Founder and Director of Knafayim
Baruch Hashem, in recent years the topic of keeping our children safe from abuse is a topic that has become increasingly acceptable to talk about. Certainly we all wish it were a topic we didn’t have to talk about. But the reality is that presently this is a problem our community must deal with. And while organizations continue to spring up to address it, how can you, the parent, family member, and community member, contribute to the solution? How can you keep your own children safe from abuse?
In this article I’d like to share with you some tips and strategies you can implement at home to give your children a strong foundation for maintaining their own bodily privacy and safety.
Start Early
Personal safety is not a one-time conversation that you can spring on your children when they reach a certain age. Rather, it’s an ongoing dialogue that begins as soon as you begin speaking to your children. Children need to know that private matters and private parts are something they can discuss with you – of course, with an attitude of tznius and propriety. These are not topics to discuss on the street with whomever one meets, but neither are they topics that may never be spoken of.
Just as we talk about mitzvos, manners, and various safety topics in our homes even before our children can necessarily understand or follow them, so too personal safety should be a topic that even young children are introduced to and allowed to ask questions about. When children grow up in a house where private matters are fair topics for questions and discussions with parents, they are more likely to bring up the issue should something go amiss in this area. Trying to start discussing such matters with a teenager, while not impossible, is much more difficult.
Ensure Your Children Have Words to Use
As parents, we naturally mention body parts to our young children as we wash them, change them, and feed them. We talk about their cute toes and delicious ears. But we often avoid discussing, or naming, anything from the torso down to the knees (with the favorite exception of the belly button). The message children learn is that these body parts are not something we talk about.
Children who don’t have the language or the comfort to talk about private matters find that they have no way to communicate about problems regarding these matters should they arise. Sometimes they literally don’t have words to describe where something is hurting or has touched them. Ignoring private parts out of our own discomfort is a disservice to our children. Talking about private parts must be done with tznius – but it must be done.
Teach Your Children That There Are No Secrets
Children should know that they may not keep a secret from their parents. Abuse thrives on secrecy; perpetrators rely on the fact that children will keep information from their parents. Make sure your children know that if someone ever tells them not to tell something to their parents, they should tell you right away. They must also know that they won’t get in trouble with you for telling you a secret, no matter what anyone has told them. (Often, abusers tell children that their parents will be very mad at them if they find out what happened.)
A secret can be differentiated from a surprise: if you’re throwing a surprise party for Mommy, you can tell your children not to mention it to her – because she’ll find out about it soon anyway. That is a surprise. A secret is something that is never supposed to be shared, and those are not okay. The upshot of this is that yes, even a parent should not tell a child to permanently keep something secret from the other parent – children must know clearly that there are simply no secrets from parents.
(As children get older, there is a natural increase in the things they want to keep personal and private from their parents. This is not necessarily problematic, especially if it rests on an earlier foundation from their younger years of secrets being prohibited. A full discussion of this nuanced issue is beyond the scope of this article.)
Encourage Body Ownership
Children should know that their bodies belong to them alone. This understanding means that should someone try to touch their bodies in a way that is uncomfortable, they will feel that someone is trespassing, no different than if someone were to touch their Legos or their dessert, rather than feeling they must accede to whatever is happening simply because someone older is telling them so.
One way to communicate this is to encourage children to wash themselves, and especially their private parts, as early as they are able, with the explanation that this is their body to take care of. Another important means of inculcating body ownership is to make sure that they have a choice of who they touch and how. Children should never be forced to kiss Bubby or give a hug to Uncle Yossi; the message they will learn is that what happens to their body is not their choice. This is not the message you want in their heads should they ever be faced with someone who is forcing touch upon them in a truly inappropriate way.
Keep Lines of Communication Open
Ultimately, your child’s safety rests on their ability to communicate to you if something is awry. If they know that you will really listen to them should they tell you something uncomfortable, that they will not get in trouble, and that you care about anything they want to share with you, you’re much more likely to know if they ever find themselves in a bad situation. Achieving and maintaining open communication is an ongoing process, and one that is vital to your child’s well-being in many ways.
These are some best practices for education and protecting your children. Of course, it’s also critical to daven for your children’s success and safety.
At the end of the day, we are limited in our ability to protect our children from the world’s ills. Please know that even when children are unfortunately victimized, their life is not over. Children are resilient. When children who have been abused tell their parents, are believed and responded to appropriately, and receive treatment as necessary, the likelihood of carrying on with a perfectly normal and successful life is very high. As with fire safety, water safety, or any other kind of safety, we needn’t be constantly anxious, but we must teach our children what they need to know to remain safe.
It is K’nafayim’s mission to strengthen family life in our kehilla. One way we contribute to this is by offering free in-home trainings for parents to learn how to talk to their children about abuse and keep them safe. If you’re interested in a training, please contact info@knafayim.com. In order to fund these activities, we are currently running a $100,000 sweepstakes, which you can participate in at www.knafayim.com/raffle. We appreciate any contributions to help us serve the klal!
