Guest Post - Sleep-Over Scares

My sister has posted before and I love sharing her thoughts with you all.  She is a trauma therapist and she gives to others more than herself.  For this post she gives some advice and some scary as all hell stats.  I learned a lot reading it and feel better about how to talk to Lucy about things.  Read and share, please!

There is a scary mommy post that has been popping up in my news feed again lately.  It's an old post, but it's making the rounds again.  The jist of the post is a mom writing about her and her husband’s decision to not allow their young children to go on sleepovers.  She goes on to say that they have some exceptions for trusted family members, but when it comes to friend’s houses, particularly friends who they don't even know with parents they never even met, their children are not going for a sleepover.  She says that at such a young age her children are too vulnerable and can't be trusted yet to know and understand appropriate and inappropriate behavior. She doesn't exactly explicitly say her ultimate fear is her children being sexually abused, but it's pretty easy to discern that’s what she means. 

I whole-heartedly agree with her!   I'm a trauma therapist.  The position I’m in right now I work strictly with people who have experienced sexual violence of any form, a lot of whom experienced it at a young age.  So, I'm faced with it all the time, I know intimate details of abuse that real people have experienced and the affect it has on them.  I’m privy to the grooming, the threats, the fear...all the things an abuser uses to gain power and control. At my job we also do a lot of outreach and prevention work, so I also know the statistics.  I know that the abuser is almost always someone known (90% of the time), not a stranger.   It’s a family member, a neighbor, a teacher, a friend’s older sibling, even a child’s therapist (yes! This happens). I know that 1 in 6 females and 1 in 20 men will experience sexual violence in their lifetime and about half of them before they turn 18.  I know the ages 18-24 are also one of the most vulnerable, being up to 4 or 5 times more likely to experience sexual violence.

I love the work I do and most of the time I can separate my work life from my home life.  I can usually leave my therapist hat at work and put my mommy hat on without bringing in my anxieties and worries to my family.  I’m not perfect and sometimes I have days or weeks in which the stories I hear hit a little too close to home or scare me a little more than usual.   I have days where I just want to sit at my desk and cry.  Cry for my clients and their suffering, for my Quinny and for the lack of control I have over all of it.

I think that may be what is hardest for us parents.  We cannot control everything.  We cannot keep our children in a bubble.  We can’t not send them to school.  (Every school, by the way, has abuse occurring within its walls).  We can’t ever know with 100% certainty that they aren’t around a perpetrator, that they aren’t somehow getting access to pornography, weapons, drugs, etc.  All the things we want to protect them from are out there.   

So, as parents we feel helpless, anxious, fearful.  What can we do?  Well, yes, not allowing our children to attend sleepovers may help.   But, it’s not realistic to think just that will stop anything from happening.  The truth is there are so many other scenarios that are just as likely or more likely to put our children in danger.  So, the only thing I know to do is prepare my daughter with how to handle various different situations and to teach her about body safety and setting boundaries

I've been talking to her about body safety since she was just an infant and lately I've been really starting to talk to her more and more.  I'm teaching her the right names for her body parts.  I tell her who can touch her privates and for what reasons (diaper changes, bath time, Doctor check up) and I also tell her what I want her to do if anyone ever tries to touch or hurt her privates (or make her touch theirs) when she doesn't want them too.  I'm teaching her to yell "no no no" And to tell me or daddy right away.  I stress the importance of telling me even if it is somebody she thinks mommy loves.  I tell her I will always believe her.  This is in my opinion the most important part!  I can’t tell you how many people I see who told someone and were not believed, so never told anyone again. 

I’m trying to teach her things by example.  She is an extremely loving and sweet child and she loves to give hugs and kisses and often gives them freely.  But I’m guilty of trying to make her give people a hug and kiss.  Sometimes I’ll aks for one and she will say no because she is busy doing something.  Sometimes I say,  I’m stealing one anyway!  But I’m trying to get better at respecting her “no” as a way to teach her that when she sets a boundary I respect it.  I’m not perfect, but I’m really trying because I truly think that even at this young age, learning what it is like when her boundaries are respected builds her armor for when she is out in the world.

I know she doesn't understand what any of this really means yet but I want to take the shame and secrecy out of it.  I want her to learn and feel comfortable naming her parts, knowing what is private, how to set boundaries and what it feels like when boundaries are respected.  And most importantly that mommy and daddy will believe her no matter what.  

I can't protect her from everything and everyone.  But I can teach her that she is in control of her body.  I can teach her what okay and not ok touches are.  I can teach her how to talk about it.  I can teach her to feel safe to come to me.  

So, when I think about things like a sleepover I think about the possibility of abuse.  I also think about access to weapons, drugs, alcohol, porn.   And I'll protect my child in every way necessary. After all, I’d rather my daughter need therapy to talk about how her awful mother won’t let her go on sleepovers than to talk about her molestation.