Your Child Is in Danger! - Educate Your Child!

 

Wise King Solomon told his son that knowledge, wisdom, and thinking ability could protect him "from the bad way, from the man speaking perverse things." ( Proverbs 2:10, 12)  Isn't that just what children need? The FBI pamphlet Child Molesters: A Behavioral Analysis says this  under the heading "The Ideal Victim":  "For most children sex is a taboo subject about which they receive little accurate information, especially from their parents."  Don't let your children be "ideal victims." Educate them about sex.  For example, no child should reach puberty unaware of how the body will change during this time. Ignorance will make them confused, ashamed-and vulnerable.

A woman we'll call Janet was sexual abused as a child, and years later her own two children were sexually abused.  She recalls: "The way were were brought up, we never talked about sex. So I grew up embarrassed about it. It was shameful. And when I had kids, it was the same. I could talk to other people's kids but not my own.  I think that's unhealthy because children are vulnerable if you don't talk to them about these things."

Abuse prevention can be taught early. When you teach children to name such body parts as the the vagina, the breasts, the anus, the penis, tell them that these places are good, they are special-but they are private.  "Other people are not allowed to handle them-not even Mommy or Daddy-and not even a doctor unless Mommy or Daddy is there or has said it is OK." Ideally, such statements should come from both parents or each adult guardian.

In The Safe Child Book, Sheryll Kraizer notes that while children should feel free to ignore, scream at, or run from and abuser, many children who are abused explain later that they don't want to seem rude. Children thus need to know that some grown-ups do bad things and that not even a child has to obey anyone who tells him or her to do something wrong. At such times a child has a perfect right to say no. Just as did Daniel and his companions to the Babylonian adults who wanted them to eat unclean food. - DANIEL 1:4. 8, 3:16-18.

Next time: Your Child Is in Danger! - Conclusion of Educate Your Child! 

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