To think that kids at secondary school should be taught about relationship red flags?

[toptramp]

Of all things in my life, it was my abusive relationship that almost killed me and my career. I am scarred by it and my career is no way as good as it could have been if I had seen the warning signs and ran for my life.
Moreover I am still single as I have had problems establishing them since said abuse.
I have heard that the goverment are thinking of teaching kids about dating abuse and how to avoid it? I met my abuser at the age of 16 and there was absolutely no guidance from parents or teachers on the warning signs and noone helped me get out of it even when it was obvious that I was becoming ill and damaged by it.

It is all very well having good qualifications as I do but if you meet the wrong partner, your life can get messed up pretty quickly.

Such lessons may also target potential abusers and teach them respect in relationships.

PSHE is maybe one lesson a week? Dead easy to slip through the net.

I think schools do cover this in SRE lessons. Clearly from this thread, not every school. Bit like sex ed really - it's compulsory and extensive, and doesn't always make a difference.

So yes, schools probably could do a lot better, and what can be achieved there will help.

But the important and formative messages are required earlier (before the current teen culture gets any hold, and before hormones are racing), and this is a job for parents. We cannot expect schools to solve this by the provision of information.

BTW: I do see this as a part of PSHE; I would not want to see more time taken from the timetable.

My point was not that children shouldn't be taught anything, but rather that teaching about relationship red flags is not what needs to be taught. It's the self esteem side of it to give people the confidence to say no/walk away etc. But I don't really know how you teach that.

It's something I worry about teaching my own children. It's not something I was explicitly taught but to this day I remain astonished about the crap men and women put up with.

Find us an alternative Custardo.

my posts have been nothing but solution orientated and focussed. my solution is giving the tools to parents

Would you prefer your daughter to be taught at school what an abusive relationship looked like, or the inner workings of pythagoras?

pythagoras, becuase i think it is my role to teach my children about healthy relationships

The great thing about learning about relationships in school is that

a) you have a captive audience
this assumes interest, and the time given to this subject over and above any other subject already being taught or that could be taught from my list - is very small in comparison to a parent who can teach a child these things all the time

b) you will be able to reinforce the same ideas about healthy relationships across all cultures and classes

parents should do this
c) no children will slip through the net

parents could ensure this and schools let children who cant even read and write slip through the net, so assuming that a brief one hour talk a year on DV is going to change anything on a large scale is naive i would suggest.

d) it doesn't take a huge amount of time out of the 36 school weeks available
EXACTLY - i propose the small amount of time given to this very important subject is not enough at all. it is important, along with many other socialising factors for a child and should be part of a parents teachong

The nanny state has sat on her arse for far too long IMO.

your proposal is exactly nanny state orientated - by bassing parents in a paternalistic vision of state knows best.

at the very best it will be done fleetingly

A vast majority of parents are in no better position to explain Pythagoras than the inner workings of human relationships. The whole point of school is to teach children vital things that society cannot depend upon parents to teach them.

Many kids are now growing up with only one parent. They have witnessed a divorce (often an acrimonious one), and really do not have any way of experience in what is and isnt acceptable in a relationship.

I didnt, I grew up with two parents in a stable and happy relationship, and my mother discussed contraception etc with me, but she had been with my dad since she left school at 15, so her experience of relationships was very limited.

I am sure I would have benefitted greatly from advice during my teenage years, and it may have helped me to avoid some of the shit relationships that I had.

But you haven't explained how and when parenting lessons on this topic would be given, how you would get uninterested parents to turn up and why this is better than just talking to kids directly. (the immersive factor only works if it is a topic the parents really care about - how are these lessons going to make the parents really care?)

my solution is giving the tools to parents

Custardo, I will ask again, HOW?

How do you propose that this should be done?

i think i'll come back to this thread later becusae all my posts which suggest that the government should invest in parents and give parents the tools to affect cultural change - are being either ignored or reduced.

i work with womens aid occasionally, and there is an absolute lightbulb moment for some women when they realise that actually their relationship is not normal.

i think if this was part of a toolkit for parents where parents were taught this amongst other things, that the lightbulb moment could occur. ~i dont think that the brief amount of time that can be given to this ins chools will affect any cultural change if the dominant culture in a childs life is violence.

no custardo, nobody is ignoring your posts at all, we are asking HOW you propose the government implement this and do it?

But you haven't said how, Custardo. 'Giving the tools to parents' is a great phrase, but what does it mean practically? How would you see this being accomplished?

Should all parents go to school to get parenting lessons? I can see the DM headlines now....

I grew up with my parents modelling a very abusive relationship to me and my siblings. The effect it had in me was to make me run a million miles from any man who showed even the slightest character traits of my father. It made my sister go for carbon copies of him. Even though I fought against it, it wasn't until I read Lundy Bancroft that I realised HOW abusive my parents' relationship was and how low me and my siblings' self-esteem was because of my father's constant mental abuse and my mothers' acceptance that this was normal and it was because he loved us really. I would have loved someone to say 'no, this isn't right' because it would have validated what I was already feeling but dismissing because my father was so charming and lovely to 'outsiders' so how could they all be wrong?

YANBU OP and I'm glad to hear that some version of this is already being taught in PHSE - I just hope it IS part of the curriculum and gets reinforced to both boys and girls.

By the time people are parents, it is often too late to do anything.

The alternative is vetting who should actually become a parent. Which I think is rather a good albeit unworkable idea.

I find Work Experience rather a waste of time in the curriculum of a year 10 pupil. The thinking within schools seems to be that lots of young people come from a home where both parents don't work so they never see the reality of working life. Therefore it is a waste of time for children who have working parents.

Interestingly our school runs an evening meeting every year for parents which covers Alcohol, smoking and the risks that can be found on the Internet like Mumsnet. If they were asked to attend a meeting about relationships and boundaries it would be seen as rather intrusive not to mention incredibly patronising to the majority of parents who are in perfectly respectful, functional and happy relationships.

The recent "street grooming" cases show that the children most likely to fall into appallingly abusive relationships are in the care system , I suppose that good quality PHSE lessons might possibly have helped some of them.

YANBU.

Does anyone have any objection to your children being taught road safety in school, especially as so many children are injured as pedestrians?

Then no one should object to lessons about DV which kills two women a week and harms many more, not to mention the generational harm which is perpetuated by DV.

I don't think work experience is a waste of time for children with working parents. It can give really solid ideas about what jobs involve beyond getting dressed and leaving the house in the morning. My DM was a geriatric nurse, which is valuable stuff, but of no relevance to my career in computing, whereas my short work placement gave me a much better idea of what the jobs I was interested in might feel like.

lovecat I spoke to my 83yearold mum yesterday. She told me she went to a lovely family party with her friends and the father was so nice, he didn't fly off the handle all the time. She said nobody felt nervous around him etc etc.

I had to say to her 'that's normal Mum'. I had to tell her that men didn't have to be like my Dad (or my dp).

I agree with the OP - a lot of children won't be taught this from their parents because their parents may also not recognise that it is wrong. I could have benefited from this being taught in school.

:( realhousewife I know, my mum (late 70's) often comments to me how calm DH is and how good he is to 'help out' around the house... I can't get her to see that this is entirely normal. Her defence of my dad remains that he was 'a good provider'. Actually, we were dirt poor until she went back to work (he seemed to spend most of the 70's on strike and spent half his wages down the pub because 'it's his money') but that gets glossed over too.

Maybe the answer is to target the people who will need this kind of input. Rather like speeding, if you get caught speeding you have to go on a course to address your behaviour. There isn't a whole lot of point making it available to people who don't speed.

The social initiatives that have been implemented never actually get to the people it needs to reach. Look at the 5 a day campaign, it compounded the knowledge for the people who already know and care about nutrition but the Pot Noodle and chips brigade didn't care then and they don't care now.

Let's take the knowledge to the people who need it, the children in care, the children from abusive homes. Every time a gp, teacher or school nurse raises a query about inadequate/abusive/negligent parenting that family can be targeted. I'm reasonably certain most would accept guidance especially if a refusal would lead to some kind of social services intervention.