The central struggle of parenthood is to let our hopes for our children outweigh our fears
Highlights from Reddit thread - r/daddit - Reddit
my two cents as a dad and a child and family therapist who has spent the majority of my career working with survivors of abuse.
There's a quote I keep on my wall in my office and I share it with parents all the time:
"the central struggle of parenthood is to let our hopes for our children outweigh our fears."
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We don't keep our kid safe by putting them in a bubble; too much restriction just teaches them how to be sneaky. We keep our kids safe with information and trust. Teach them they can come to us when they have questions and respond non-judgmentally.
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Talk about boundaries and consent... Model this from a young age (i.e., how many times does your 3 year old have to tell you to stop tickling her?). Make sure they know the difference between secrets, surprises, and privacy. Grownups should never tell you to keep a secret from your parents (in our house we call it "surprise Santa"). Talk about sex.
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We're never going to eliminate all the threats our children will face. But we can give them the tools to manage them themselves.
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give them a safe platform to return to, no matter how small or big the problem is, they can always return home and be greeted with open arms.
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"You're the boss of your body" (how I start to teach boundaries and consent to even very little children)
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"Did you play any new games today?"/"Did you feel safe for the whole day today?" (What I'll ask when a kid is coming home from a new place)
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I think it's very important to use terms like penis/vagina/vulva/breasts, because when we dance around it with stuff like "tutu", "willy", even "private parts", we teach kids that these are shameful things that we're not supposed to talk about, which can increase barriers to disclosures.
secrets, surprises, and privacy,
The language that I use is very age-dependent but it's a concept most kids can understand with examples. Surprises are happy things like pregnancies or birthday presents. Privacy is stuff that you might share with a parent or close friend but not other grown-ups of kids at school, like shutting the door to get changed, cut it could also be like not telling your friends about the fighting that happened at home. If it's something you feel you're not supposed to tell your parent(s), then it might be a secret instead of privacy. Secrets are not safe; if someone is trying to get you to keep a secret from your parent(s), that is not a safe person.
- We've had the "secrets" talk with my daughter when she was 4. "If an adult is telling you to keep something secret, they're probably doing something bad and you should tell us" is a pretty simple message.