Wednesday, October 10, 2012

protecting our kids

i'm reading a book called "Protecting the Gift" by gavin debecker. i saw it recommended on some parenting page and thought i'd check it out. the main subject is how we, as parents, can keep our kids safe and teach them to keep themselves safe as they get older. i've read various versions of these sorts of books in the past, but this one was a different flavor. it was very practical and i appreciated that.

one of the big things it teaches is how to keep kids safe from sexual predators. that's a subject that makes most of us uncomfortable and some of us queasy. we don't like to think about it very much because there's so much shame and secrecy surrounding it. we think that it can't happen to our kids because we love them so much and we do everything we can to keep them safe. we are good parents, so everything should turn out fine.

i remember hearing as a young teenager that 1 in 4 girls would be molested before she reached the age of 18. i was horrified and would look around at my friends and wonder which ones it would be.

at the time i first heard that statistic, i didn't realize that it was me. even stranger, in hindsight, is that it had already happened, but i had suppressed it and wouldn't even remember for a few more years.

my family was great. my parents were protective and careful about where and how we spent our time. they were careful about who we could be around without close adult supervision. they did everything they could think of correctly.

unfortunately, what happened was something they never would have thought of.

the summer that i turned 5, my mom was babysitting for another girl who was about 10. we were often left to play by ourselves or with siblings or other neighbor kids without a whole lot of supervision. shortly after she started coming over, that girl made me perform sexual acts with the other kids. she would tell us that we were married, even going so far as to perform a "marriage ceremony" to legitimize the whole thing. then she'd give step by step instructions on what we needed to do to each other. we didn't like it, but she was way bigger than the rest of us and when we complained, she threatened to tell our parents what we were doing to each other and we knew we'd get in trouble for that.

thankfully, she didn't need my mom to watch her for very long and soon she was out of my life. looking back, i wonder what must have happened to her to cause her to be acting out in that way. she was clearly a very troubled little girl.

when i was about 12 years old, i got touched inappropriately by my orthodontist. it happened a few different times while my mom was sitting in the waiting room and the doctor was leaned over my chair, pretending to adjust my paper drool bib. or if he couldn't get enough privacy in the exam room, he'd find a reason why i needed more x-rays and he'd back me into a corner in that tiny room and grope me where no one could see. he never said a word to me that wasn't about teeth or my retainer. he just silently found opportunities to touch me when no one was looking.

i don't know why i didn't tell my mom about the orthodontist. i felt all skeavy and disgusting each time i went. maybe i just wanted to pretend it didn't happen because addressing it would have made me look directly at it and deal with it when i really just wanted to forget it ever happened.

when i was 18 and got to college, i got really sick with a nasty sinus infection that just wouldn't go away. i had to go to a clinic a few miles away from the school several times before i finally kicked it. the worst part of being sick was that each time i went to the clinic, i saw the same, yucky old doctor. even though i only had a sinus infection, he always directed me to strip completely and then put on a paper gown that opened in the front. i didn't realize how strange that was at the time and i was so sick that i hardly had the strength to care, let alone question a medical professional. when he came back into the room for the exam, he always opened the gown fully and took my pulse in my groin. he also handled my breasts to supposedly hear my heartbeat properly.

again, i didn't tell anyone other than some friends. none of us knew what to do about it. we turned it into a joke and made up an obnoxious nickname for him and tried really hard not to get sick enough to need to see a doctor.

my whole point in airing out my skeletons like this is to say that we need to protect our kids. we need to teach them to value themselves and what is right. we need to listen to any little warning bells in our heads, even if they don't make sense on paper. we need to teach our kids not to just obey anyone in an authority position. we need to foster a sense of self worth in them so that they won't be prey to the dirty old men, adults who take advantage of their positions of trust, or even other children. we need to enforce an open door policy, literally and figuratively with our kids. that way, we'll be checking on them often and supervising anyone who's with them. if something does happen, they'll know they can tell us. and if, by any terrible chance something out of line does happen to our kids and they tell us, we need to report it. not just try to stay away from that person, but get them prosecuted. the statistics show that anyone who does such a thing to one kid is likely doing it to lots of kids. it can go on for years and years and wound so many innocents who are too afraid to talk about it. too many of those kids will go on to hurt others in the future.

let's protect the gift of intuition and innocence by giving too much information rather than not enough. kids who are likely to be targeted aren't too young to be told about such things, even if their parents feel uncomfortable talking about it. you aren't protecting them by keeping specific info away from your kids, but you might very well be protecting them by sharing what seems to maybe be too much.


19 comments:

  1. This is a delicate and troubling topic for many parents. But you're right about the importance of talking about it and preparing our kids. Parents never think it'd THEIR kid that will be assaulted, but it's always somebody's kid.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I bet that wasn't the easiest post to write Sherilin... I'm so sorry you were put in those situations as a kid. It's terrible that so many girls (and boys) can identify with those types of things. I remember hearing that statistic too as a kid, and thinking the exact same thing - "which one of us is it?" I think one of the best defenses is information. When our kids are aware and educated, they are hopefully more likely to recognize the manipulations of other people (adults and children) who are in more powerful positions than they are. I think I will check out that book.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. it was a little awkward to write. i kept asking myself if i should really be telling these things. if it wasn't better left unsaid. but maybe, just maybe it'll make someone who reads it will think about it and do something, anything, that will actually make a difference for a kid.

      Delete
  3. I think it does happen to a lot of kids - so sad. How brave of you to discuss it - reading something like this will certainly help someone. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. my own stories are so much less severe than the stories millions of others could tell, but maybe it'll stir up a thought for some parents of new ways to keep their kids safe.

      Delete
  4. Sherilin, you are SO right about this. I'm going to check out that book. When I read Free Range Parenting she talked about the same idea - giving your kids the tools and information they need to take care of themselves. It is so important. Thank you for sharing your stories here, that takes courage, and your examples make it clear that kids need to know about boundaries, how to deal with advances, etc. I never knew about that stuff as a kid either, and I was also molested, and never told my family.
    Hooray for taking the shame out of it and turning it into something valuable, an experience that better informs us in relation to teaching our own children.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. thanks and i'm sorry you were one of those kids too. why didn't we tell our parents? i think maybe we weren't entirely sure it qualified as abuse. or we didn't want to be a tattletale. or we just didn't want to think about it and it would be embarrassing if our parents were asking questions that we didn't know how to answer.
      i hope we can teach our own kids to be smarter than that.

      Delete
  5. This post really moved me and shocked me in ways that I didn't expect it to Sherry. The thought that one in four girls get molested before the age of 18 is scary and the fact that you were one of them is horrifying. I'm sorry to read about all of this, I really am, I wonder what happened to that disturbed little girl and if that dirty doctor is still at it now, it's a scary thought, you're so right that we've got to protect our children from these kind of creeps and sick people.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. it's not just girls. and according to the book i'm reading, in current time, it's actually 1 in 3 kids who will have some form of unwanted sexual contact from an adult before they turn 18.

      Delete
  6. You are performing a great service by sharing your experiences. Hopefully this will prevent the same thing happening to someone else. Bravo.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Molestation of children is a topical subject in the United Kingdom at the moment. Jimmy Saville (high profile DJ/ celebrity/ charity fundraiser) who died last year has been revealed as a serial child-abuser - even abusing disabled children in hospital when purportedly doing his charity work.

    Research has shown, however, that it is not sleazy strangers we should be most worried about. Most abusers reside within the family home i.e our relatives.

    Thanks for sharing your story.

    BJ

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. that's seriously messed up.
      and you're right that most of the molesters aren't strangers. most parents don't give a stranger the chance to get close enough to the kid for such a thing to happen. it's usually a neighbor, relative, or family friend. so nasty.

      Delete
  8. How brave you are for sharing. *sigh* I worked with the "extreme" cases for a few years. Sadly, it's the "subtle" ones that can often do the most damage since they are rarely brought to the forefront.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. that must be a really hard job to do. it seems like it could squash your spirit after a bit, but those cases need help so badly. kudos to you for being that person in a position to help.

      Delete
  9. You are so brave in sharing your story. I'm so sorry that happened to you. I agree with Juli, it's those "subtle" situations when you're not really sure in the moment if it's wrong. Those sort of gray areas when it's someone you're told it's okay to trust (like other kids and doctors!) can be so confusing. I have a similar story, and I remember thinking that if I had been raped or even definitely touched inappropriately, at least I would know what to do about it (maybe). At least it would have a name. (Or be "legitimate," as our lovely politicians would call it.) Isn't that awful? How do we teach our kids to watch out for those not-so-obvious predators? I'm totally buying that book.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. i hope you will buy the book. i got it out of the library and kept wanting to underline things, so now i know i need to buy it. there's some great advice for teenagers about dating and i wrote out large portions of it that really resonated with me. like, "when a man in our culture says No, that's usually the end of the discussion. when a woman says No, it's the beginning of the negotiation."
      or "when you end a relationship w/ someone and say that you don't want to talk to that person 10 time afterwards, you've contradicted yourself 9 times."

      Delete
  10. This is one of those things that you never think will happen to you or your kids, and when it does, it socks you in the gut in a way that you never could have imagined....

    ReplyDelete

don't let me be the only one doing the talking around here. spill your guts!