If there was a way that you could raise your child that would almost guarantee that they were safe from exploitation and sexual abuse, would you be signing up right now?
I doubt there are many parents out there who would answer no. And yet the vast majority of parents are Authoritarian, a parenting approach that I am about to argue puts kids at a far higher risk of being abused than they need to be. Peaceful Parenting (also known as Respectful Parenting) however can minimise the risk.
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Yesterday I wrote about abuse existing on a continuum. I wrote that when we ignore covert abuse, give it a free pass, shove it under the rug and only recognise overt abuse we continue to create a society that has no healthy yardstick by which to measure. That when we insist that things on the “lower end” of the spectrum aren’t “actual” abuse, “actual” rape that we help to gloss over warning signs, and unhealthy behaviour. We normalise them. In some cases we even romanticize them. And as a result it makes the lines between discipline and abuse, anger and abuse, flattery and harassment, sex and rape; blurry.
We first have to recognise it.
We have to name it. We have to actively teach our children to fight it, to see it. Only we aren't doing that. This week, three more women and two children have been killed by those who were supposed to love them, Fathers, Boyfriends, Uncles. We cannot point the finger at some “other” and blame them and their “other” culture for this atrocity. This is our doing. This is our culture that has culminated in the massive increase in domestic, family and sexual violence that this year has brought. 62 women in 37 weeks. There is no count for the children. At least one man stands in that tally as well.
It's time to call it what it is, terrorism. |
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