Over at the Friends in tech blog, George was kind enough to create a parent education flier, pointing out some of the various resources where parents can learn more about keeping kids safe on-line. There’s a nice downloadable PDF, suitable for printing and sharing with parents or other groups working to help kids learn to use this vast resource we call the Internet, safely.
Saw another nice bit of helpful information over at the Occupational Adventure blog today. Curt lnks to an article, ten tips to build belief in yourself and offers his own, condensed list. (That makes for easy printing to use as a reminder to yourself.) I can attest that I’ve done some of things on this…
Pin If you pay attention to the news at all, I’m sure you’ve seen something about Larry Nasser over the past couple of years. You may even be fairly familiar with the story. If so, the Netflix documentary Athlete A might not offer a lot of things you don’t know to some extent or other. But, you may want to watch it anyway, even though watching it and hearing the stories will be difficult. I did a couple of nights ago, and had a couple of thoughts about it, in no real order of importance.
Pin So, when I look at a highly successful program like US gymnastics, like Penn State football, like USA Swimming, like English Youth Football, etc. I think we can clearly see this. Why be such a downer, don’t you see how much good this program, and the people in it, are doing? It’s probably nothing, just some misunderstanding by over-imaginative kids. Nothing to worry about, look at the success we are having in the field, gym, or water. That’s what this is all about. That’s the important thing. The rest of this will pass.
Except in the case of US Gymnastics, these ladies, and dozens of others, have not simply let it pass. They have remained steadfast in talking about it, making sure they can do everything they can to make sure it doesn’t happen to the next generation and reminding all of us that winning at all costs, is not worth the damage that is done to children who are sexually abused.
They are truly resilient, like many of us who have survived sexual abuse, and gone on to talk about it, share our own stories, and live our adult lives. But never confuse that resiliency with how hard it really is to do. Never look at a survivor who has appeared to overcome their abuse, and assume that it’s ok to diminish what happened to them. It’s never easy, and for each one who might appear to have overcome, I’ll show you 5 who are still struggling every single day. You’ll find many of them in prison, or mental health care centers. Still dealing with the aftermath of their childhood trauma without access to the same support and resources that we lucky few have had the privilege to have. Yet they are all human beings, and they were all children once, children who had to suffer at the hands of adults who were more interested in their own pleasures, comfort, and place in their society than they were to consider the damage being done to these children.
Don’t be one of those adults. There are many ways to abuse a child. Larry Nassar did and is paying for his crimes, finally. But there were a whole lot of other adults who abused these girls, by not taking it seriously, not investigating, and not caring enough about them as human beings to protect them. Make no mistake about that.
Pin We like to think that only someone unstable would commit these type of crimes. So was the entire city of Rome mentally ill, or was something else going on? It’s my belief that something else was going on, and that was the ability to see those that are different than us as somehow less than human.
All the news programs are filled up with stories of scared people buying all of the local stock of duct tape and plastic sheeting, and generally being frightened by everything they see on TV or read online. It’s a scary time to be alive in America, there’s no doubt about that, but let’s be realistic…
The Fifth Edition of the Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse is up over at Survivors can Thrive today. Once again it looks like there quite a bit of good writing going on, as usual. Next month’s edition will be hosted right here, so start thinking about submissions! Technorati tags: CarnivalAgainstChildAbuse
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Cool! Thanks for sharing this with everyone.
Thanks for sharing the info, Mike. I’m all for sound advice for keeping kids safe. I participated in a KidPower program with my son last year, and I was appauled at the stats on on-line predators out there. My son doesn’t go online without my direct supervision, but there will be a time when he does. I’ll be checking out those sites!