The high profile Penn State case of associate football coach Jerry Sandusky abusing children in his care over a ten year period should be shocking, but sounds all too familiar to those of us who work on sexual abuse prevention. Children are primarily abused by adults who know them well; people who abuse children look for opportunities to be with children and groom them as trusted adults getting to know them, as Sandusky did at his center; too many times other adults look the other way.
What is shocking though is to think that when reported, officials perhaps all the way up to Coach Patierno and even perhaps the President looked the other way rather than hurt the football program. I hope that isn't true, but it certainly reminds us of the Roman Catholic Bishops and Cardinals who did just that when faced with allegations against priests.
So, what does this remind us to do? First, to report any adult we suspect of child abuse.
And second, to use this as a teachable moment to 'abuse-proof' your children. Make sure that the programs your children attend -- scouts, soccer, school, church or synagogue -- have a strong policy on keeping children safe, including screening and background checks for volunteers and employees and never being alone with children. Make sure that your child knows that most people would never hurt children, but that an older, bigger, stronger person should never touch a child's genitals. Make sure your child knows that adults don't ask children to be their friends or keep secrets, and that if someone makes them feel bad, funny, or uncomfortable with their touch or their words, they should tell you. Tell them that their body is wonderful, it belongs to them, and that they can say no to unwanted touch. And finally, tell them to come and tell you if someone does touch them. You may not be able to prevent the first case of abuse, but if your child is equipped with language and this information, you can prevent the second.
It's been a week of teachable moments in the news, with Herman Cain and Penn State. I hope you are using them.
(For more ideas on preventing sexual abuse of children, you might want to read my books "From Diapers to Dating" or "What Every 21st Century Parent Needs to Know."
Showing posts with label children. Show all posts
Showing posts with label children. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
Friday, September 02, 2011
Attacks on Family Planning and Abortion Are Attacks on Children: A Guest Editorial
The Religious Institute co-founder and current Advisory Committee member, Rev. Dr. Larry Greenfield, shared with me this piece he wrote for Protestants on the Common Good, on the current attacks on women's health services. I liked it so much that I asked him if I could share it with you:
“Re-introducing Corporal Punishment”
As I approach my seventieth birthday, I’m spending more time remembering how fortunate I was to have been raised in a loving family, where, as an only child, I was treated as something special.
For health reasons, my mother was explicitly told not to risk what would likely be another unsuccessful pregnancy. But throwing caution to the wind, and desperately wanting to have a child of their own, mom and dad gave it one more try.
My birth was treated, literally, as a gift from God.
Well, almost all the time. The exceptions, of course, had to do with those occasions in which I seriously misbehaved – that is, those times when I caused my parents to question whether the divine gift had a good bit of the devil’s contribution in the mix.
When that happened – and it had to be a very serious offense to cause this particular punishment – the razor strap came out (my dad was a barber at a time when facial shaves were a regular feature of his trade) and I was given a truly stinging whipping.
That corporal punishment I still see, all these years later, as an exception, a deviation from, my parents’ love. Even then I recognized that their anger against me caused them to draw on the worst parts of their otherwise compassionate and caring personalities. (And I can only hope that my own children recognize that when I inflicted corporal punishment on them, it was a similar departure from who I was as the father who loved them.)
I have the sense that my parents, at that time, weren’t exceptional in reverting to corporal punishment when angry with a child’s behavior. As far as I can tell, it was the norm.
But that started changing when more and more parents over time heard about, read, and took to heart what Dr. Benjamin Spock proposed in his book “Baby and Child Care” (1946) and other writings: be verbal not physical in disciplining the child, and all within the context of expressing love, even if it had to be tough love.
Now twenty-nine countries outlaw corporal punishment in the home, twenty-two of them in Europe. In the United States it remains legal, but here too there are limits to what is acceptable physical punishment.
I can see that transformation operating in the way my own grandchildren are being raised.
It has taken decades to achieve, but even here in the U.S. we’ve changed.
Or have we? Might it be that we’ve only changed the way we administer the corporal punishment?
Charles Blow, columnist for the New York Times, recently (8/27/11) made that case in a “striking” (but non-corporal) way.
He referred to a Guttmacher Institute report that indicated unintended pregnancies have increased 50% since 1994, yet politicians are passing laws to restrict abortion at a record pace: 80 this year, compared to 23 in 2010 – more than three times as many so far this year compared to all of last year.
What has this got to do with corporal punishment, when supposedly it is the mother (almost never the father) that is being punished for her sexual behavior? Mr. Blow answers: “Even if you follow a primitive religious concept of punishment for sex, as many on the right seem to do, you must at some point acknowledge that it is the child, not the parent, who will be punished most by our current policies that increasingly advocate for “unborn children” but fall silent for those outside the womb.”
(While Mr. Blow doesn’t mention it, there is an irony that some of the anti-choice legislation includes the de-funding of Planned Parenthood, which often provides the contraceptive education and resources that reduces the number unplanned pregnancies, and thereby ultimately diminishes the likelihood of neglect and abuse of unintended children.)
But it isn’t just in the area of sexuality where we’ve found new ways of inflicting physical harm on children. Mr. Blow also quotes from a new report of the Annie E. Casey Foundation: “the official child poverty rate, which is a conservative measure of economic hardship, increased 18 percent between 2000 – 2009.” (Remember that many years in that decade were considered periods of abundance.)
And if that weren’t enough, Mr. Blow draws from a U.S. Department of Agriculture study that “the number of children facing food insecurity in 2009 soared to nearly one in four.” Then there is also an ABC News report that “49 percent of all children born in this [United States] country are born to families who receive food supplements from the federal Women, Infants and Children assistance program.”
What is the consequence of that kind of malnutrition brought on by child poverty and child hunger? What is the corporal punishment that is being inflicted?
Delayed growth and motor development. Lower I.Q.’s. Severe behavior problems. Attention deficit hyperactivity. Deficient learning capacities. Lower educational achievement. The list goes on and on.
All that punishment inflicted against children for the sin of being born into families guilty of being poor.
Members of the Republican party, as well as many Democrats and Independents, express what seems to be genuine concern about the national debt that today’s children will have to bear as adults. But in their 2012 budget proposal the Republicans, in particular, want to reduce spending for nutritional programs. Mr. Blow comments: “They want to hold the line on tax breaks for the wealthy, not paying attention to the fact that our growing income inequality, which could be reversed, continues to foster developmental inequality [among children], which is almost impossible to reverse.”
Since in this country we don’t have laws condemning the old forms of parental corporal punishment, there’s probably no chance of passing legislation that would assign some form of appropriate punishment to politicians and members of society-at-large who engage in this kind of neglect and abuse of our nation’s children.
But couldn’t those of us in the Christian community at least take guidance from the procedure Jesus recommended to his church when one member sinned against another? He instructed (see Matthew 18: 15-17) that if one fails to get the attention and confession of the offender in a face-to-face meeting, the circle of witnesses ought to be widened, and, failing that, the offense ought to be brought to the whole community for judgment and then, finally, punishment.
That punishment apparently was exclusion from the community of faith. Maybe that’s what the church today needs to do with its child neglectors and abusers in public office.
And, of course, the electorate could do something similar when it’s time again to choose its leaders.
“Re-introducing Corporal Punishment”
As I approach my seventieth birthday, I’m spending more time remembering how fortunate I was to have been raised in a loving family, where, as an only child, I was treated as something special.
For health reasons, my mother was explicitly told not to risk what would likely be another unsuccessful pregnancy. But throwing caution to the wind, and desperately wanting to have a child of their own, mom and dad gave it one more try.
My birth was treated, literally, as a gift from God.
Well, almost all the time. The exceptions, of course, had to do with those occasions in which I seriously misbehaved – that is, those times when I caused my parents to question whether the divine gift had a good bit of the devil’s contribution in the mix.
When that happened – and it had to be a very serious offense to cause this particular punishment – the razor strap came out (my dad was a barber at a time when facial shaves were a regular feature of his trade) and I was given a truly stinging whipping.
That corporal punishment I still see, all these years later, as an exception, a deviation from, my parents’ love. Even then I recognized that their anger against me caused them to draw on the worst parts of their otherwise compassionate and caring personalities. (And I can only hope that my own children recognize that when I inflicted corporal punishment on them, it was a similar departure from who I was as the father who loved them.)
I have the sense that my parents, at that time, weren’t exceptional in reverting to corporal punishment when angry with a child’s behavior. As far as I can tell, it was the norm.
But that started changing when more and more parents over time heard about, read, and took to heart what Dr. Benjamin Spock proposed in his book “Baby and Child Care” (1946) and other writings: be verbal not physical in disciplining the child, and all within the context of expressing love, even if it had to be tough love.
Now twenty-nine countries outlaw corporal punishment in the home, twenty-two of them in Europe. In the United States it remains legal, but here too there are limits to what is acceptable physical punishment.
I can see that transformation operating in the way my own grandchildren are being raised.
It has taken decades to achieve, but even here in the U.S. we’ve changed.
Or have we? Might it be that we’ve only changed the way we administer the corporal punishment?
Charles Blow, columnist for the New York Times, recently (8/27/11) made that case in a “striking” (but non-corporal) way.
He referred to a Guttmacher Institute report that indicated unintended pregnancies have increased 50% since 1994, yet politicians are passing laws to restrict abortion at a record pace: 80 this year, compared to 23 in 2010 – more than three times as many so far this year compared to all of last year.
What has this got to do with corporal punishment, when supposedly it is the mother (almost never the father) that is being punished for her sexual behavior? Mr. Blow answers: “Even if you follow a primitive religious concept of punishment for sex, as many on the right seem to do, you must at some point acknowledge that it is the child, not the parent, who will be punished most by our current policies that increasingly advocate for “unborn children” but fall silent for those outside the womb.”
(While Mr. Blow doesn’t mention it, there is an irony that some of the anti-choice legislation includes the de-funding of Planned Parenthood, which often provides the contraceptive education and resources that reduces the number unplanned pregnancies, and thereby ultimately diminishes the likelihood of neglect and abuse of unintended children.)
But it isn’t just in the area of sexuality where we’ve found new ways of inflicting physical harm on children. Mr. Blow also quotes from a new report of the Annie E. Casey Foundation: “the official child poverty rate, which is a conservative measure of economic hardship, increased 18 percent between 2000 – 2009.” (Remember that many years in that decade were considered periods of abundance.)
And if that weren’t enough, Mr. Blow draws from a U.S. Department of Agriculture study that “the number of children facing food insecurity in 2009 soared to nearly one in four.” Then there is also an ABC News report that “49 percent of all children born in this [United States] country are born to families who receive food supplements from the federal Women, Infants and Children assistance program.”
What is the consequence of that kind of malnutrition brought on by child poverty and child hunger? What is the corporal punishment that is being inflicted?
Delayed growth and motor development. Lower I.Q.’s. Severe behavior problems. Attention deficit hyperactivity. Deficient learning capacities. Lower educational achievement. The list goes on and on.
All that punishment inflicted against children for the sin of being born into families guilty of being poor.
Members of the Republican party, as well as many Democrats and Independents, express what seems to be genuine concern about the national debt that today’s children will have to bear as adults. But in their 2012 budget proposal the Republicans, in particular, want to reduce spending for nutritional programs. Mr. Blow comments: “They want to hold the line on tax breaks for the wealthy, not paying attention to the fact that our growing income inequality, which could be reversed, continues to foster developmental inequality [among children], which is almost impossible to reverse.”
Since in this country we don’t have laws condemning the old forms of parental corporal punishment, there’s probably no chance of passing legislation that would assign some form of appropriate punishment to politicians and members of society-at-large who engage in this kind of neglect and abuse of our nation’s children.
But couldn’t those of us in the Christian community at least take guidance from the procedure Jesus recommended to his church when one member sinned against another? He instructed (see Matthew 18: 15-17) that if one fails to get the attention and confession of the offender in a face-to-face meeting, the circle of witnesses ought to be widened, and, failing that, the offense ought to be brought to the whole community for judgment and then, finally, punishment.
That punishment apparently was exclusion from the community of faith. Maybe that’s what the church today needs to do with its child neglectors and abusers in public office.
And, of course, the electorate could do something similar when it’s time again to choose its leaders.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
“Click” reproductive services back into our healthcare (and education)!
While Rev. Haffner is vacationing this week, Religious Institute staff will be guest blogging. Today's post is by Dr. Kate Ott, Associate Director.
It makes sense that the nation’s leaders consider reproductive healthcare services an optional part of universal coverage. It makes sense because from little on, we learn that the “reproductive system” is not a significant part of our bodies functioning. In fact, we ignore its existence when talking to children for as long as we can when.
In my little East Coast town, our library was recently renovated to include a fabulous new children’s play area complete with reading corners, imaginary play resources, and of course a new kid-friendly computer section. My youngest, age 4, started playing a science game about the body’s systems on the computer. You can call up the breathing (pulmonary system), blood (cardiac system), bones (skeletal system), brains (nervous system), muscles (muscular system), stomach (digestive system), BUT you can’t pull up the reproductive system. In fact, the click-on “universal man” is so amorphously shaped he has less reproductive organs than Ken-Barbie.
As you play the game, you learn the names of the body parts including internal organs. You can double-click the heart to see if it is soft or hard. You can highlight nerves and watch them carry a message to the brain. The digestive system stops short of having click-able links that connect to any “private parts.” My 4 year old wanted to know “where the food went next” and why the body didn’t have a penis. He knows that if he drinks lots of water he will have to go to the bathroom and pee comes out his penis. At 4, he made this connection and wanted to know why that wasn’t part of the game. A natural part of life in his opinion!
I took some time to play the game as well, so I could see if my initial reaction was correct. In fact, there were no reproductive organs and no way to make basic connections between areas such as the penis, vulva, or others. Why keep this information out of the game? Yes, the player might have to choose a boy or girl at the start of the game in order to specify which reproductive organs each has. And the explanations would need to be age-appropriate, just like they were for the nervous system.
Silence through absence of a reproductive system in a computer game (or any books available in the library) for children teaches them a loud and clear message that reproductive health and “that part of our body” is not to be discussed. We have reproductive organs, folks. It isn’t optional! Let’s make them an equal part of our bodies, of what we teach children, and of our healthcare plans.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Return to the Dark Ages in Elementary School
Education Week this week ran an article called "Teaching Chivalry in the Classroom" by Judith Costello, who comes from an organization called Christian.com.The article tells the story of a school program that teaches 4th grade boys to be knights and 4th grade girls to be ladies-in-waiting as part of an anti-bullying program. You have to read this excerpt for yourself:
The image of knights and ladies came to mind. Ever since a group of medieval re-enactors had visited the area, my daughter had been interested in that time period. Mrs. Cavasos decided that this theme could be integrated easily into the anti-bullying program the school was using.
The boys would be given opportunities to be physical in the context of preparing themselves to be “defenders and protectors of all that is good, true, and right.” The girls would be given opportunities to seek out beauty and learn about healing. As ladies they would be the “nurturers and caretakers of all that is good, true and right.”
We used art activities, read stories about dragons, created costumes, studied new vocabulary words, and researched the medieval time period. We learned about the use of herbs for pharmacological needs.
Using their fine motor skills, the girls worked on creating headdresses and decorating their castle. The boys used large motor skills to create huge dragon posters that they helped to string up between trees.
The culmination of our efforts was an outdoor dramatization that students and teachers in other classrooms envied. Several other teachers opened their classroom doors to see what was happening as dragons passed through the hallways and out to the trees. Teachers looked outside to hear the dialogue as young knights went into battle. They were interested to see the knights use all their energy to slay those terrible dragons with beanbags. And when the knights fell to the ground, a group of beautiful young ladies rushed to their sides with healing herbs from the pouches they had created.
It's upsetting to me that Education Week would run this story of educational sexism and gender stereotyping without comment. What about allowing children to choose which part they want? What about girls who want to slay dragons or boys who want to heal and nurture (to say nothing about developing fine motor skills in boys or large motor skills in girls)? Or, goodness, what about encouraging both boys and girls to take both parts, learning to be both "defenders" and "nurturers and caregivers" -- for surely we all need to be both in adulthood? And I can't even begin to imagine how a gender variant child might have felt in this classroom.
As a mother of a son and a daughter, if this had happened when they were in elementary school, I would have spoken out against such rigid gender reinforcing in the classroom. Was there no outcry?
The purpose of the program was said to be to teach children to treat each other with respect. Surely this message could be given without resorting to the dark ages.
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