This post isn't an easy read or very funny. It contains a meaty issue, a paranoid woman who's sometimes on the edge of running away to an Amish village and bringing her kids up in a 'safe' place, and a mental woman in toys r us.
All this thinking started in my head a few days ago, after a certain conversation- the one below- and i wanted to put this out there, to see what people think, to gather advice from other parents. But mainly for someone to say i am not alone.
"Mum, Dad just broke the private rule"
Me: What do you mean love? What private rule?
Bobby: "He just touched my bum".
I had 3 initial responses to this. My first was what the chuff is the private rule? Secondly i just wanted to laugh, that it was his dad that had broken the Private rule. Thirdly i was relieved. Relived that what i had been saying to him was going in.
We've been having issues recently, we're trying to teach our son who has no concept of privacy that his "bits" are his bits. That they are private, they are his and no the whole of Morrisons don't want to see them.
This is a subject that i think is close to my heart. I worry about bad things happening to my kids. When i say bad things i mean bad things by bad people. We teach our children that there is no such thing as monsters. Yet i know differently. For a fact. There are actual monsters in this world. Its such a difficult subject to write about, i think because its such a horrific thing. I choose not to think about it, but just because i choose not to think about it,it doesn't mean that its not an issue. I'm not sure what to teach my kids about paedophiles. urgh i cant believe i wrote that word. Obviously i don't want to bring them up to fear people but i think there should be a certain amount of 'stranger danger'.
I read articles about victims and i think how can i stop this happening to my child. When they were both small i could keep them so i was always watching them but now they are getting older I'm not sure i can.
We are staying on a caravan site and i don't like Bobby playing in between the caravans, he ask why and i tell him its because i want him to play where i or his dad can see him. His dad is much more relaxed than me, i want him to be able to roam free too but all i think about is we don't know who is in those caravans. I start to get a bit panicky and make a new rule that the kids can only play on the decking which is around our caravan. I know in my heart of hearts that this restriction has a shelf life. I cant keep my children so close to me all their lives.Nor do i want too. I don't want them to grow up in fear but i want them to grow up empowered.
Also I'm aware of something someone professional told me recently. When you suffer from a type of trauma, and are faced with everyday situations which may trigger a memory of your experience then you may not be able to deal with it in a rational way because a chemical is released in the front of your brain which causes you to panic and you cant see past this situation without relating back to the trauma.Therefor you cant act or think rationally. Or how you would think or act normally. I'm not sure of all the science in this or biology for that matter, I'm just going on what a trusted friend has told me. Plus it makes sense to me. So when i think of how i acted like a mental woman when we lost Bobby in toys r us for a few minutes, i was screaming his name and shouting at people that id lost my son (those poor people!!), It now makes sense to me that all i could think was that someone was walking out the door with him.
Im writing this and thinking "whats the point in sitting here, bringing all these feelings up, no bodys going to want to read this anyway beacuse it will make them feel uncomfortable. I feel uncomfortable writing it. I feel vulnerable writing this. No one likes to feel vulnerable. Im sat here at my dads caravan, One of my kids is napping and the other is out walking with his dad, so im putting this post out there. What i want to know is how do other people, parents, grandparents feel about this. do you worry too? Am i on my own in this?
I'm sorry that this post is so rambled. I've hovered over the post
button with this post more than any other but this is a bit of an issue
for me and i want to know what other people do, what do you teach your
kids about strangers or appropriate privacy? I'm going to link this
post to my face book but if you'd rather not comment as that's too
public,please message me.
Thank you for reading, Lucy x
