I was reading an article yesterday where some girl was trying to get Social Services to give guardianship of her unborn child to her boyfriend's mother so it wouldn't be taken from her at birth and adopted. The boyfriend is currently in prison for assaulting her while breaking a restraining order that was handed out after a previous attack and their oldest child has been removed from her care because of the violence in the home. And yet she STILL says that she loves her boyfriend and that they'll be together when he gets out and it'll all be fine because he'll change. Some people (men and women) will always put their partner before their children, no matter what the risks, red flags or outright abuses are. I don't - can't - understand it.
I'm also all for teaching children to listen to their feelings. Kids often don't have the same positive prejudices that we pick up as adults that can lead us to try and rationalize things we might find odd. When I was about eight there was a boy in his mid/late teens living across and a few doors down that I didn't think was 'right' but whenever I said anything to the adults I got a lecture on how I should make the effort to be nice to him because he was "a bit touched and couldn't help how he was". Good thinking by the adults, I suppose. They didn't want me growing up treating anyone with a disability or a learning difficulty with suspicion. Except they were wrong to tell me to stop being mean and complaining about him because I ended up having a disturbing near miss with him.
At the time I was totally, utterly obsessed with mermaids after being bought Sea Wees mermaid dolls for Christmas, so when this boy approached me and started showing me some plastic cocktail skewers with all the usual shapes and figures on top, including mermaids, and offered to give me all the mermaid ones he had if I went into his house I was torn. We weren't supposed to talk to strangers - but he wasn't a stranger, he lived across the street. We were told not to accept invitations to go places with people, but he was a neighbour and all of us kids were in and out of most of the houses on the street because we all knew each other and our parents all knew each other. And then I had the adults voices ringing in my ears that I had to be nice to this boy, that I was a naughty girl to say that he was creepy and horrible when all he was was different. So I went. Thankfully things didn't go as badly as they could have - he exposed himself and tried to make me touch him, tried to kiss me and told me to take off my shorts but he didn't stop me when I ran like hell for home. It was a very unpleasant experience and it affected me for a long, long time (perhaps still does because I'm shuddering writing this) but when I read about the fate of other kids... Yeah, I know I got lucky. I never told an adult what had happened, not even Ma Kitty, because I thought it would make me a naughty girl for being mean to someone who couldn't help being the way he was.
So that's me and that's my icky childhood story and that's why I believe in listening to a child who tries to tell you that something isn't right about someone, even when they don't know or can't say why. That's also why I'm a great believer in trusting my gut instinct, too.
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