Sexual Child Abuse

The real statistics of children that are sexually abused can never be known. This is because so many children that are involved never come out to say.

But an estimated guess is that 8 out of 10 female children are victims or have been near victims of child rape.
This is an alarming rate by any standard but who is going to make sure it stops.
The onus to protect our children therefore lies on us as parents and legal guardians of our children.

Although there is no foolproof method of completely stopping child abuse since most times, the person the child already has a closeness to ends up being the culprit, we can however put some precautions in place to make sure that our children's vulnerability to this menace is reduced to the barest minimum.

These are a few tips that will put you on the right path.

1. Educate your child:   Don't tell your child that there are bad people who can try to do bad things to her.Tell her that there are good behaviours and bad behaviours and no matter how close a person is to her or no matter how much she loves him, if the person crosses the line into those bad behaviours, he should be stopped immediately. Of course you also have to let her know what those bad behaviours are. For example, touching her on the thigh or caressing her arm or arranging to have a secret meeting are all unacceptable behaviours.

2. Give Room For Easy Communication:  Your child must be given room to easily communicate with you her parents. Build a relationship that makes it easy for your child to talk to you. Most times children are afraid to talk to their parents about these types of things because they think their parents might blame them.
Many times, child rape doesn't just happen. The accused would usually have been building up to it by maybe buying things for the child, caressing the child or trying to get close to the child in other ways. But these children, because they don't have who to tell, would keep it to themselves until the day when they would finally be raped.
If the communication lines between you and your child is open, he or she will tend to tell you things from which you can pick out tell tale signs of trouble. Sometimes the child him or herself might not even know that it means anything, but you as an adult will be able to smell trouble and nip it in the bud.

3. Make your Child Feel Valuable: In many cases, as earlier said, children are raped by someone they are familiar with. The aggressor uses a systematic and calculated psychological method to get the child to believe that they have something special together, which eventually makes it easier to attack. This is done verbally by making the child feel she is special, buying gifts, and getting the child to do or get away with things the parents would normally not allow the child to do like skipping school or eating sweets.
Children that have low self esteem are very much prone to this type of systematic cajoling.
Parents should therefore try to bring up their children in a loving environment while making sure that their child grows up with a good self esteem.

Of course this by no means covers this topic, and I for one would welcome more tips and comments that can help to protect our children from this menace of Child Abuse.

Fatou

Teenagers and Sex

Today, we shall be discussing teenagers and sex. 

At what age do you think that your teenage child should begin to have sex? 
Most parents do not want to face the reality of their child having sex.

You don't want to imagine that your child that was learning to walk just a few years ago is already involved in sex.

Those whose children are not yet teenagers are probably breathing a sigh of relief. Well mine is still in a few years to come, you're probably thinking. 

But i urge you not to be too relaxed yet. Children are having sex as early as ten years old these days.

But what can we as parents do to curtail our children from having sex at young ages?

Well the thing to first understand is that it is not about the children having  sex but that the children usually don't even understand fully what they are doing.

Most times these children are pressured into sex either by peer pressure, or by a boyfriend they want to please.

They themselves are not sure what they really want and don't have the necessary information to be able to know exactly what stand to take in the matter.

They therefore go along with it as a matter of course.

The N0. 1 solution is for we parents to be very open to our children. We must discuss honestly and openly the issue of sex with them.

It helps if you are able to discuss mistakes (and 90% of us have made them) that you yourself have made on issue of sex as a young man or woman.

In the event that you are lucky not to have made any mistakes yourself, then refer to the mistakes of someone close to you who your child also knows.

The reasons why sex continues to be on the upsurge among youths are:

1. Parents don't discuss the issue of sex with their children

2. Parents discuss the issue of sex with their children when it's too late or almost too late.

3. Parents discuss the issue of sex with their children as a parent to child passing on instruction or admonition to their child. This never works especially for older children.

Your child must know why it is in her best interest to wait until she is more matured before she begins to have sex.

4. When parents discuss sex with their children, they are not honest in their discussions.  Children can see through this right away.

5. Parents give only half information about sex to their children, either because they are too embarrassed to delve deep into the issue of sex with their children or they are afraid the child will end up using the information wrongly.

In this situation, you have to trust your child to use the information you give her on sex wisely. You have no other choice.

I know now with hindsight that it is best not to have sex until you get married, just the way God intended it from the beginning.

But this might be hard to sell to a sixteen year old except you have opened the communication line to her for a long time and she feels free to discuss the topic of sex with you at any time.

Lastly, many parents ask at what age to begin to educate their children.  I say, as soon as they are able to understand you when you tell them don't do that...whatever that may.

At the age of 3 years is what i would say. At that age you can just tell them.   'Don't allow anyone to touch you here (you point to her private part). If anyone, even if it is an uncle or auntie touches your bum bum, shout for help!' 

Already you have started to educate the child.
 
In the long run, having a healthy, open, and honest communication regarding the issue of sex regularly will help your child to be well educated sexually. And this will help her to make informed decisions about when or why she is having sex.

In the eventuality that she does begin to have sex, at least you will know that she knows exactly what she is doing and why and most importantly how to best protect herself.









                    

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