Parent Sense on Halloween: a free gift from Imaginif
October 31, 2007
Imaginif gives you a once off safe treat to celebrate Halloween. FREE gift. Download a 12 page protective play tutorial, jam packed with games and activities designed to keep your kids safe. FREE gift link is at the end of this post.
And yet another chance to win a prize: ENTER NOW - Halloween competition soon to be drawn,
Halloween Safety. WIN Echdina in October.
The origin of Halloween describes Halloween’s move from Pagan to Christian to commercial. Scores of children dressed in costume, often taking on the image of things scary and forbidden, may tonight cross the boundary of your castle and demand your sweet obedience or they will turn you into a toad. Poof! [Megan hops away with a tadpole tail between her warty frog’s legs]
Despite the historical and opposing religious influences of the day, Halloween remains a day where the dead are remembered. Skeletons, ghosts, ghouls, zombies and vampires (okay, the undead too) will shake their images in our eyes and ensure that we feed their souls with the respect of a sweet life. On Halloween we are asked to remember the souls of those gone before us and to seek guidance from them.
Bah humbug…I’d rather feed the sweet life to something living and something with a tangible future: our children. Thousands of living, costumed Halloween predators feed off our children daily. Dressed in clothes that make them look like everybody else, they act as though they are angels. They trick our kids into accepting treats and convince our kids to keep their mouth’s shut, to not tell anyone of the special bond between the predator and child. They are Gorilla fighters, domestic terrorists, and we fail to recognise them because they are so well entrenched in our society.
Why does prevention of child abuse and the fight against domestic terrorism not have the commercial support of the corporate world? There are few global monoliths that support prevention of child abuse. There are, in percentage, few small businesses or even individuals ready to step up to the mark and commit to resourcing the eradication of child predators. Oh that we could dispose of child predators like we do the celebration of Halloween.
Child predators are everywhere. They look just like you and I. They are your neighbours, your spouse, your sibling, parents, friends preacher, teacher or civic leader. They have infiltrated the sanctity of your castle and your children are their targets - not just today, on Halloween, but on every day of the year.
Knowledge and vigilance is the job of we parents. Looking out for our children, looking out for the children of our communities, looking out for child safety and child protection in our global existence. Looking out requires a framework of what to look for and what to do. Do you know what to do to keep your child safe from those domestic terrorists?
Before your children venture out to have a fun filled evening, I urge you to educate yourself about how super easy it is to drop protective comments into conversations and everyday play. Research supports that child safety is greatly increased when carers are able to seamlessly weave protective play into daily life.
This is Parent’s Sense - something that every parent really should have - Imaginif’s Halloween gift to parents everywhere: Parent Sense. May the power of the Sense be with you. Have a happy and safe Halloween.
Article by Megan Bayliss
Related articles:
Halloween Safety for Teenagers
Halloween Safety Tips for Every Safe Child
Sexual abuse and long-term survival
October 31, 2007
Sexual abuse has a drastic effect on physical, emotional, cognitive and sexual development. It can leave both physical and emotional scars.
Sexual abuse disrupts the attachment cycle, making it difficult to build future trusting relationships with other people; “How can I attach to another person after I’ve been violated?”
One way that young people survive sexual abuse is to disassociate from what is happening to them. Thinking about it is too painful. Survivors hope that maybe, if they don’t allow themselves to dwell on the event, the memories will magically fade away.
Unfortunately, time does not heal all wounds. Time won’t push you forward. If you take a passive roll in your healing, time will go on, but you will be left standing in that same scarred and scary place.
Survivors of sexual abuse might wind up as workers in the sex trade. They serve as strippers or prostitutes, in an attempt to exert power over the very area that has caused them the most harm.
Other survivors masquerade as super-women (or super-men). They maintain a high level of activity, hoping that the nightmares and flashbacks will fade away.
Life is made up of events and the emotions connected to them. We cannot disassociate from emotions in the long term. They come creeping back into our lives, in the form of intrusive thoughts, flashbacks and nightmares.
Telling the complete details is painful because, in that telling, survivors re-experience some of the same scary emotions that they felt when this violation first happened to them.
And yet, the only way to get over the abuse is to work through it. You have to deal with that painful part of yourself - and there is power when you give voice to things that have traumatized you.
This is why sexual abuse survivor Cece Norwood calls her organization Nirvana Now. By the time sexual abuse survivors are ready to seek help, they want instant healing and immediate results. It is difficult to summon up the emotional energy necessary for the road ahead.
The road to recovery might include traditional counseling, involvement in a support group or partnering up with a life coach.
It is important to be picky when choosing a therapist. An inexperienced counselor might open up a Pandora’s Box of memories during the first session and then saying, “Sorry, our time is up.”
For people who require financial assistance to receive medical care, this limits the amount of options available. The counselor might be inexperienced, in an entry level position, with plans to move in on the near future. Perhaps he or she is fresh out of graduate school and “experimenting” with ideas from their professor, rather than being experienced in counseling sexual abuse survivors.
After attaining her Masters in Counseling, Cece Norwood has made it her life’s work to assist survivors in their journey toward hope and wholeness. Having met her in person, and even co-presented a workshop with her, I want to promote her as one of the foremost authorities on recovering from sexual abuse.
WIN tomorrow by entering the draw TODAY
October 30, 2007
Last day to enter the draw for
Halloween Safety: WIN Echidna in October
Don’t make me force you. Choose treat before trick: Treat the symptoms of failing child protection and turn tricks of predator manipulation into best child safety parenting practice.
Enter now. Drawn tomorrow (remember that Australia is a day ahead of U.S.A, Europe and the U.K.
Tomorrow is Halloween. Remember to keep your kids safe while Trick or Treating.
Good father award for protective play
October 30, 2007
The father placed a hat and shoes on his little boy and patted the child on the behind as the toddler turned and wobbled toward the park swings. A tube of dripping sun screen was stuck under the huge man’s arm pit. The white droplets were matting his long underarm hairs. Unaware and in pride, big daddy stood and watched his child head straight for danger.
My heart was in my mouth and I was ready to jump up, but father calmly and quickly paced toward the two big kids on the swing and held up his hand, authoritatively, in a STOP fashion. Both swings slowed down as the swing riders dug their feet into the sand on the next down run. The father smiled and nodded in thanks at the swing stoppers and bent to pick up his little boy.
“Those swings are dangerous,” daddy cooed. “Good big kids for stopping and not knocking you over. Let’s go and play in the sand pit. It’s safer there.” As he walked off, he mouthed “thank you” to the kids on the swing and gave them a wink.
While I walked home, my mind processed the amazing child protection I had just witnessed. He did not yell at his child to force them into a catatonic state of fear and exploitative constipation, neither did he growl the big kids who were just doing what kids do. He took full adult responsibility for protecting his child positively and against all types of environmental dangers (hat, shoes, sun, etc). I so wished that there was a community child safety award to bestow upon this father. I wanted to showcase his best parenting practice and encourage others to strive toward such protective park play. In the absence of an award, I decided to blog it and publicly give that Dad the thumbs up.
Child protection is the everyday things we do to keep our kids safe. Dob in a child protector - who have you seen acting protectively toward children? Who deserves the thumb up?
Fear for kids as crocodile and man steal their safety
October 29, 2007
Headlines of The Cairns Post today: Hunt for child predator and Fear for kids as croc feasts on dog.
An aggressive 2 meter crocodile has been cheered on by a group of children sitting on the bank of a suburban water way in Cairns, Australia. The croc was seen chomping on a dead dog and lunged to take a bird off the side of the bank.
Allegedly, as the man eater dined, a group of children played beside the water way and in childlike curiosity and amazement, watched the hungry crocodile feast. Reports indicate that adults were present but that no attempts were made to move children to safer vantage points away from waters edge. One worried adult stated that they witnessed a child playfully pretend to push another child into the water.
The second headline (albeit the major headline) draws attention to a child abduction attempt at a local market. Thankfully, the little girl escaped the clutches of the predator and ran to safety.
Out of curiosity, what are the headlines of your local paper today? And, which predator would you consider to pose the greater risk to children: a crocodile or a child abductor?
More Cairns news about a different Croc on a different day: Croc found in city centre drain
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