I read yet another article on protecting children from molestation. For quite some time we had been hearing about rapes and child molestation.
How to protect the kids?
These days too many ideas are going to the extremes. Following are the ones I observed
- Every stranger is evil.
- Every male is a threat.
This is okay to teach, may be to teens. The teens probably understand the context better. But for very young kids we can not teach that way. The kids form their personality in these early ages. Most of neuron wiring happens at that age. They may become paranoid. They may develop mentality of doubting everyone all the time.
They may not be able to interact effectively with both known and unknown people.This could wreck the life forever.
It is very scary. We hear reports of father raping daughter. These instances may be 0.1%. But to be safe, every mother would be forced to caution daughter about every man including brother and father. This kid could doubt an innocent hug of the father as bad advancement. . Even otherwise, the fear will be deep rooted and into subconscious mind. The end result won’t be pretty. You will have a grown up with broken relationships because she can not trust anybody.
Where is this going? What is the right way of teaching these?
On one hand, the stakes are too high. Kids need to be taught about this. On the other, innocence, emotional well being and ability to trust are also important in the long run. These too need to be protected. It is a complicated balance.
The kids education materials around the world better take care of this. Else we will end up with extremely paranoid generation with totally broken relationships.
