Saturday, August 30, 2008

Who Can You Trust with Your Kids??

As we know, I'm a freak and a worrier. I can't help it. My chief goal in life is to get my children to adulthood without dying or being seriously permanently injured. I feel like something as awful as that happening to them is unlikely, but what I do worry about is their being victimized....

I know when I was in college the stats were 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 10 boys would be sexually victimized by the time they reached 18. Scary. I'm not trying to scare you though. But this is what I know- most of the attention to this is focused on protecting your children from adults...but what about other children?

I feel 100% comfortable with the adults in my children's lives, but not the kids. I don't know the other kids at daycare or school and if they are receiving inadequate supervision, something can happen.

And stuff DOES happen. When I worked in social work I met little kids who did very serious things to other children. Not just innocent play, I promise you. And it's important to know that if a child does perpetrate, its because, most of the time, they are a victim of someone else. They need help.

The reason I bring this up is because I learned that there is some serious lack of supervision at Daycare and some innocent but inappropriate things did occur when my kids were in their care. I'm not worried, I know nothing bad happened to my children. This time. But its time for a very un-fun phone conversation with Diva. And I am now relieved about the decision we made to pull them.

So, have you had that discussion with your children, on who can touch and see their privates and who can't? Have you told them this applies to other children too? How did that conversation go? Do they know its ok to say no to someone, including other kids even if they are afraid it will hurt that kid's feelings? I just did. Sucks doesn't it.
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7 comments:

liznewt said...

It's a scary, scary world out there.

Anonymous said...

I'm hoping that we have talked about things like this enough with our kids that they would be comfortable enough to talk to us about it...but you never know. It is scary and it really sucks that you had to go through that. You are a good mom...

Ashlee said...

I talked with my son about it when he was three. And I've just started discussing it with my daughter who is almost three. If they don't know that it's wrong, they won't know to tell someone to stop, or to tell someone else that it happened. I'm a paranoid mommy too, but I would rather be overprotective and keep my kids safe, than to be the other way and have them get hurt. You know?

Helena said...

My child is only one year old but I'm already worrying about those things. Sexual abuse is much more common than people realize because a) kids don't tell everything and b) too many adults choose to close their eyes from the unpleasant truth. When I was ten, some boys of our class raped (with clothes on) one girl in the back of the classroom every time before the teacher came in. Nobody dared to help or say anything so the adults never knew.

Sister Sassy said...

Helena, that makes me so sad. Awful.

The thing that happened involved the daughter having the kids all show their underwear to each other. Pretty harmless at 4 yrs old, but a 6 year old felt uncomfortable about it afterwards and told his mom who called me.

Kiki thought it was no big thing, he doesn't mind showing his underwear to anyone. But apparently this isn't the first time this daughter did that with the kids and I guess her parents aren't taking it very seriously. So...ugh... anyway. I was careful not to make it a big deal to Kiki since he doesn't think anything bad happened, he just showed his underwear which he doesn't mind doing -in his mind. But we had a very long talk about how he shouldn't take off his clothes or underpants every unless mom and dad are there. And if he isn't sure, to call us on the phone.

so thats what happened. I'm still waiting for Diva to call me back.

Jen said...

We had to have this conversation in different contexts and settings. It's not necessarily something that kids take in at one time.

I wish life were less complicated.

Courtney said...

We went through something a little more "violating" with my oldest when she was 3. It was done by my husbands half sister when she was 10. It has, needless to say, left a wedge in the family. Unfortunate! We explained to her parents she was probably a victim, but neither one bothered to get her any kind of help so it's out of our court now.