Early Childhood Sexual Development · Clinical Exercise

Tracing It Back

A 34-year-old client carries shame into sexual activity she wants, with a partner who is not disgusted at all. The lesson was learned at four, from a mother who was not trying to teach it.

What this exercise practises

Locating where a developmental lesson was learned, distinguishing it from the adult experience it now shapes, and keeping the normative baseline separate from the family response to it.

Five short parts, mostly multiple choice with feedback on every answer. The two writing boxes are optional.

Estimated time to complete this exercise: 20 minutes

1The lesson
2Normative or not
3Three moments
4The work
5The other version
6Close

Before you begin

How this one works

Five short parts. Most of them are multiple choice, you get feedback on each answer, and a wrong answer shows you the defensible one with its reasoning.
Two parts have a writing box. Both are optional, and the exercise will let you continue without using them.
Nothing is graded and nothing you type leaves your browser. Reloading discards it, and you can copy anything you wrote at the end.
The material draws only on Sections 1 and 2. You do not need anything from later in the module to complete it.

The skill being practised is tracing: locating where a developmental lesson was learned, and keeping that separate from the adult sitting in front of you.

References

  1. Beckett, M. K., Elliott, M. N., Martino, S., Kanouse, D. E., Corona, R., Klein, D. J., & Schuster, M. A. (2010). Timing of parent and child communication about sexuality relative to children’s sexual behaviors. Pediatrics, 125(1), 34–42. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2009-0806
  2. Chaffin, M., Berliner, L., Block, R., Johnson, T. C., Friedrich, W. N., Louis, D. G., Lyon, T. D., Page, I. J., Prescott, D. S., Silovsky, J. F., & Madden, C. (2008). Report of the ATSA Task Force on Children With Sexual Behavior Problems. Child Maltreatment, 13(2), 199–218. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077559507306718
  3. Friedrich, W. N., Grambsch, P., Broughton, D., Kuiper, J., & Beilke, R. L. (1991). Normative sexual behavior in children. Pediatrics, 88(3), 456–464.
  4. Friedrich, W. N., Fisher, J., Broughton, D., Houston, M., & Shafran, C. R. (1998). Normative sexual behavior in children: A contemporary sample. Pediatrics, 101(4), e9. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.101.4.e9
  5. Nathanson, D. L. (1992). Shame and pride: Affect, sex, and the birth of the self. W. W. Norton.