The fight against HIV/Aids in T&T would not be achieved un­less par­ents play a more crit­i­cal role in sex ed­u­ca­tion at home. So said 1998 Miss Uni­verse, Wendy Fitzwilliam, dur­ing an HIV/Aids fo­rum host­ed by Women's In­sti­tute for Al­ter­na­tive De­vel­op­ment and Unit­ed Na­tions Pop­u­la­tion Fund at the Hy­att Re­gency ho­tel, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day. Al­so an ad­vo­cate on HIV/Aids aware­ness and ed­u­ca­tion, Fitzwilliam said most par­ents shy away from hav­ing im­por­tant con­ver­sa­tions with their chil­dren con­cern­ing sex and sex­u­al­i­ty.

But she stat­ed that hav­ing these con­ver­sa­tions in the for­mi­da­ble years of their chil­dren's lives would help pro­vide a greater un­der­stand­ing and aware­ness of sex ed­u­ca­tion. "Un­less fam­i­lies deal more ef­fec­tive­ly with the is­sue of sex­u­al­i­ty, then as a na­tion it would con­tin­ue to be dif­fi­cult to ed­u­cate the youth on HIV/Aids," Fitzwilliam said. Draw­ing on her per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence as a teenag­er, she said her sav­ing grace to her sex­u­al aware­ness was her re­li­gious in­struc­tor at St Joseph's Con­vent, Port-of-Spain. She al­so com­ment­ed that the school was one of the first to in­tro­duce a sex ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme that gave guid­ance and draw aware­ness re­gard­ing sex and sex­u­al­i­ty.

"I would like to thank my re­li­gious in­struc­tor for be­ing very open and hon­est and pro­vid­ing vi­tal in­for­ma­tion that helped shape the young ladies of St Joseph's Con­vent," she said. Fur­ther mak­ing ref­er­ence to her ex­pe­ri­ence, she said she pan­icked in­side when her four-year-old son was cu­ri­ous about parts of his body. "But I paused and em­braced the mo­ment and dealt with it," Fitzwilliam said. She said, how­ev­er, that she was cau­tious and al­lowed him to lead the con­ver­sa­tion so she could de­ter­mine how much in­for­ma­tion she di­vulged. "This is not an easy task, but we have to stop shy­ing away from hav­ing these con­ver­sa­tions with our kids," Fitzwilliam said.