Consent and respect – What you need to teach your child
Day in and day out when I look at the news, every second or third item is about some harassment, molestation, rape or murder of a woman or the girl child. A good question for us to ponder is – Do we as a society understand – Consent and Respect of the other?
What is even more shocking are these recent reports of young children, adolescents, minors engaging in molestation, sexual assault or even rape against even younger children.
In a recent incident in Bangalore, a 10 year old boy allegedly groped a woman in a residential locality, which was captured on video. The women raised an alarm and confronted the boy. The woman said that people believed her only when she showed them the video.
Where do children learn these inappropriate behaviours?
Where do children learn these inappropriate behaviours? How do they get to believe that they can act like this and will not face any consequences? If a child thinks that touching another person inappropriately / forcefully / with out their consent – is okay, what can they do next, unless they get to learn that this NOT OK. Who is responsible to teaching the child that such behaviour is UNACCEPTABLE, WRONG and PROHIBITED.
It is important to understand that people who commit major crimes, do not start with that. They may have started with petty crimes and graduate to more heinous ones.
On other hand smart phones and internet are in the hands of every child. Unrestricted and unsupervised access to internet – leads them to view pornography. Horrendous videos of molestation and rape are available openly on the internet. Children access them and attempt to imitate them in real life, with no understanding or fear of what is NOT OK about it.
Objectification of women is so rampant and is celebrated in Media – be it movies, music videos, lyrics and social media. Recent success and popularity of movies where women are getting beaten or subjugated, shows a mirror to the societal reality.
Are we condemning such behaviour or condoning ?
Every single person that justifies this action or online comments that defend / trivialize such incidents are condoning – encouraging this behaviour. On the other side the societal expectation is that the person molested / assaulted / harassed would not speak up and if they do, there are enough people around to shame them in real life and online.
Are we teaching our children our wards Consent and Respect ?
How do we as a society contribute to this degradation, and how can we learn to be responsible enough to ensure that everyone, especially children learn to respect boundaries (their own and others’), understand consent, understand what is appropriate and what is inappropriate?
We all, as parents, families, social groups – neighbours, teachers, society as a whole are responsible to teach appropriate behaviours and censure inappropriate behaviours. That it wont happen to my child or my child will not act inappropriately, needs to be a belief – that is rooted in reality – based on what we imbibe in our children.
Inner Dawn Counsellor Kala Balasubramanian’s views featured in Deccan Herald on 20-Nov-24
https://www.deccanherald.com/india/karnataka/bengaluru/new-concern-sex-crimes-by-kids-3283493