To all the Trauma Survivors Reading this blog –
I have some questions for you.
What kinds of things do you wish your parents had been able to do that would have protected you from sexual abuse?
What kinds of things would have helped prevent your being abused by people outside of the home?
If you were abused within the home, what would have helped you to get help from safe people outside of the home?
If you were to pass your words of wisdom to parents that are truly invested in keeping their children safe from sexual predators, what would you say to them?
Your thoughts and comments are greatly appreciated.
Warmly,
Kathy
Copyright © 2008-2018 Kathy Broady MSW and Discussing Dissociation
My son is a 15 year old severly autistic teen who has a lot of problems tolerating physical touch and/or intimacy like cuddling or a kiss on the cheek.
Since my son was a 1,5 year old boy i’ve told him about happy secrets and tummy ache secrets.
Secrets that make his tummy ache he shouldn’t keep cause those make him feel ill.
When he grew up i told him he was never to be holding an oath of secrecy to anything that makes his tummy ache and he could talk about it with whom he feels is safe to talk to.
Then when he grew up a bit more i also told him as he could tell if i did something that is inappropiate(not specifically sexual abuse, but anything he feels isn’t “right”).
I did talk about sexual/bodily privacy, sexual acts and what would be appropiate and what not, so he does know the difference between “normal” and “abusive” behaviour in terms and actions.
At the end of the day we usually end up lying in bed cuddling and talking over the day as it was.
It gives him time, peace and openness to talk about his feelings, his day and get his emotional and physical needs met this way.
And…i’ve told him he could speak back to me-in a calm way-that i treat him harshly or badly.
Being a single parent i do need feedback and if my son provides this it is okay and i have to listen to it for he has a voice in our home just as much as i do.
Fact is…everyone needs feedback on how to deal with bringing up kids/teens and if there isn’t a second parent to talk to kids and teens can have their voice too.
Then again i also appologize if i did something wrong; i’m not perfect; not as a parent and not as a person!
And when i appologize for my wrongdoing by taking screentime away while my son didn’t behave badly i should be held accountable; even if this means i have to apologize to my son.
But…i do not tolerate big mouths, swearing or name calling!
So talking about what i didn’t do right can be done in a respectful way.
And i have to respect his opinion, even if i don’t see it this way.
I take my time to look back on how the situation was and make some sort of storyboard in my head to oversee the situation and come back to my son when he says i didn’t treat him right.
And about sexual abuse and my son…he did get abused while in care and i couldn’t do anything about it, nor could report it anywhere for i was to blame due to the DID.
Blaming others to protect themselves when i tried reporting it….
All he showed me was that he was obsessed with his bottom and we had several good talks about it.
I’ve asked to get him into EMDR treatment to work on his abuse, but he wasn’t able to process this and the EMDR stopped due to that.
In the past 5 years he’s turned around from a PTSD behaviour to non existent trauma behaviour.
But…if he shows PTSD symptoms again i will request for more treatment and i do fight for his mental sanity like a bull.
So don’t come in between me and my son or you’ll see a very bad side of me you wished you didn’t see.
So regarding to preventing sexual abuse…make sure there is a difference between happy secrets and tummy ache secrets.
And then….talk about they will NEVER have an oath of secrecy to keep, no matter what happens!
Dear Selah,
What a beautiful and stunning posting. It is heart-wrenching to hear that your son should have to deal with abuse and PTSD. But your relationship with your son and the wisdom, compassion and fierce protection of him that you have written here is poignant and inspiring.
You have demonstrated such a wise and gentle way to mother. I take inspiration in your example that I might be as wise and gentle mothering my insiders.
Words of gratitude seem so wanting to the task of thanking you for sharing your wonderful self here Selah!
With sincere appreciation and awe,
ME+WE
12/30/18
Hey Me+We,
Thank you for replying and being so kind to me.
I ain’t wonderful, i ain’t perfect and what i’ve written is one part of a dimension of parenting.
But i do feel i should protect him as much as i can.
And therefor i do my best to help, protect and support him in any way possible.
And that i’ve been talking about abuse since the age of 1,5 years actually is cause it’s been haunting me since then.
My PTSD caused me to fear this age…although i also had this when he was 9 months old…but then he didn’t seem to understand what i said.
Hi
I grew up with CSA by my dad and uncle from an early age for my years . The type that if you could conceive by age 5 I would have. My mum also abusive. Home was not a safe place and other family members were not aware or available. There were also no services in place for help in the late 1970 s. There was a hospital examination when I was 10 dad went to jail for eight months mum started down a slippery path of alcoholism and bought home many partners. Some support would of been helpful but I don’t think there were many services. I’m not sure anything would of helped me to get help. To today’s parents you are not the perpetrators I would say protect them, listen to them,validate them and seek the services available as early as possible to support them. But also get help to support yourself as there career through this time
Hi Lee,
Thank you for sharing some of your story. There is all kinds of support here. It is never too late to find the compassion, concern and understanding of community. We have a great one here!
ME+WE
10/19/18
Actually give a damn about your kids. that would help. Care if theyre alive.
Really don’t think there is a preventative for the decisions made by people. No matter what a person does or doesn’t do to try to prevent a catastrophe from happening due to the decisions of people just isn’t possible.
We live in a world where people make wrong decisions all of the time. Those decisions have been questioned throughout the ages. “Why did you do that”?
There have been explanations but not satisfactory to the person that the trauma or tragedy has been effected.
If we lived in a perfect world, then sexual abuse would never occur. We don’t.
We live in a world of imperfect people making poor choices.
There isn’t anything I’m the world that could have been done to prevent us from being hurt. It was the decions made by the people who harmed us,
We didn’t create the monsters. We just have to deal with them.
I would say – believe the first disclosure, and that is never too early to talk about disclosing bad secrets.
I know you posted this quite awhile ago, I wanted to still offer my thoughts. One thing that was harmful to me, even though I didn’t find out until I was a teenager, if an adult(s) actually witness the abuse taking place and doesn’t report it because the abuser has issues of their own, it needs to be taken seriously. In my case my aunt and mother told my other aunt about what they caught him doing, even though they took him to the psychiatrist about it, and the dr said it was a one time thing and not to worry about it, you still need to worry about it as in my case it continued and no adult checked in and continued to allow contact. Also I work in the education field and if I was to notice a kid acting very differently and struggling, I would report it even just to my boss. Even though I obviously had issues while in school, they did not get me help. And even though one of my teachers in elementary school told my mom to get me help, which my mom worked at the school, my mom did not get me help. Always believe a child if they even hint at anything, it at least needs to be looked into. As for a parent trying to do what they can for their child, do not down play the situation or ignore things happened. If you know someone has a history of abuseing do not leave them alone with them! Sorry just felt I needed to share.
I don’t really have answers for these, which terrifies me since I now have two daughters of my own.
I really think that a lot of what makes child abuse so easily hidden is our society’s insistence on dividing the world into adult spaces and child spaces. This makes parents/caregivers the only real bridge between those two worlds. If the parent/caregiver is the abuser, then the child has very few channels available to pass information to the other side. Even if the parent isn’t the abuser, if they aren’t able to act as a bridge -if they don’t communicate well with their child- the child remains isolated.
Hi Superlagirl,
Thanks for posting — it’s good to hear from you.
You’ve made a good point — having active, open communication with children is extremely important in terms of giving them a place to talk about what’s going on in their lives, to ask questions, present concerns, etc. Children who have no one they feel comfortable talking to are certainly not going to talk about the complicated topics, such as any abuse they are experiencing.
Thanks for stopping by. Keep the lines of communication open with your own daughters — you’ll be surprised how much difference that can make.
Kathy
I worked your years as a caseworker and supervisor for a state CPS (child protection ser.), being of a generation when NO spoke of abuse, and having our own kids effects our outlook these questions.
[b]What kinds of things do you wish your parents had been able to do that would have protected you from sexual abuse?[/b]
That both of them had looked at their own lives and abuse so they could have stopped themselves from abuse and neglect.
Our mother probably sexually abused us because she was sexually abused and our father didn’t see the abuse because he was abused and didn’t want to relive those experiences.
In general parents need to be willing to choose to see their children as people in their own right with lives that can be effected out side them.
[b]What kinds of things would have helped prevent your being abused by people outside of the home?[/b]
Well, it would have been great if our mother didn’t sell us and our father had noticed we were missing at times when we should have been home. (bit resentful of that one)
If we hadn’t felt totally worthless to start with there might have been a chance for us to have told someone. Unfortunately back then no one would have listened, it was unheard of to speak of such things.
Parents need to be open to their kids signals that they’re not comfortable, it might be beyond them to even know what is happening is abuse.
When interviewing children it wasn’t the out right statements of sexual abuse, they were already out there, it was getting a kid to open up and talk that we had to do sometimes in a very small window. It’s picking up on things like a teenager telling you their stepfather liked to wrestle with them and asking where and how without inferring anything sexual.
[b]If you were abused within the home, what would have helped you to get help from safe people outside of the home?[/b]
There weren’t any safe people outside our home at the time. Today, knowing there was a safe adult out there to speak to who might just believe us. It helps knowing that teachers are required to report abuse. Although states vary in their reporting laws and response.
Personally I don’t know that we would have ever told anyone. There was such conditioning to not tell. We would have had to know there was a “safe’ place to take us right then and there. We knew if we got sent home it was right back to all of our abusers and probably we’d have disappeared.
[b]If you were to pass your words of wisdom to parents that are truly invested in keeping their children safe from sexual predators, what would you say to them?[/b]
Listen to your kids, be aware of any changes in their behavior, make sure they know you’ll hear anything they have to say and that you’re invested in keeping them safe. If your kid gets REAL quiet, ask what’s wrong!
If you’ve been abused, get it worked out in your own head so you don’t miss what’s going on in your kids’ life. We know that may sound harsh but really kids deserve to have a life that isn’t at risk because we’re unaware of their safety.
Ravin
Hi Castrogirl
“I once asked a therapist why we developed dissociation as a coping mechanism when children who live through worse things didn’t. Her response is that those children probably had someone who loved them unconditionally. They had someone they could talk to, look up to, act as a positive role model and above all else were safe to use as an outlet for emotions so they could be worked through and processed.”
I think DID has a great deal to do with isolation. People who have survived trauma with others around them have that place to find some recognition of the trauma.
Ravin
http://mybelovedalter.wordpress.com/2009/02/02/connecting-the-dots/
Hi Kathy,
Interesting questions which raise all sorts of issues.
In our situation, we never really knew what “normal” was. So we didn’t realise what was occurring to us, wasn’t experienced by every other girl. We just thought no one talked about it. So while I agree with David that there needs to be a safe environment for disclosure, the child first needs to realise that what is happening isn’t appropriate.
I once asked a therapist why we developed dissociation as a coping mechanism when children who live through worse things didn’t. Her response is that those children probably had someone who loved them unconditionally. They had someone they could talk to, look up to, act as a positive role model and above all else were safe to use as an outlet for emotions so they could be worked through and processed.
I consider this is why the caregivers around us didn’t realise what was going on. We had been told that we were such an inconvenience that we tried to be invisible and cause the least amount of trouble possible. This meant that in the home environment we wouldn’t have told anything to anyone.
Within the school environment, one of the best ways in which we could have been protected or spotted as an at-risk child, was to have behavioural records carried through from birth. In our baby behavioural notes we were described as “bright, inquisitive and happy”; by the time we got to primary school we were described as “withdrawn, cautious and a loner”. In school we excelled academically, so our behaviour was just considered normal for us. If those baby behaviour notes had been given to the school, maybe something would have been picked up?
The first question I’d to people thinking about having a child is “why do you want this child?”
The next would be “what systems and supports do you have in place to ensure you can raise that child safely?”
In order to protect children, probably the biggest question is “how do you ensure that your child feels safe enough that they can tell you anything?”
Hmmm never realised how 4 questions could stir up so much…
Take care…
I have rather an odd perspective on this, having been an older target for sexually predatory behavior from adult women when I was a teenager. Although I had, and have, a close relationship with my mother, I never told her about it, because she had been so phenomenally ineffectual at protecting me, all my life.
So I think one of the key things that parents and guardians can do is to give their children confidence that they can handle disclosures appropriately, and in a way that won’t rebound negatively on the child. Children aren’t too good at thinking outside the box, and it might not occur to a kid that he or she wouldn’t necessarily have to stay in an environment where a predator is present — what a child pictures is a confrontation that may or may not solve the problem, but which leaves the child in a situation full of fallout. I think a key piece of giving disclosure safety to children is presenting the option to be *completely removed* from an unsafe situation before any confrontation takes place.
In a similar vein, I think that adults who are in contact with potentially at-risk kids have a duty to make themselves aware of local child protection regulations, which vary quite a bit from state to state, and be realistically and accurately informed about what it would mean to provide a safe space for an at-risk child. The more you are able to give accurate information to a kid about what you can do, the more likely that child is to confide in you. Children can smell fear and uncertainty on adults, and I think that a lack of confidence in adults’ ability to do anything useful is the factor underlying the silence of some abused children.
Firstly when I saw the title of this post I actually groaned out loud. No offence Kathy, its just stuff I’d rather not have to deal with whilst at the same time knowing that is very important that we face these things head-on. Hmm kinda like therapy.
**sigh**
And in this spirit, I’ll give this a shot. 🙂
What kinds of things do you wish your parents had been able to do that would have protected you from sexual abuse?
n/a see question 3 – but I agree with David that the child should know and feel inherently from the earliest possible age that its parents can be trusted above everything, will never reject them and should and can always be told the second the child feels unsafe in any environment – whether abuse is a factor or not the child needs to feel secure with its own parents.
.
What kinds of things would have helped prevent your being abused by people outside of the home?
n/a see question 3
.
If you were abused within the home, what would have helped you to get help from safe people outside of the home?
Most abuse by caretakers is unreported because the child is brought up in an environment where communication is discouraged or punished. In my case the daily events of my life were not of interest to my parents, the expression of emotion was banned outright (and punished) and so there was no reason why I would ever imagine that anyone outside the home would be remotely interested in my existence let alone what was happening to me.
It’s a tricky one because as an adult I dont know that I could approach another adult and say “I think you are abusing your child” or just go and report them – I wouldnt even know how to begin going about that practically let alone the moral implications and, of course, its never the parents you think it is. My parents were perfectly “normal” and presentable. We were required to present a good face to the world.
Despite this, my littlest Little still thinks that someone out there should have noticed because after all, adults are there to protect.. arent they? But at the same time adults cannot be trusted. So a child in this situation would never go looking for help of its own accord. I just waited out childhood in the knowledge that when I was 18 I would be able to leave home (go to College) and never go back.
So I have no clue how to answer the question – the child needs to be allowed and encouraged to communicate but that’s not in the interest of the abusive family. The idea of an adult from outside the family befriending a child and trying to help would be seen, ironically, as more dangerous and more likely interpreted as something such as is suggested in the first two questions.
.
If you were to pass your words of wisdom to parents that are truly invested in keeping their children safe from sexual predators, what would you say to them?
As above, parents who really want to protect their children just need to allow the child to speak for itself and feel safe enough and secure enough in the love and support of its own parents to be able to tell them when something doesnt feel right.
You don’t even need to tell children that there are “really bad people out there” and scare them unnecessarily – just respect them for the innate intelligence and awareness they have which is often so much more attuned to the world than the adults’. Children must know that if there is something – anything at all- that feels wrong then they can always tell their parents, guardians, or whichever trusted adult.
If there is any doubt in the child’s mind they will either never tell, or only once it is too late to protect the child.
I know. Take it from an utterly dismantled 29 year old who only “told” 6 months ago.
Hey Everyone,
Have a look at the In the Light project. They are creating a book, with photography, that tells stories of various sexual abuse survivors. It’s a very interesting project. Check it out!
Kathy