Safety Strategies to Prevent Child Abuse
Peer to peer violence has gone from 30% of cases entering the system of childhood sexual abuse to 70%. These same children are playing at school, in the neighborhood, and together on playdates. During the school year, children spend the majority of their day at school and the best way to prepare your child for tricky behavior is for them to have safety strategies. We want children to develop their communication skills about themselves, talk about the way others behave around them, and especially help develop their intuition. We expect so much of children, yet as parents we often struggle with managing our own feelings and stumble in even teaching our own children in regulating their feelings. Becoming a parent makes us face our feelings even though we want to keep doing the things we grew up with that no longer work. When we express our feelings in appropriate ways, we are modeling what we’d like them to do. Parents can practice with their child in a variety of ways to help them build their communication skills, voice their courage, and continue having an open expression of feelings. These skills help children to keep them safe from predators. In this blog, I will describe what safety strategies your child can use to lower the chances of peer to peer abuse and other predatory grooming behaviors from adults.
Strategies At Home
You can begin helping your child learn how to cope with difficult situations by role modeling with them safety strategies. For example, your child refuses to start the bedtime and bathtime routine. Many parents struggle with these daily transitions and frequently can happen during morning routines too. Children are still developing many aspects of themselves and as parents we need to clearly understand that they do not have all their executive functioning skills like regulating their feelings. We must also co-regulate with our child to help them develop these skills like their intuition. For example a 5 year old child may not have problem solving skills if toothpaste falls on the floor while they try to brush their teeth. They may just start screaming and we as parents have to help them figure it out. We don’t have to say, “it’s okay, you don't have to wail like that.” We can simply say, “oh no.” We as parents need to learn to really listen and so that kids' feelings are being heard. A child’s feelings are often not delivered in a pretty box but rather arrive messy or loudly.
Depending on their age, the number of kids, and their learning styles, parents struggle a lot to keep up with all their child’s needs. It’s a skill for a parent to learn how to really listen to your child’s needs while also running a household. It’s hard to learn new skills as a parent if you weren’t brought up with emotionally mature parents of your own. Rarely are children taught how to harness their voice and intuition. However, parents can begin role modeling with children when it truly counts. Parents can identify their child’s feelings and make adjustments. We are the adults in the room and if a child refuses to comply with your requests, parents must carefully make decisions on how to handle their own parental feelings first about the refusal and then the child’s feelings. This decision making process happens in seconds.
Children will present with feeling cranky and will refuse to do their chores. Maybe they do their chores but their screaming ensues or misbehavior starts. A parent can get triggered and it feels like the high volume of static radio. If you are a highly sensitive person that can challenge motherhood and send you straight to the feeling of powerlessness in their own childhood. The children may collude together as your elementary age child chimes in with the older kids on refusing to do chores. It becomes a chorus of defiant behaviors and it’s not always easy to connect with your breath.
The best strategy at home is to listen more, talk with “uh-huh” syllables when your child starts to get into their primitive emotions and observe your behavior more as a parent. Notice what they are doing, as the child often is communicating in primitive ways. They scream and it’s hard but it’s important to just apply the knowledge that you are doing your best. Parents can be encouraged to relax by taking a deep breath to literally push your system into your rational left brain mode when kids start yelling or screaming about doing their chores. Slowing down as the volume is cranked up is hard work. It’s essential for your children to see you as a parent that isn’t afraid of their child’s feelings and is anchored in their own feelings whatever they may be at the time.
Shift into Daily Conversations
Talking to them about their day can really help gauge how they are learning to communicate on tricky behavior. For example you can ask, “what do you do if a friend wants you to play with them and they tug your arm instead of asking you?” One child may immediately respond with silence and so you ask your other child. The other child may say, “you say no!” You can praise your child with that appropriate courageous response in using their voice to communicate their needs. Then you can add another possible conflict your child may face by suggesting, “but what if a peer insists and keeps pulling your arm to push you over accidentally?” When one child responds, “you tell a teacher and get help” you know your child has been listening to your efforts on teaching them about using their voice. This conversation takes 5 minutes and you can again reward your children for participating. Even if another one of your children didn’t respond, they are still listening and likely absorbing all of it.
Strategies at School
Strategies get trickier at school because there are many variables that are happening there which are drastically different from the ones at home. Kids may behave more compliant at school and it may be harder for children to speak up in a myriad of scenarios. This is why parents need to practice with their children at home with a variety of feelings and how to start listening to their voice as well as intuition. It’s important that parents present safety strategies like it’s common knowledge to put on your seatbelt when we get in the car.
We can ask our children about things that they enjoy at school with their teachers and peers. One aspect may be in asking their child if they like their teacher or if they feel comfortable giving them hugs. This can help you as a parent understand your child’s comfort level. You may also model this idea of asking for hugs or if it’s okay to caress their forehead when they are waking up for school. Your child may be half awake but you are being consistent in asking your child for consent. The body remembers often more than what words can ever describe and that’s why preverbal memories may not exist for a baby exposed to drugs in utero. You are setting the standard of how their main attachment figure is acting with them even in a sleepy state. Once they get accustomed to adults asking for permission to hug them, they then will expect this kind of behavior from other adults like teachers at school. They will sharpen their knowledge and understanding when adults behave inappropriately.
Children may not know how to articulate things and their feelings vary throughout the morning routine to get ready for the day. They may be crabby and how we respond to them as adults is very crucial. We have to slow down to speed up in parenting. Slow down but the school bus is leaving in less than 10 minutes. In their emotional state, they are offline in their ability to use any executive logical skills. Children may be reaching for things they want like a particular water bottle and it’s denied because it’s more of a jug. No amount of rationalizing on how it’s too big for school. Tag teaming it in the morning, as parents isn’t always possible but it’s often what’s needed. Single female headed households or mothers with little to no involvement of their spouse may carry all the responsibilities.
We can help children have strategies in doing role plays at home. You can ask your child to help you come up with scenarios that are often tricky. Children may be witnessing things at school that are hard to talk about and confusing. I encourage parents to have their children play in common areas like the living room for board games or a pillow fight. The dining room or kitchen table can be a great boundary to allow for supervision of children with their peers to play together. You can be in the common areas preparing whatever you are doing like dinner or paying a bill on your laptop. You will hear stories about peers interacting with their teachers at school. You can bring up that scenario later with your child and ask about what it was like to witness a teacher starting to make remarks toward another student. The point is not to call out a teacher for being perhaps tired. Teachers are allowed to be tired and human. The point is to talk about it with your child and get a better perspective from your child on being a bystander. Even more importantly, you want to role play with your child in situations they may witness when bullying happens or other tricky behavior. We as parents want to encourage children to use their voice and courage more often. With practice, they can begin to tap into their intuition and how they too have it in them to speak up in red flag behavior with adults.
Strategies in Public Places
I often describe being in public with my kids like some sort of dust bowl experience as it’s hard to manage their needs with getting our most essential items at the grocery store to keep us alive. This may sound like an exaggeration but if you have ever heard a kid having a tantrum you are getting a sliver of that parent’s experience. A mom who has experienced childhood sexual may get activated by things like this. Sometimes I see mothers at the grocery store with their well behaved children walking casually throughout the store. It’s only a snapshot of their day and it’s safe to assume that another may have seen me in a similar way. However, everyone knows exactly when a child is having a complete meltdown at the store. Many will either gaze, stare with judgy eyes or try to rapidly move away with their kids. Mothers may even whisper to their children and the store can nearly hear a pin drop with the wails of the screaming child. It’s often so overwhelming to be at a store with young children or even older school aged kids. They struggle with listening to you, want to purchase things that are just distracting, and have basic needs like using the bathroom.
Public Bathrooms, Siblings, and Neighborhoods
When children are babies they have diapers but that is also very exhausting as you have to change their diaper. At least, when they are younger and your children are in the same age group, you all go to use the bathroom together. Boy or girl everyone is together and you try to ignore the gross factor of your toddler touching various surfaces as you use the bathroom quickly too. You all wash your hands together and try to get out of there as fast as possible because the smell factor can also be obscene.
However, as children get older, like 6 or 7 years old, they run around the local Target like it’s a field of open air and grass. Kids may get happy about shopping but you have to teach them about staying close to you and the power of saying, “no.” When they ask to use the bathroom they may want to use it independently. I urge you to hold off on this suggestion as children are still learning boundaries. One doesn’t know who is in the bathroom and you still have to remind the child to wash their hands appropriately. Parents cannot assume that a bathroom is safe for young children. Here a 6 year old child was assaulted at a daycare where supposedly it’s considered that children are being cared for by others. The same thing happened in Chicago here where a 10 year old got separated from their family and some perpetrator took advantage, luring her away to a bathroom. I wonder how many bystanders saw this vulnerable child and how no adult picked up on helping her. Perpetrators look for vulnerable children to target.
Safety is also applicable in helping your child playing in the neighborhood. You as the parent can assess things like whether you feel like it's safe letting your child ride his bike up and down the street nearby. You give boundaries like, ride your bike only on the sidewalk and remind them how fast the cars are racing the street. You pray that your child listens to you while you do your yard work out front. You further give them more boundaries like, “stay outside and you cannot go inside any neighbor’s homes.” Every scenario is different but children need boundaries and want to hear how you create safety for them. Children need lots of repetition and redirection as they make many errors in judgment. For example, “no, please stay outside of the neighbor’s home, we are all instructed to be playing outside right now.” Children who have little understanding of boundaries will test the adults supervising them on how to make it safe to make mistakes. State the boundaries repeatedly with care and eventually they start learning.
Parents deserve to feel supported especially if you have come from a family where you never grew up with the word “boundaries”, no one taught you to listen to your intuition, and your emotions were not accepted. You may have felt like your feelings were a weakness. I am here to tell you that your feelings are your powerhouse of resources. I teach parents how to heal from their childhood trauma with EMDR therapy. As a parent educator, I help parents prevent their child from becoming another statistic. As a bilingual (English/Spanish) therapist, I am currently accepting clients in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Illinois. Schedule a free 15 minute consultation here, email me here or call 803-573-0279.
References
How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish
Conscious Discipline: Building Resilient Classrooms By Dr. Becky A. Bailey
Consent Parenting by Rosalia Rivera
