Dad Accuses School Of ‘Promoting Fetishes’ After Teen Daughter Is Given Advice On ‘Sucking Toes’

A furious dad has accused his daughter’s school of promoting fetishes after the 14-year-old was sent home with a pamphlet called “101 Ways To Show Someone You Love Them Without Having Sex.” While many of the ideas on the list given out by Shevington High School in Wigan, UK were innocuous, such as going for a romantic walk and making sure they’re safe, it was the more bizarre additions to the list which drew Carl Lawrence’s criticism.

  1. One of the list’s pieces of advice? “Suck their toes.” While sure, sucking someone’s toes can indeed be a way to show someone you love them if that’s what you’re both into, it’s not necessarily behavior you’d want to promote to kids who are just barely teenagers. “I understand children need to be made aware of the world, but should we really be promoting fetishes in Year Nine? I don’t think so,” Carl said, as per Metro. “The first thing that stood out was ‘suck their toes.’ That’s quite niche. ‘There is no way I think a 14-year-old should be reading this.”
  2. Carl tried to educate his daughter about the subject. Hoping his daughter Emma wouldn’t believe she needed to have someone’s foot in her mouth to show she cared about them, Carl took it upon himself to broach the subject with the girl. “When I spoke to my daughter I said, ‘You do know this isn’t the only way to do things?’ Surely they can just enjoy each other’s company. They can go for walks, watch a film, go to Burger King, go to the park. There’s tons of things she can do that don’t involve getting someone’s big toe in her mouth.” Hopefully she took that lesson to heart!
  3. Even the kids in the class thought the list was ludicrous. As you can imagine, giving a bunch of young people a pamphlet that suggests sucking toes was always going to cause fits of laughter, and that’s exactly what happened in Emma’s class, she revealed. She also claimed that when the kids mentioned how gross it was, the teacher responded by saying that they wouldn’t know if they liked it until they’d tried it.
  4. The toe-sucking wasn’t the only problem. Carl also took umbrage with the fact that the list suggested other age-inappropriate activities such as proposing marriage, driving long distances to see someone, or even buying them underwear. While that might be a thing for much older teens, he feels it’s certainly not right to encourage 14-year-olds to take part in them.
  5. The company behind the pamphlet stands by it. “Spectrum’s Relationships and Sex Education Programme provides information and support to young people throughout their high school journey, helping them to make safer choices,” said a spokesperson from Spectrum Community Health-CIC. “From Year Nine onwards we also introduce our RSE magazine, which is adapted every year in response to feedback from young people, parents and schools. The 101 Ways were created by teenagers and are referenced by Spectrum in the context of the classroom lessons they support.”
Jennifer Still is a writer and editor with more than 10 years of experience. The managing editor of Bolde, she has bylines in Vanity Fair, Business Insider, The New York Times, Glamour, Bon Appetit, and many more. You can follow her on Twitter @jenniferlstill
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