse involved, try distracting her mind from the subject by finding out something she likes, and give her some information on the subject to get her distracted. When I was in high school I was a student aid for the ESL (English as a second language) course for some of the first through fourth grade students. There was one young lady around the same age as the one you’re having trouble with who seemed to be obsessed with the differences in the male and female anatomy. I had the same concerns as you, should someone over hear one of her colorful comments, what would they think? So I went to the teacher and explained what was going on. She informed me that this child had a habit of doing this a lot around people of the opposite sex. She knew the family personally, because she had made it a point to know them when this behavior started, and was sure the child wasn’t being abused. She advised me to just ignore it. Well, one day after a week of ignoring her comments, I decided to put an end to it. I went to the store and got a children’s book about animals. The next day I took 15 or so minutes to look through the book with her, she became very interested in it, even though she had trouble with some of the English words (looking back I should have gotten a Spanish version), so I gave her the book to keep. This had two very good affects. For one she stopped with her previous comments, and became an ‘expert on wildlife’, and her reading also improved noticeably. Hopefully this story will help you out with your situation, and possibly give you a solution.

10

I have seen other threads here about kids and early teens who were very vocal about sexual matters and were, in some cases, displaying highly inappropriate behaviour. In those cases, some Dopers pointed to the possibility of sexual abuse, and to varying degrees, I agreed with them. This time I’m having difficulty believing that this is anything more than a precocious mischievous 8 year old with a slight head start on her peers in her knowledge of sex.

Nothing mentioned in the OP would have the alarm bells ringing, which is not to say that the Incubus doesn’t have a problem on his hands. I just think that the problem is one of disruptive behaviour and lack of respect rather than something more serious. All the same, it can’t hurt to raise the issue with her parents.

11

My immediate reaction would be to say “We are discussing math now. This is not the time to be talking about sex. Period.”

After all, there is a time and a place for everything, and this little girl needs to learn that. Yeah, I’d raise concerns with someone in authority, but if your job is teaching fractions, you maintain control and teach fractions.

Then again, I’m a grouchy old woman who likes things done just so.

12

There is nothing in the OP which proves that she even knows what sex is beyond “it’s what makes babies”. “Oh you know” is even more vague - she could be referring to something completely innocent in a way only a child could misunderstand.

This is what I get from “do you think she had sex more?”. Surely if abuse were going on she would realise that sex does not just happen three times in one’s life, but far more regularly?

However, you know the situation first hand - the matter is in your assuredly discrete and sensitive hands. Does the class receive a lesson on “adults touching the doll in the wrong place” soon? I think I had such a lesson at about that age.

13

I certainly hope that the girl is not being abused, but it does sound odd for her to be acting like that. I don’t think a normal kid would become preoccupied with sex until their hormones start up. I know I didn’t. Back when I was an 8 year old little girl, I still didn’t understand the mechanics of how masturbation worked well enough to make an implication about it. I certainly was not sheltered (for example, my parents let me watch Saturday Night Live at that age). Have things changed so much in the 12 years since I was 8? I too feel this is troubling. Sometimes sex abuse is hard to detect, so even if you know the parents and they seem “nice”, you can’t be sure about what might be going on in private.
I admit there are other possibilities. Maybe she has an older brother who was caught masturbating in the bathroom by their parents and she overheard them talking to him about it. But since sex abuse is often overlooked because people don’t want to believe it happens, I wouldn’t want to dismiss the potential of abuse.

14

My 9 year niece tried to french kiss me on more than one occasion (I saw her do it to her twin sister). I blame spanish soap operas for that…

15

Document and report EVERYTHING.

If there IS some weird reason for this – sexual abuse or whatever – then you’re covered. You reported what you saw, you did your job.

If some sort of strange consequence arises from this, you have documented that she constantly wants to talk about sex. You’re covered.

Other than that, FairyChatMom’s got it down. “This is not the time for discussing sex. This is math time.”

16

Well, she was talking about multiplication, too, to be fair. :smiley:

17

Let’s not get hysterical and call out Family Services to rip the family apart just yet, okay?

What bothers me more then anything else is that this girl is talking about this way with people who are relative strangers. That kind of talk is okay when you are talking with mom and dad. But not Grandma and Grandpa. Not your aunts and uncles or your cousins. Not her teachers. Sad thing is, I can just hear the 'rental units saying something along the lines of "Oh, it’s ok. Tanya’s just so precocious and smart." :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

That may be but Tanya apparently doesn’t know or hasn’t be taught that there are certain topics that one does not discuss/talk about with casual aquaintances.

18

Let’s not get hysterical and call out Family Services to rip the family apart just yet, okay?

What bothers me more then anything else is that this girl is talking about this way with people who are relative strangers. That kind of talk is okay when you are talking with mom and dad. But not Grandma and Grandpa. Not your aunts and uncles or your cousins. Not her teachers. Sad thing is, I can just hear the 'rental units saying something along the lines of "Oh, it’s ok. Tanya’s just so precocious and smart." :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

That may be but Tanya apparently doesn’t know or hasn’t be taught that there are certain topics that one does not discuss/talk about with casual aquaintances.

19

I at first wondered if something might be up, but then I remembered the infamous thread here about auntie em’s “big vagina” - a young relative or young child of a friend saw her getting out of the shower, and she was all proud about her knowledge of the body, but remarked with some awe at how big em’s “vagina” (actually the “bikini area”) was. Some kids tend to babble on at embarrassing times about their new-found knowledge. I’m hoping it’s something more harmless like this.

20

I’m definitely going to talk to the Directors about it today. The sex talk isn’t the only thing she does. She is also pretty vulgar and obscene, which makes me think she is really fishing for ways to get under our skin. We have a hard time getting her focused, and I’m hoping this sex talk is just something new she’s discovered that can give some grown-ups pause.

I’m going to try very hard not to be fazed by it, even though some things she says are kind of funny/odd. I’ll bring it up with my coworkers as well. Some are more, erm, reactive to things like that than I am, and if Tanya realizes she has the capacity to embarass/insult us, she will continue to do it.

Working with some children at the center often feels like a tug-of-war battle between trying to get them focused and productive, and them trying to drive me completely insane. The “Drive the tutoring coach crazy” tactic is not new, I’ve seen many kids pull this kind of stunt (though the sex topics are new), and many of them eventually realized they weren’t going to be able to piss me off enough to get out of doing their own work.