How Parents Can Teach Children to Recognize and Report Unsafe Behavior

Most of us have been taught the wrong lesson for as long as I can remember, and it is that ‘strangers are the most dangerous people to us’ and so we must never trust one.

However, this is contradicted by reports which indicate that about 90% of sexual abuse against minors isn’t committed by strangers; rather, it is committed by people already known to the child or family. This alone tells us that the perpetrator is closer than you think, and so parents should teach protection methods for this truth rather than for a lie everyone’s told us. 

So Here’s what the problem can look like in different situations and at different ages, and what ‘report it’ actually means. 

Stranger Danger

A hard-to-digest truth is that the person you actually need to worry about for your child’s safety is never a stranger. 

Since most adults like coaches, family friends, relatives, or even cousins have already established a good relationship with the parents and have earned trust with both them and the child, it is difficult for the child to actually figure out the problem with someone’s behaviour, and even if they do, most adults dismiss it as a ‘friendly’ act. The problem is that often we choose to believe the adults rather than the child, which leaves him/her helpless. 

So the approach to preventing a situation regarding sexual abuse is to stop telling them to ‘avoid strangers’ and setting up a wrong picture in their mind. A better approach would be to reassure your child that they can come and talk to you about anything that’s bothering them and they will never get in trouble for it. 

Teach Children Real Words 

Always make sure your kids know the real and scientific names of their body parts; even the daily-used names work. This is important because kids who know this are actually seen to identify and report abuse sooner with more clarity than the ones who cannot exactly say what happened and how. Most abusers also prefer to target children exactly like this since a child who cannot explain what happened is the least likely to report it. 

So teach your kids real words and how to use them properly because most of the incidents of sexual abuse also hide in plain sight. For example, bedtime or bath time are the most obvious times for it to occur because nobody would suspect anything. 

Real words, said plainly.

The Rule That Actually Works

Always teach your child the rule of “only surprises are good, secrets aren’t” and keep repeating it throughout the day, especially before they sleep, until they can say this one phrase without ever having to think, as if it’s a default setting pre-installed in their brain. 

The logic behind it is that most assaulters use ‘keep this a secret from mom, it’s just between us’ as a sweet gesture statement to hide their assaults. This way, the child feels special to have something only the two of them know and never actually reports it. Always make your kid understand that surprises come to an end after a specific date or time, like a gift or party, and hence they are good and make everyone happy, but secrets have no duration and so automatically fall under the bad habit category.

Once your kid learns the difference between the two, he is most likely to come and tell you about a ‘secret’ an adult told him about, which is the whole point.  

Warning Signs Worth Knowing

There are a few patterns that are definitely worth noticing about each adult that comes in contact with your child for their safety. 

• If an adult constantly pushes for alone time with the child in the name of spending ‘quality time.’
• Over gift-giving, especially when it’s not needed. 
• Reluctance with an adult around your child, because your gut feeling is one of the strongest factors in identifying sexual abuse. 
• An adult who cannot respect the boundaries you set for your child and constantly makes you feel like you’re overdoing it and that children don’t need this much protection.

Now, instances of them happening don’t 100% guarantee that something is wrong, but if they occur constantly, then it’s worth talking to your child about it instead of directly accusing the adult. 

Why Institutions Still Get This Wrong

Good reputations don’t equate to good levels of safety. In fact, most schools with prestigious reputations and stellar reviews get this entire concept wrong. 

Independent investigations at boarding schools, including a widely reported case involving Portsmouth Abbey School abuse lawsuits, have found abuse that went unaddressed or unreported for years, sometimes because a child told an adult and nothing happened. 

What “Report” Actually Means for a Kid

Reporting is understood as something far different by a kid than by an adult. For a kid, reporting often means testing the water first.

Kids mostly indicate a sexual offense having occurred through their actions before they ever form real words about it. For example, these signs often come in the form of comments that are not in the context of a given situation, an unusual behaviour around a person that wasn’t there before, and more. They do all of this to test your response; if you react in a panicked way, there’s a good chance the kids might not tell you the actual thing. So it is important that you remain calm when they tell you something. 

It is also considered a good practice to make more than one adult accessible to them in times of need. Someone they can reach out to if you’re not available.

The same logic extends online now. Grooming increasingly starts in ordinary digital interactions, on a game chat or a shared account, long before it becomes anything a parent would recognize as a red flag. 

Teaching a kid to protect kids online means teaching them the secrets-versus-surprises rule applies to a screen exactly the way it applies to a person in the room.

Things to Ensure In Schools

Holding your school accountable from the start is a far more effective way to tackle cases of sexual offense against minors rather than demanding answers from them after an incident has already occurred. 

1. Who all are allowed to have private contact with a child, and is it ever unsupervised?
2. In case of an incident occurring, what is the procedure for reporting it, and does it have a secondary path? 
3. Does the person being reported fall in the reporting chain? 

A program with schools clear questions about safety protocols already written down and easy to find is telling you something. One that gets defensive when asked is telling you something too.

Conclusion

All these things shouldn’t just be ensured once and then left with the assumption that regular checks are being conducted. 

Always make sure you teach your kids about real words, the difference between secret and surprise, and a reassurance that nothing they say will ever be ignored or get them in trouble. 

None of these alone would be helpful, but all of them, repeated over time, become a habit for your kids which they don’t have to think twice about.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

Aditi K

Freelance Cybersecurity Writer

About article

The author of this article Aditi K, an Freelance Cybersecurity Writer at Saferloop, brings practical experience and industry knowledge to the subject.

The review and editing by Vinithra Karunanidhi have been done to make sure that it is accurate, clear, and relevant.

At Saferloop, we are determined to provide high-quality, well-researched, and updated content. To understand further how we produce and revise our articles, please refer to our Editorial Guidelines.