How parents can teach their children body safety | EduCeleb
Ahmed Iyanda
23rd August 2019
It is pertinent to all parents to be directly involvedin the safety, constant checking, wellbeing and monitoring of their children.One of the roles every parents must not overlook is the safety of theirchildren.
Charity begins at home, they say. All what childrenneed must be acquired at home first before setting out to learn other activities.Parents keeps worrying about how they can achieve protecting their childrenagainst all odds in these seemingly dangerous times.
Parents would give priority to ensuring they protectand safeguard their children until when they understand the risks.
Body safety is far beyond parents lending their children to learn outside the world, while sexual abuse is on the increase in the society is as a result of lack of infusing knowledge to the children. This makes sexual abuse to get perpetuated by someone the child(ren) knows and trusts. Parents should serve as mentors, teachers, coach, and leader to their children. Sit them down, talk to them and enlighten them.
A report shows that 59 percent of child sexual abuse offenders are acquaintances, 34 percent of them are family members of the child while only 7 percent are strangers.
We tend to pre-empt children are safe as long as weleave them with those they trust or as long as we don’t leave them unsupervisedwith adults we don’t know well.
Gone are the days that parents warn their children notto collect things from strangers. If at all they will, it must be approved bytheir parents’ consent by informing them before making use of it. Reverse isthe case now and this has made teenagers to fall victim to sex offenders in thesociety.
A study found that the majority of sexual violence victims were below the age of 20. Risk also exists anytime children are left without thorough supervision with another child or a somewhat older child.
Many researchers estimate that one out of four girlsand one out of six boys will encounter unwanted sexual touching of some sortbefore age 18.
Some parents feel irritated educating their childrenof sexual education. They tag it as being inferior and unreligious discussingsexual related education to them. Not only that, they find it hard sitting themdown, enlightening them on body safety, give them tips to guide them, by sodoing they would learn a lot.
Our children are our friends, companions and confidants.We shouldn’t hide anything from them when it comes to educating them about sexuality.Or else, they would learn it from elsewhere, which may not be for good purposes.Teach children the appropriate term for each body organ and what is used forwhen it comes to body safety (parts). Parents have to develop the tactics throughto pass the message to them.
Are you the type of parents that doesn’t care aboutthe wellbeing or lifestyle of their children? Many parents prioritize work overthe welfare of their children. You hardly meet them at home except at night.The need to create discussion between us and our children will go a long way inchastising the safety of our children. We need to communicate to them inlanguage well pleasing and understanding for effective learning.
You must be readily available to your children whenthey have complaints about what has happened to them outside. They must tellyou or another trusted adult. Your children must know the importance of therule ‘no secret’. If someone says something to your children, they should beeager to disclose it to you. With the help of the rule ‘no secret’ they willrelay everything that has happened to you.
As your children grow, teach them about the privacy oftheir body. They should not be secluded with others while undressed. In homeswhere children’s rooms aren’t separated, those of the opposite sex shouldn’t bemade to share the same bed. You don’t also dress up before your childrenirrespective of how young you think they are.
In the event that someone touches theminappropriately, they should be able to tell the person to stop while movingaway to safety. They should know that touching them in the chest, or netherregions of their body is inappropriate.
Enrolling your child isself-defence trainings could also keep them safe from danger where you are notavailable. Taekwondo, karate or any other martial arts skills would go a longway in helping them disarm a sexual predator or against any other forms ofattack.
The good and bad news about abuse is that most of it,statistically, is not perpetuated by strangers. Up to 90 percent of childrenwho are victims know their abusers. It could happen at the hands familymembers. Almost all the rest is perpetuated by trusted intimates such as religiousleaders, coach, or teachers.