Links for educating about Domestic Violence

I wouldn't presume to know what *you* should be teaching *your* kids about domestic violence.

I don't know what your kids know. 

I don't know what your kids don't know.

I don't know what is safe for you to tell your kids

I don't know what is safe for your kids to know.

I don't know what isn't safe for you to tell your kids.

I don't know what isn't safe for your kids to know.

But this must be a topic of concern to you, as it should be to all parents, or you wouldn't be reading. You probably don't know exactly what you should teach your kids either. Perhaps you have no experience, so don't know what you're meant to be preparing your kids to avoid. Perhaps you have all too much experience and court orders that prevent you from saying and doing the exact things you *know* you want to tell those pieces of your heart that walk around in someone else's body- namely your children. Tough topic.

Most forms of abuse are legal.

Sometimes you can't get away from the perpetrators.

You can't cure other people's personality disorders.

Sometimes damage control is the best you can do.

Sometimes life sucks.

But here are some links to help you work out what you need to teach. There can be no "one size fits all" here.

From Woman's Aid in the UK:

The Education Toolkit- Expect Respect

For Kids in Shelters: The Children's Welcome Kit

From the Victorian Government in Australia:

Building Respectful Relationships: Stepping out against gender based violence for secondary school students.

From the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, in association with UN Women:

Voices Against Violence
(This seems to be available in English, French and Spanish.)

From the New South Wales Government in Australia:

Child Protection Education K-6

Out of America:

The Representation Project
(If you purchase anything here, we'd like to hear a review, thank you!)
((I've emailed asking for a suitably priced kit for home use))

Another from Australia:

Respectful Relationships

____________________

Indigenous Australians in Cinema 1936-2014 - Reflections

As part of my son's crusade to "subject" me to a course of study on Indigenous Australians in cinema, we've begun by watching the 'First Australians' series.

It has taken us a while to get through it for a number of reasons, not least my dear son's penchant for suggesting we watch an episode just as I was about to head off to bed causing me to nod off part way through!

This is a brilliant series, it shows Australia's treatment of the first people to inhabit this continent throughout history - both good and bad.

I believe that no Australian child should be able to complete their schooling career without having seen it.

Over decades, governments and media outlets have encouraged the wider community to write off Indigenous people as "no hopers". However as 'First Australians' shows, there are countless Indigenous people throughout our history who have fought through the mire of European domination to fight hard for their people and we should look to those leaders as Australian heroes.

That Australian children have learned for decades about Simpson and his Donkey but not about Pemulwuy or Jandamarra is a travesty, although it does seem to be changing - in part due to this series.

I've found it really upsetting, physically upsetting to know that this treatment had been inflicted on anyone - let alone the first people of the country of my birth. It's a shaming experience, however I've been buoyed by the stories of Pateygarang & Lieutenant William Dawes and of the Wurundjeri people & Reverend John Green which show that not all inter-cultural relationships were negative.

'First Australians' has left me with a fuller understanding of both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' history and the depth of their culture. I now have a far better idea what their culture and land means to them - take Koiki Mabo for instance. He was dying, cancer riddled his body but he still would not give up the fight for recognition of his traditional law, culture and land but the cultures and lands of Indigenous peoples throughout Australia.

I am very grateful the series was made and look forward to part two of this study - the films.

Series introduction

____________________

Rhonda lives in Central Victoria, Australia, generally minding her business and leading a quiet, peaceful life- unless her children have shown up to harass her.

My Feet, They Stand on Gadigal Land - Learning About Country

(That picture there, by the way, is the logo for the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.)

It’s the custom, since I’ve had children, that at any event we attend, we’re reminded that the land we stand on is indigenous land. In the slightly patronising way of the coloniser, I’ve approved. Explained it to the kids. There’s even been a slight bowing of the head, as if I’m a respectful non-believer in a church.

The last time it happened was at my daughter’s school. And this time I got it.

My education was better than in generations past. I knew this land was inhabited before our arrival. And yet, ‘Aborigines,’ as we were taught to call them, were presented to us as creatures from the past, even as we read or studied their lives in our present. It’s taken an education more than three decades later, the one I provide to my ten year old son, to teach me and make me see.

Fifth grade means Australian history – it’s a subject that has to be done. Most of us sigh over it, knowing that it starts with Captain Cook, ends somewhere around the invention of the stump plough and bores us stupid in between.

In the bookshop, just before term began, I saw a glossy hardback. Australians All, it said along the spine. I had that book on the counter with my debit card out before you could say ‘I think this book just made my curriculum planning easier.’

Written by the well known Australian children’s author, Nadia Wheatley, this history begins with the Law of the Land.

In the beginning was the Law. And the Law held the balance in the land. Through the forming of rocks and the soil, through the making of mountains and the river, the Law held. Millennia came and went. The continent changed its shape. But the Law ruled.

(The Law encompasses a complex set of interactions between indigenous people and the environment, aimed at keeping social and natural environments in balance. )

Wheatley then takes the child-reader back 40 000 years, telling us the story of a family living at Lake Mungo. She weaves a lively narrative, through the end of the last Ice Age, across centuries and across the land, and everywhere she takes us, children are living, dreaming, playing.

By the time she turns her attention to the Industrial Revolution, in far away England, Wheatley has left our imagination peopled with others we can see in our mind’s eye. As a child grows up as if in Dickens, breathing fibre dust from the great cloth factories, we know that across the oceans lies a child like her, in an unlike world, one where the Law still holds life in balance. When the white devils arrive on their ghostly ships, we hold our breath. No longer are we remote from this story. This beach, on which the white men land, is the same beach that holds the footprints of the indigenous child, alive to us, beckoning. And because she is alive to us then, she is alive to us now. Her hopes, her thoughts, the family with which she lives, her community, the technology she uses, her way of life…part of us now.

Wheatley’s empathetic, accurate, informative but above all imaginative narration builds the bridge my ignorance could not.

The next time I hear the acknowledgment of country, I’m in a school hall. It’s matter of fact. There is no poetry. And yet, this time, I feel it in my body. What country means is gratitude. This stolen land is being gifted to me over and over again by those from whom it was stolen. Underneath the soles of my shoes, the floor, the foundations, the gravel and the sand is the land. If I could touch it now I would.

　

This land and its Law, it holds all of us. My feet, they stand on Gadigal land.

~

Australians All can be found at your local bookstore, or, failing that, on Amazon.

Another imaginative and narrative national history I highly recommend for those looking to study British history is by the incomparable Noel Streatfield, yes, she of Ballet Shoes fame. It’s called The Fearless Treasure, and although sadly OOP, can be found on AbeBooks.

What books have helped you or your children feel truly connected to the time or place  being studied ?

____________________

Melissa is a part-time uni student and mother of three, living in Sydney, Australia. She has home educated various combinations of her children since 2003.

Educating Children About Sexual Abuse — Why?

Educating Children About Sexual Abuse — Why?

I had been looking forward to the lavish birthday party my friend's mom said she'd organize for weeks. She would turn 11 during the school holidays and wanted a camping party. My friend lived in a huge house with a big garden that had a shed, and the party definitely lived up to my expectations.

My friend's mom was one of those real motherly moms. The party showed that too. She had prepared games, served snacks in the shapes of animals in that shed, and a organized a creepy story-telling session accompanied by the camp fire before we, kids, got to sleep in real tents in the garden. The whole class was there, and it was a lot of fun.

Their neighbor, a middle-aged bachelor who lived in an even bigger house and had a beautiful garden with a pond and exotic fish, also celebrated his birthday that night. My friend and I wandered into his garden with some of the other kids, so she could show us the fish. It was a decision that changed my life forever.

“Come and sit with us,” the neighbor must have said. Soon, we were drinking juice while the adults got drunk. One guy was a foreigner, from the same place where my father was born. We got talking. It must have taken him five minutes to find out that I was bothered by my multi-ethnic background, often got into fights with teachers, didn't have a great relationship with my mom, and that my father was dead. Oh, I also told him that I kept pet snakes at home. He was into snakes too.

I don't know why — it must have been intuition — but I told him I did have a step dad and he lived with my mom and me, as soon as he asked more about my father. That was an outright lie. Later that night, as were about to go to sleep, my tent mates talked about the boys they liked. My friend made an odd remark. She said she thought the guy I'd been talking to fancied me, and that he was a pedophile.

Months later, that guy showed up at my house. He had wanted to give me a book about snakes, he said to my mom, and my friend's mother had given him my address. Weeks after that, he and my mother were an item. And weeks after that, he raped me. He had been living with some house mates, but now that he had a girlfriend he wanted a place of his own. He asked my mom if I could help him unpack his stuff at the new place while she got some rest, and she agreed.

Talking about this doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. I'll just say that I knew what he was doing and knew that he was wrong, but it went on for years anyway.

Recognizing Pedophiles

OK, I hope that most people know that guys that meet your kid first and then go to extreme lengths to charm you are probably dangerous. Statistics that say one in three girls and one in five boys will have encountered sexual abuse by the time they're 18 are all over the internet.

Who does that kind of thing? Oh, just about anyone can do it — religious figures, teachers, sports coaches, relatives, and the list goes on. The signs are hardly impossible to spot, though, as long as we're open to seeing them. Adults who want to victimize your kids may come from all walks of life, but they do have some things in common:

• They need to spend time alone with their victim to be able to commit their crimes, so they look for ways to make that happen.
• They don't want to go to jail, so they seek out situations in which reporting is unlikely to occur. They look for vulnerable children, and vulnerable families. I was vulnerable in quite a few ways, but kids who don't know much about sex who have families that don't know much about sexual abuse would definitely fit the bill.
• They need your trust.
• They tend to escalate the abuse gradually, testing the reactions of their victims and their families.

How Do You Find Out More?

Sexual abuse is hardly a pleasant topic, but finding out more about how it happens minimizes the chances that it will happen to your kids. I found Gavin de Becker's books, Protecting The Gift and The Gift Of Fear, immensely helpful. While de Becker doesn't really share anything most of us don't already know deep down, he does move this information into the conscious brain.

What do you tell your children about sexual abuse, though? Many parents are reluctant to discuss this topic with their kids, because it might frighten them. Another reason to refrain from talking about sexual abuse is that sex in general can be a bit of a taboo.

Probably as a direct result of my own experiences, I have been talking to my kids about bodily autonomy and sexual abuse from the time they were quite tiny. Things every parent can and should do to help prevent sexual abuse include:

• Teaching children the correct names of their genitals and the genitals of the opposite sex.
• Teaching children it's wrong for anyone to touch their genitals, ask them to touch another's person's genitals, take pictures of their genitals, and other related activities.
• Making sure that kids know this is a crime, they can say no, and you will always take them seriously if they tell you about anything like this. Even “innocent” secrets like shared candy should be reported because they could be part of the grooming process.
• Sexual abuse is never, ever the child's fault. Not even if they happened to be curious at the time or didn't actively resist.
• People your child knows are more likely to sexually abuse them than strangers are. Sexual abuse isn't about “stranger danger”; it is about sexual abuse.
• If your child tells you about being sexually abused, you won't freak out and kill the guy (or sometimes gal) and you won't question your kid endlessly. You will never, ever wonder if it might have been your child's fault and you will take them seriously.

In our family, we talk about this topic quite frequently. That's because my kids are very interested in knowing how they can contribute to their own safety, and because role playing that they say “No!!” to a predator is quite a lot of fun. One conversation simply isn't enough to ensure these messages take up permanent residence in a child's brain.

We have used a curriculum meant to help prevent sexual abuse made by Child Lures Prevention. (http://www.childluresprevention.com) My kids have enjoyed learning about various ways predators may try to take advantage, and the (pretty thin) booklets have been a starting point for more interesting conversations.

No matter how you address this, don't completely neglect to talk about sexual predators. They are really quite likely to show up at some point. Education can make the difference between your child becoming a victim and not. It could also encourage your child to tell you what's happening if sexual abuse does occur, stopping it immediately and getting the criminal locked up.  

____________________

Jack is the enthusiastic, opinionated mother of two kids who are frustratingly similar to her. They are "global citizens", otherwise known as perpetual foreigners. Happily, they're comfortable with being in a minority, and it's just as well because they're just about the only homeschoolers in their Eastern European country of residence and are multiethnic to boot. Jack enjoys knitting, redecorating furniture, and talking about things that shock people. She homeschools because she wants her kids to have a decent education and a childhood in which they can feel normal, despite being multiethnic, Jewish, vegetarian and raised by a widowed mom.