Role of parents vital for tracking sexual predators
Dr. P.M. Nisanth
(The author is Assistant Professor, Department of Education, Rajiv Gandhi University, Arunachal Pradesh. He can be contacted at email: nisanthpm@gmail.com and mobile phone no. 9567279956)
No child arrives with an instruction manual or warranty booklet. Parents are saddled with the frightening job of navigating their way through unfamiliar territory. For the most part, they are driving blind. The comedian, Jerry Seinfeld, joked that having two-year old is like owning a blender without the top. It is a tough job being a parent. It is also the world’s most easily available job. One doesn’t need to train for it. One needs no qualifications for it. Yet, one is a parent, often by choice, sometimes by chance, but always, especially the first time round, completely unprepared.
In this hyper-informative age, parenting is much like tap dancing in a minefield. Alvin Toffler wisely said, ‘Parenthood remains the greatest single preserve of the amateur’. Nonetheless, as amateurs, we do stumble through parenthood, giving our best to the most demanding job in our lives.
How can we keep a child safe?
A child is safest at home, you thought? Wrong. Scarily, the home is the second most common location for fatalities amongst children. The recent article published in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 54, Issue No. 19, 11 May, 2019, reporting of Violence against Women and Girls in Indian Newspapers. This study presents the results of analysis of over 1,500 articles from four mainstream Indian newspapers both English and Hindi, measures several sets of reporting on violence against women and girls. This analysis revealed that mainstream newspapers reporting on sexual violence against women and girls, presenting violence as a series of events and a systemic social issue and most of the incidents happened in the domestic sphere.
Keeping a child safe form sexual predators
Apart from teaching a child how to navigate the world within the home and without with alertness and care, as a parent, a prime responsibility you have is to equip your child with the vocabulary and the agency over his or her body to help them deter sexual predators. If your child is old enough to name his/her body parts, know that private parts and anyone else’s private parts are off-limits, and he/she is to keep in mind the three magic words, ‘No. Stop. Tell’. This is basically the first line of defence one can teach a child against anything that makes him/her uncomfortable. First, he/she is to say ‘NO’, loudly and clearly. Secondly, he/she is to tell the person to stop, and, thirdly, he/she is to say that he/she will tell his/her parents about it. Hopefully, this would deter some predators.
The biggest myth going around is that sexual perpetrators are strangers in a dark alley, but in fact, the majority of sexual crimes against children are committed by people they know and trust and, most importantly, who have unfettered access to them. Get involved in your child’s life as there is no substitute for your attention and supervision. Be aware of your children’s environment, the programmes they watch on television or the internet, the kind of games they play both virtually and in the real world. Respect the child’s feelings and their likes and dislikes around touches. Support, encourage and praise your child for sharing his/her thoughts and feelings.
Teach your children about personal safety as you are their best teacher. Teach names of private body parts, identification of safe and unsafe touches as well as personal safety rules. The key personal safety rules are: “It is NEVER all right for someone to touch, look or talk about your private body parts except to keep them clean and healthy. It is never alright for someone older or bigger to ask you to touch, look or talk about their private body parts. If someone tries to break this rule, say ‘No’ and get away. Tell someone you trust and keep telling until you get the help you need. These messages can be articulated in an age-appropriate way, for example, with young children the vocabulary can be of rules; for pre-teens it can be around guidelines whereas for adolescents it can be around action points. Just like we teach our children safety rules about crossing the road, we should also teach them about safe and unsafe touches.
Some parents wait until their child asks questions. If your child is shy, or does not ask questions, or has a sense of shame about their private body parts, you may have to take the lead. If you have not started these conversations yet, do not hesitate to start taking about them. It is never too late to talk to them about it. If they do not get information from you, there is a high possibility that they will look for it someplace else. The information they find may be inappropriate and confusing. This increases their vulnerability as others can take advantage of them.
A good way to encourage children to talk is to be an active listener; do not appear to judge the child on what happened. Encourage them to tell if something unsafe is happening or if someone is behaving in a way that scares them. Let them know they can tell or ask for help from you and other adults. Speak to your child in a calm and reassuring way as fear is not an effective teaching tool, but confidence is.
Violence against children in India has increased by a sharp 11 percent between 2015 and 2016, as freshly-released National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data suggest. Going by absolute numbers, it’s an increase of 12,786 reported domestic crimes against children across the country. The total number of crimes against children reported in 2017was 1,06,958, while 94,172 crimes were recorded in 2016. Experiencing domestic violence in childhood impacts lifelong health and well-being. Yet, violence continues to haunt children’s lives in India, as also around the globe, regardless of their economic and social circumstances, culture, religion or ethnicity, with both immediate and long-term consequences. Children who have been severely abused or neglected are often hampered in their development, experience learning difficulties and perform poorly at school as well. It is high time to think about a healthy parenting approach to make our children empowered and fight back to sexual predators.