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If you’re a parent, nanny, teacher, caregiver—anyone who is regularly responsible for children—it’s important to talk to the children under your charge about “safe adults.” Those grown-ups they can trust if they ever feel unsafe—and those they can and should not. While it’s easy to avoid the conversation so as not to instill fear where none exists (or because your kids have barely been out of your sight except for school and group sports), it’s an important step towards maintaining their long-term safety and protection.
What we often do, according to TikTok creator and parenting expert Jessica Martini, is name the people our children can trust: mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, uncles, cousins, teachers, or their coaches—the unfortunate truth is, according to RAINN (the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), “as many as 93% of victims under the age of 18 know the abuser.” Simply listing off who our kids should be able to trust is not enough—and may cause further confusion, shame, and reticence to speak up.
The Kids First Child Abuse Treatment Center concurs, saying teaching our kids about “stranger danger” is not the best way to keep them safe from sexual predators. “In the vast majority of sexual abuse cases, the offender was known (and very often trusted by) the victim’s family. Sexual predators invest incredible amounts of energy into creating a persona of a trustworthy person in order to have access to children.”
In one of her popular Parenting PSA videos designed to teach child safety, Martini suggests sharing the following parameters with our kids to identify safe adults in their lives, rather than creating a traditional “list.”
- We can begin by telling our kids: “A safe adult is someone who makes you feel happy and safe,” Martini explains. “When you go near them, you don’t feel nervous, scared, or have an icky feeling in your tummy. They make you feel loved and comfortable.”
- Secondly, a safe adult (or adolescent) “will never, ever ask you to keep a secret,” and if they do, instruct your child to share the secret with you right away. She also advises not to teach kids about “good vs. bad secrets” (ones that make them feel happy vs. bad) because sometimes abusers will use “good secrets to get their foot in the door.” (E.g. “Here’s a cookie, don’t tell your mom” or “I know you broke that but I won’t tell anyone, it’s our little secret.” Getting kids in the habit of keeping “good secrets” makes it easier for them to keep bad secrets in the future. Instead, Martini notes, we can teach them the difference between secrets and “happy surprises”—things that everyone will find out soon, and everyone will feel happy about, such as a surprise party.
- A safe adult will always believe you when you tell them something important. (Martini points out that sometimes our kids will “tell us without telling us” when they don’t have the words or emotional maturity to convey it verbally. They may act out the traumatic situation in their play, experience headaches, stomachaches, or other signs of physical illness (especially when they’re going to see a certain person), become withdrawn, or experience a loss of appetite. They may also act distressed when going somewhere they previously enjoyed going—exhibiting behaviors such as screaming, crying, clinging, refusing to move, or saying “They’re the worst, I never want to go there.”
By going beyond the rhetoric of “good vs. bad” and perfunctory lists of so-called “trusted adults,” our children can better understand how to properly gauge with whom they are actually safe.
from Lifehacker https://ift.tt/tVKJdEh
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