Privacy? YES! Secrets? NO!

If you’ve just spend the holidays with a house full of company or crammed into an airport waiting area, privacy probably seemed like a distant fantasy. If you managed to surprise someone with the gift of their dreams, keeping secrets may seem like a great idea. There’s a time and place for both secrecy and privacy. Understanding and incorporating the concepts into your family life can promote sexual health and safety, and strengthen the overall quality of the relationships between the family members.

Secrecy is a straightforward concept; a person knows something and keeps it to himself. Privacy is more nuanced; one person knows something, and others may know it too, but the others don’t observe or witness it.

As part of healthy development, kids should be taught that they can earn the privilege of privacy but that secrets from parents are unacceptable. Promoting sexual health and safety is easier when a family has a norm that includes treating all part of the body equally.  Children who are unable to discuss their genitalia with their parents may be even more susceptible to the request of a predator to keep their ‘special games’ a secret. A child should learn that their body is private, but there is never any shame or secrecy associated with any part.

It’s a great idea for the adults in a family to have a discussion on what will be private — for example, discussions about finances, or parents’ arguments the children might overhear. By the time a child gets close to elementary school age, they should start to be able to understand this nuance, but younger kids understand absolutes: no secrets from Mom or Dad.

As a child matures, they can start to earn some privacy. Going to the bathroom is a good topic to illustrate the difference between privacy and secrecy. A parent might explain: “When you’re big enough to reach the toilet, when I trust that you will be sure wipe yourself when you’re done, you can earn the right to have privacy in the bathroom – you’ll be able to go by yourself and eventually shut the door. But, Mommy or Daddy will know that you’re there, we’ll know what you’re doing so it won’t be a secret. And if anything is wrong – if your pee is a funny color or it hurts when you poop, you know you can tell us.” Privacy means you get to do it by yourself, but we just don’t ever keep secrets from each other.

In a healthy family, parents need and deserve privacy. It is to be assumed that older kids will rifle through parents’ drawers and closets given the opportunity. Assume that your child will do this and take precautions: Put your personal things away and lock up anything you don’t want them to find. Of course parents have the right to have adult items in the house—they are after all adults. But, children do not want to be confronted with the fact that their parents are sexually active, so put away the special books, toys, creams, prescriptions, lingerie, etc.! If a child finds a locked drawer or box, let him wonder about the contents; if parents find evidence that a child has been exploring the parents’ possessions, take the opportunity to discuss the difference between privacy and secrecy. It’s no secret that grown-ups are sexual but how they express it is completely private from their kids.

Parents can set a foundation for privacy early in the life of their family, making it clear to their kids how they can earn more privacy as they mature. At the same time, be clear that open lines of communication mean that parents and children can and will talk about anything, and no secrets from Mom and Dad.

 

All too often, bullying can begin at home!

All too often, bullying can begin at home!

It’s heartbreaking to read about the death of Rebecca Sedgewick, the little girl who killed herself after bullies convinced her that her life was not worth living.  We  might imagine bullies as queen bees, mean girls or privileged jocks and like any stereotype there can be a grain of truth in those images.   But all too often, bullying begins at home.   A 2009 study found that “both sibling bullying and sibling victimization were associated with bullying and victimization at school.”   *

In fact, many researchers believe that sibling abuse is the most under-reported type of abuse. A sibling with more power than the others may exert that power on one or more of the other kids and parents are often completely unaware.  Parents must become aware of the differences between good-natured teasing and vicious bullying;  an important tactic is to asses if the target child is mad or terrified. If the answer is terrified, get involved immediately.

Bullies generally lack empathy, or the ability to sense the effect their behavior is having on others. Little kids need a constant reminder of the golden rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” By the time they’re adolescents but still lacking in real empathy (as is developmentally normal)  kids will at least have a foundation of the concept of empathy in their minds, if not their heart.

Parents can help prevent bullying by discussing and modeling empathy, and speaking clearly to a child who does not show empathy about why that is wrong.   When  parents  learn about or observe a child exerting any type of power unfairly over another,  they can ask the simple question, “How do you think that makes the other child feel?” This is not meant to be a rhetorical question; rather, it should start an important discussion between parent and  child.

Empathy is not natural for adolescents; they have too much internal angst going on to spend much energy on anyone else’s feelings. Empathy must be learned early on and as with any family value parents are the most important teacher.  Promoting appropriate treatment of siblings and other younger kids is a great place to start this lesson. Never stop saying “Stop and think how that makes your sister feel” or, “How would you feel if someone treated you that way?” If done consistently, your message and rules will follow your child from the home into the community, and a loving relationship between siblings will  follow them into the future!

You can find a detailed discussion on siblings in chapter 8 of The Sex-Wise Parent:  A Parent’s Guide to Protecting Your Child, Strengthening Your Family and Talking to Your Kids About Sex Abuse and Bullying, now on special from Kindle for $1!