prieto@aluxp.UUCP (PRIETO) (08/27/84)
Replace this line with your message Recently NBC had a program called Silent Shame which dealt with the sexual abuses on children that are so much in the news lately. On this program they went to describe abuses on children by PermaFile (sp ?) people who are prone to do this kind of thing which in many cases were the victims of child abuse themselves. The program encouraged talking about this subject so that it would be " out of the closet" in particular with small children. My wife has talked to our daughter about it in a casual way in particular in the dealing with strangers, the problem is that in many cases some of these persons are not total strangers to the child but somewhat figures that traditionally we teach our children to trust and obey. After viewing that program I am preparing to talk to my 4 year old daughter on the subject of not trusting or obeying even some of the figures that myself in the past I have told her to obey. What are some of the way that others have approach this subject of obey teacher, coach, friend, neighboor type figures but only to the extent that does not involve your private parts of your body. Does anyone have had experienced with this type of talk , what has been a typical conversation and or response , What age group is the child in? Has it created Fear that curtails social relationships? ihnp4!aluxp!prieto
mark@gymble.UUCP (Mark Weiser) (08/30/84)
The approach we have taken for the prevention of child abuse with our children is NOT to talk to them about inappropriate touching, etc., but rather to talk to them about telling us anything that goes on, especially if someone tells them NOT to tell us. All that I have ever read about child abuse said that it was accompanied by instructions "not to tell". So, we have talked to them (well, actually, only the 6 year old so far, not the 2 year old) about how anyone, even someone very close and dear to them, might ask them to keep a secret from us or from everyone. We say: they can always come to us with such secrets, that it is a dangerous thing when someone tells them something like this and they should tell us right away, etc. This seems to work well--at least, we seem to get pretty informed about all the little secret sharing of the day that my daughter does with her friends, and I am confident that my daughter will have no trouble agreeing with someone to keep a secret if she feels threatened, but then telling us anyway when the immediate threat is past. My wife and I thought about this quite a bit and decided that talking to my daughter about inappropriate touching would simply backfire. She would simply be made aware that there was something bad that could happen, and might be that much more afraid to talk about anything that might go on because she would not want her parents to know that she had done something bad. Also, someone very young may not be able to do anything about the touching anyway, so why give her something else to worry about. And, as prieto said, there is the problem of alerting her not just to strangers but to everyone, which I think my method covers.