Child Sexual Abuse Awareness

I have been silently following CSAAM for sometime now. I went for lunch with a friend and no prizes for guessing what we talked about. I came back thinking that I must put up a post, but quickly scratched the plan within hours because I didn’t want to attract any trolls. So far I have always written about safe topics and have stayed in my comfort zone, do I really want to jeopardize it?

Today morning I read Kiran’s tweet.

This reminds me of the “they came for the Jews, I kept quiet”. All ye who kept quiet, tomorrow it could be you.

That was the decision point for me. I mean, I am a Early Child Education professional and if I hesitate to advocate for the kids and their families, then what is the use of my education?

Irrespective of one’s age, one inappropriate touch, even if it a hasty groping, is enough to open one’s eyes to the world. Suddenly the world is not a safe place any more. Even a ten year old will develop a bat sense that teaches her to steer clear of some people. This is all in retrospect, but it is very confusing when you go through it and you are only ten years old and are not equipped with a good support system. I remember thinking hard about this negative attention but for the life of me couldn’t figure out why. The only explanation I could come up with was my non-existent breasts and the potential of what they can develop in to. I also came up with ingenious solution of wearing baggy clothes and molding my spine in to a convex shape that would give Manthara a tough competition!

I have been subjected to an occasional groping in public transportation, exposure to inappropriate language and despicable behaviors of a few individuals while in college. As difficult as it was to deal with it at that time, I must count my blessings. When it comes to my children, how do I deal with it? Gamble on luck? I wish I can put them in a bubble. But that ain’t happening. I cannot look in to those wide, innocent eyes and say that there are big bad wolves out there and they can potentially be affected by them. I just finished teaching them about widening their circle of trust and letting on people other than me in to this circle. Do I want to give them mixed messages? Though the girls already know certain aspects of appropriate and inappropriate touch, I had been afraid to go any further with this.

Thanks to CSAAM, I have been thinking about this topic for the past month. I am trying to remove the emotional ‘parent’ aspect from this equation and approach it as I would any lesson plan and I must say that helps. With this in mind, I have split what I want to do in to two categories – objectives and goals. Objectives are very concrete set of achievables which come with a definite time frame. Goals are something that we walk towards and at times we find this expanding and elusive.

Goals:
#1 Create awareness.
#2 Giving the child the right to say no.
#3 Teaching the children that they have full control over their bodies.
#4 Keeping the line of communication open.
#5 Let them know that they are special no matter what.

Objectives:
If you have a set of goals in your mind, small opportunities present themselves and these can be turned in to objectives. Otherwise, introduce the topic through a book with good content that targets your goals.

-For quite sometime now, Mieja has been pestering me how baby comes out of a mommy’s body, for which my typical answer has been, ‘When it is time the doctor will help the baby come out of mommy’s tummy’. Three weeks back, Mieja refused to take the template answer and forced me it to a corner asking me, ‘Amma, I have heard this million times. Tell me the body part the baby comes out of.’ So I told her the name of the appropriate body part. This to me is one of the goals that keeps in line with goal #3 – Teaching the children that they have full control over their bodies, which includes every body part has a name and a related function.

Over the three weeks at multiple instances I have followed up on this conversation, stressing that it is the name of a body part and is not something to be giggled over/used as a joke; the need for hygiene; every part of the body has a certain functionality including private parts and the children need to define boundaries for every body part. For example – It is okay to hold hands, not okay to touch some one’s eyes, okay  to ask for permission and give a hug, not okay to touch private parts. By holding hands and hugging you tell a person about love and trust. By touching some one’s eyes, you can potentially harm their eyes. When it comes to private parts it is inactive currently and all they need to worry about is hygiene.

-Indian culture is one that expects compliance, especially from children. So when your child says no, stop and listen to it. If possible help the child to give a reason why they are saying no. When one blindly discounts every no a child says, the child is going to grow up thinking that they do not have the power to say no. This addresses goal #2.

This is a constant struggle for me. Expecting compliance from my children has been written in to my DNA owing to the way I was raised. So I have to really practice to count to ten to keep my reflexes under control.

-Post 6 years of age, all children experiment with lying. The intention is totally harmless. A simple, ‘Yes, I washed my hands already’ is not meant to make a fool out of you, but to move on with the next exciting thing. Stamp out the urge to make a lesson out of the situation. A simple and quite, ‘I can find out if you washed your hands or not. Please tell me the truth. If you are in a hurry to go out and play bubbles, I will ask your sister to wait for you.’ will do wonders in the long run. goal #4.

What would I recommend a friend to read?
Of course the whole website, but in particular

– Awareness about cyber sexual abuse

–Commonly asked questions

–Book references by Sandhya.