Arming Our Children, Not Ourselves

As I sat in the auditorium of my daughter’s elementary school listening to the representative of our local hospital system as the guest speaker on Internet Safety I learned many things. None of the things that I learned however made me feel better able to keep my daughter any better protected or safer than her father and me. I learned that if shoes were thrown over a power line it meant you could buy drugs in that area. What I didn’t hear was growing problem of the youngest addicts taking the painkillers in their parent’s bathrooms. I learned that there were national affiliated gangs in our schools but I didn’t learn what we as parents could do to better prepare our children for gang recruitment, or what we could do in the opinion of this representative as parents to thwart further gang growth in our schools. I heard a gruesome story about a young girl who was dropped off at the mall by her mother to meet an online “friend” and avoided being the victim of a forty-four year old internet predator. This young girl was smarter than the predator and got away but her mother was too embarrassed to report this incident, fearing her poor judgment about leaving her daughter at the mall to meet a stranger would result in scandal. Her poor judgment and embarrassment ultimately resulted in the predator switching targets and assaulting the girl’s cousin in a nearby city. This predator was working both targets at once through the girls shared myspace site. This was a disgusting and very believable scenario. The key in the scenario that struck me more than the terrible crime of the abuse was the tragedy of a parent’s poor judgment that led to her daughter’s near miss and her niece’s sexual assault. I was disturbed by this but shockingly before I left the safety of my child’s elementary school I was more disturbed by the advice of the learned guest and the attitude of the parents around me. I did not hear concrete ways how to teach my child to use the internet safely. Our host instead, shuffled a well put together slideshow that we didn’t see much of because our host shuffled back and forth too fast backward and forward more concerned with telling scary stories. I was surprised to hear scare tactics and advice about how best to spy on our children. Somehow these adults believed that one of the most important ways to protect their children was to constantly and vigilantly snoop on them What I learned was just how duped the room had been into believing what I am saddened to believe now is the standard system of beliefs for mother’s of elementary school moms all over town, maybe even all over America. Somewhere the majority of these parents seemed to me to want to feel safe hearing that the school, the city, the internet watchdogs were keeping predators from swooping in from other cities and stealing our innocent children away, luring them with clever internet ploys. But then our speaker had a different message about exactly how deviant our children were and about how they lie to us all about the things they do online. Communities are outraged when something children are abused and citizens tend point fingers in every direction, demanding more educational programs to prepare our children, we demand more protection from the police, often saying more should be done to prevent internet predation. We sit stunned and wonder what should we do? I offer humbly now only what I beg you all not to do. I sat listening as this speaker described how to spy on our children. How to buy computer programs to ensure you could log on to your child’s computer and see every keystroke they make. Snoop on their email. Snoop on their friends. Listen to their phone conversations. Go through their personal things. As if somehow knowing what was in their text messages, emails and instant messages could give you all the secret information needed to keep them protected, innocent and somehow within your complete power to control. When I suggested I had a great relationship with my eleven year old daughter and that we discussed everything about our lives openly the speaker and the crowd not only laughed at me, but some across the room chastised me. One saying, “She needs to watch her girl!” A friend and neighbor happened to be near this woman and defended me and my daughter. A good girl so far and so far tells me most everything about her young life, talking to me quite frankly about her budding social life, sex, politics, science, drugs, death and many topics I think that the parent’s in that auditorium would never imagine talking to their children about. What made me so sad and so sorry for some of these parents is this – if you can’t trust your children enough to tell them the honest, if sometimes harder truths about life, their life, their town, their circumstances whatever that may be, a recent death, a family member’s addiction, a divorce, a family member’s sexual orientation and what your exact and honest opinion on each of these matters is. If you are not grossly honest with your children who will be? Who will they trust? The very people that may be trying to lure them away could be who your children turn to about matters they find you to fraudulent about. Older friends who don’t share your family values. Older internet friends or gangs who love to provide their versions of family. If or when the sad day comes that your child realizes he can’t trust you, what will be left of your family, of all of our families and consequently our community. When your child realizes you don’t trust them to tell them truth about the world around them, they will do they best they can with what you’ve left them. Trust is earned and if I taught my daughter to lie to me by not being forthright with her I guess I would expect her to lie to me. At our house the truth no matter how inconvenient, rules. There are parts of every harsh or explicit or adult portion of this world that can be shared in some way that can be toned down and shared with each child according to that child’s age and maturity. I am not advocating making miniature adults out of our community’s children. On the contrary, I believe that if you are candid and cautious with your delivery you can explain to your children in a way that empowers them that predators are not always lurking over the state line but may be in their church, in the extended family, across the street, or at the elementary school. We cringe to consider this but to fail to teach it is far more disgusting. Our girls and boys need to know that possibility exists because it does. That way our daughters get to remain innocent; yes I mean innocent because better to be prepared for the worst and then able relax and enjoy childhood and virginity rather than abused and childhood taken. You will not want to hear this and I hope it makes you angry enough to talk about this to someone, I hope everyone talks about this, but we need to arm our children with enough information to be a part of their own protection. We can not continue to “Protect Our Children, Overprotecting them into a false sense of security that leaves them, ignorant easy targets unable to defend themselves or susceptible to repeat attacks. And if you think your child will turn to you in a crisis if you begin their adolescent years shopping for software to spy on them I am saddened for you and for your children. You may know every single thing your child types on his or her computer at home in your so-called Safe Haven. However you will never know if your child has made alternate plans or how vulnerable you have made your child in mistrusting the basic concept of open communication and loving discipline with honesty. My being hopeful that my daughters will be honest with me as we both grow older is not naive it is based firmly in the knowledge that if we love and trust each other I can arm them with the best protection I can give them, the armourment love and the weapon of razor sharp knowledge. I’d rather have a smart child than a well intentioned police force, school district and the whole lot of parents that were with me in that auditorium.

Kim