I have two young kids.  I have a nine year old and a seven year old.  To say that I am concerned about their relationships, both now and in the future, is an understatement.  This is something nearly all parents can relate to.  We want the best for our children, and that includes being in safe and healthy relationships as they grow older.

We recently had an experience with a family that we go to school with.  The two kids in this family were harassing my younger child and my child asked them to stop.  They did not.  My child then continued to set boundaries and the other kids continued to ignore the boundaries.  The other mother was wonderful.  She reached out to me and apologized and rounded up her kids.  I checked in with my kid to make sure they were okay, and then we all moved on.  In passing, I happened to mention this incident to a couple of other mothers a couple of weeks later.  When they learned who the family was, one of the mothers said, “Oh, well, your child should be happy to be getting attention from them!”

This hit me all kinds of wrong.  This came from a place of wanting to be accepted by a prominent family in the community, no matter the cost.  Why are okay with excusing bad behavior from someone just because of their social status? Why do we automatically assume that any kind of attention is good attention and we should be thankful for it?  This is exactly the type of messaging, starting at such a young age, that leads to the idea that abuse is a sign of love, and we should be happy and accepting of it. 

I haven’t ever experienced physical violence in an intimate relationship.  This isn’t a brag, mostly I’ve been lucky.  It happens, and I’ve been close.  I have experienced my fair share of violence from men.  There is a story from high school that sticks out in my head when I think about the conversation I had with these other mothers.  It’s something I can’t believe I didn’t fight, but at 16, or at any age really, we sometimes get talked into letting things go.

I was a party girl my last couple years of high school.  I went to a lot of parties with my classmates.  When I was a junior, I went to a house party and I had too much to drink.  The girl hosting the party took me up to her bedroom and let me sleep there.  When I went to sleep, I was alone.  When I woke up at some point, I wasn’t alone.  A senior boy was in bed with me and he was putting his hands on me.  He said something to me to try and make it seem like we were sharing a moment, but we were not.  This was not a consensual situation. This was shaping up to be some Brock Turner level shit. Luckily for me, I was able to get up and leave the situation without any escalation.  That isn’t the case for many.

A day or two later, I was at another friend’s house with a group of girls in my class.  I mentioned the incident to one of the girls.  She told me that “He does that.  And we can’t tell anyone because of his family.”  She then proceeded to tell me of a couple of other specific incidents of others girls waking up to him sexually assaulting them.  My biggest regret in this whole situation is never telling anyone else about it and reporting it, not because of what happened to me, but because of what probably happened to other girls.  But I was the new girl at the school and in the town.  This family is huge and powerful and many of them are nasty people.  It seemed like a battle too big to fight.  This is the truth for so many sexual assault survivors.  Nobody in power is really on our side.

Y’all, abuse is not a form of affection.  Why does almost every woman have a #MeToo story and yet, somehow, we don’t seem to know any abusers?  “He did it because he likes you” needs to die.  We need to teach our kids to recognize real love and affection and how to support them when they set boundaries.  We need to side with victims in incidents of abuse and sexual assault.  Reporting should never cause more trauma (and too often, a trauma even worse than the assault itself).  Until we fix this, it will continue to go unreported and underreported, which means it will continue to happen, and it will happen to our kids.

My kids are still young.  I am proud of them for setting boundaries when they feel uncomfortable.  I am also proud of the mom who recognized the boundary and the trespass, didn’t make excuses for it, and attempted to correct it.  These are the types of parenting choices we need more of in this world.  Today’s “helicopter” and “snow-plow” parenting often manifests itself in us “protecting” our kids by shielding them from the consequences of their actions.  In many ways, this does more harm than good.  Boundaries are a constant conversation in my household, both setting them and respecting others.  Both are equally important.  Someday soon, all of these babies will be out in the world, on their own, entering into adult relationships.  It’s our job right now to model and teach real love and appropriate forms of affection, so they know how to build healthy relationships based on mutual respect.

Song of the week: You Don’t Own Me - Lesley Gore