While watching Lemony Snicket’s “A series of Unfortunate Events” for the 500th time since its release onto DVD, I was reminded to take the NAPCAN Child Friendly Challenge. I asked the two Master 10 year-olds what they would require in a child friendly community. Their answers:
1. “friendly people who don’t ask weird questions to find out about you”,
2. “No strangers”.
Their answers puzzled me. One child is my son and the other, a son of my colleague. Both children are well versed in protective behaviors with their parents being sexual assault therapists. What are we doing wrong if both boys have a notion of danger coming only from strangers? Consistent research supports that children are far more at risk from people in their own immediate circle than from strangers. Our children know this. Consistent research also supports that we need daily reminders to ensure our children move from a literal understanding to a complex view as soon as they are cognitively ready.
Sitting, dumbfounded, and reflecting on their answers, it reminded me to ensure that we all understand that young children take things literally. When we make comments like, “Don’t talk to strangers”, a child understands that to mean you cannot trust strangers because they are the only ones that do bad things. If we fail to explain the concept of a stranger, an unknown threat that looks like everyone else, a child will walk around with their own, age appropriate, view of what a stranger looks like. Research has consistently shown that a child’s view of a stranger is a person who is unlike them.
In my own work with children, I have had unfailing descriptions of strangers as being ugly, skinny men that walk around on tiptoe and wear black hoods over their head to hide their eyes. They ask suspicious questions and act in suspicious ways. Often they have beards. Oh my gosh – is this what my child thinks too! Those people may well indeed be strangers to us, but just like us, strangers come in a variety of packaging: pretty and plain.
A colleague did his own testing of this stranger theory. He was working with young adults with a mild intellectual disability. Following a program on Protective Behaviors, he dressed as a woman to disguise himself and walked around the oval handing out sweets. The students all took the sweets and were physically all over the friendly “female visitor”. When he undressed and spoke to the students about the danger they had just walked into, the students pleaded that he wasn’t a stranger because he had a dress and nice hat on, gave out sweets and had a big friendly smile. Oh dear!
My son and I breakfasted recently with the Minister for Child Safety. He told a story about his little sister and her literal interpretation of male strangers on public transport. Mum had always told her not to talk to men on the bus. Taking the bus home from school, her Uncle hopped aboard and sat in the seat behind her. His attempts to engage her in conversation failed. The little girl sat, stoic and loyal to her mother’s instruction: “Don’t talk to men on the bus.” Once the pair alighted, the little girl took her Uncles hand and happily chatted all the way home. How’s that for a literal understanding of her Mum’s warning?
The reality is that people who harm our children, “strangers”, look just like you and me. Eighty five percent of child sexual abuse is perpetrated by someone well known to the child. While children still do need to know about personal protection from stranger harm, they also need to know what a stranger looks like. A stranger is somebody that we don’t know. It could be the person in the apartment next door, the new schoolteacher, the visiting Minister at Church, or the person walking their dog past our house. Children also need to know that often it is people we do know that do the worst things to us and that just because we know and like them, it doesn’t make it all right for them to hurt us. The children must tell us so that we can stop the hurt and get help for the hurter.
I will be revisiting the difference between “stranger danger” and “relation sensation” (listening to your intuition and good touch/bad touch early warning signs about family members) again tonight. I will be literal in my language and give examples of when people we have known have stolen from us or bought drugs into our house. I aim to surround my child with friendly people who do not have to ask weird questions of him but I will also tell him that I watch like a Hawk and will swoop on anyone, stranger of friend, who tries to hurt him.
Not only have I had to suffer 500 rounds of Lemony Snicket, now I have to do the one millionth revisit of protective behaviors! I will do what it takes because I accept that it needs to be reinforced daily. I will do so in the best spirit of protecting my child because I love him and want him to live in a child safe community.
Ask your child what a stranger looks like. I’d be interested in their responses if you choose to share.
For more information on the BITSS model of Protective Behaviors, click here.