To have called NSPCC

[melmo26]

I have name changed for this for obvious reasons.

My 9yo daughter asked to speak to me tonight and was rather upset.
She said she was scared to tell me something and that she was really worrying.

A boy from school has been making her play a dare game. Where you are not allowed to say no and have to do it. The dare game involves them having to take out their privates. She said she didn’t like this game but the boy in question made her do it. She is not the only child involved.

I called NSPCC for advice as I didn’t know if this was natural curiosity or not. They have said it doesn’t sound like and and will be contacting the child protection team.

I feel absolutely sick to my stomach, I know I have done the right thing but am sitting here shaking. I live in an absolutely tiny village on the outskirts of all friendships. I just know this is going to cause problems and no one is going to see this from my child’s point of view.

I am so scared of the repocussions, have I done the right thing? Am I wrong to have reported this?

Please help me try to make sense of this. Does anyone know what happens next?

You’ve done the right things

Dontgo tothe other mum.

Good luck today x

Don't approach the mum. She will likely react in anger (from shame) and won't be conductive to the situation. Let the proper people deal with it

Well I did speak to my daughter this morning.
She has said it was all a game and everyone was laughing and joking about it. She said she was just scared to tell me in case she got in trouble for doing it.
She said she just doesn’t want to play it anymore after finding out at school it’s wrong.

Now I feel I have done the wrong thing. I’m going to call NSPCC back this morning and tell them what’s been said and hopefully it will be passed on to SS.

Oh god what if I have totally overreacted

You haven't overreacted.

She's a child. She cant possibly know the seriousness of the situation. And these things seem like a game til the one day it's not.

Dobt panic about calling them here. In years to come she will realise what happened and be held you called

The context of 'a game' makes no difference. The 'laughing and joking' does not make it OK.

NSPCC have been told, and will react as appropriate.

Tell the school, including about the 'game' context. Every adult in school will have received safeguarding training, and so they should react appropriately.

YOU HAVE DONE THE RIGHT THING - your job is to tell the appropriate people, look after your daughter, and then do nothing else (ie don't talk to the other mum, don't talk about it with other parents, don't necessarily seek updates as long as your DD is happy).

DO NOT stop the wheels you have already started.

Dear Melmo, how awful for you and your daughter. Tread gently and love strongly. Your daughter will come through this best by knowing that she is loved, believed and listened to. At this stage, you have no obligations to anyone else except to your daughter. The feelings of the school, the other children involved and their parents are not relevant.

I can hear from your posts that you are fearful of repercussions in the community. Take strength from knowing that your child has told you. Report it factually to the school and the governors. Say that you want it dealt with gently and as quietly as possible and that you do not want this to be discussed in any way with any of the children at school today. If they need to take action today, they can put in place a supervised lunchtime activity for all children that does not alert any of the children to the fact that this has come out.

Tell them that you refuse to give permission for this to be discussed with your daughter today and that you will seek advice from her GP and from NSPCC as to how best to proceed to ensure that she is protected from any impact associated with this. The fact that it is Friday is a good thing, the school management and governors can use the weekend to decide what to do and ask for a meeting first thing on Monday morning for them to reassure you that your child will not be blamed or shamed in any way.

Let her talk when she is ready, be there to listen but don't be pushed into forcing her to talk to others. While it is important for this to be investigated, it is not important that your child discusses this with other people. That is in their interests and not her's. You will find the right time and place for her to talk this through and understand that she is not to blame and this is not her fault, that it is wrong but brings no shame to her.

I am sorry this has brought up things from your childhood and I would strongly encourage you to seek counselling for yourself. It is very hard to separate the pain we feel on behalf of our children from the pain we feel from our own past.

I sense that you feel isolated and I truly hope that you have someone who can listen to you and give you a hug today.

You haven’t overreacted - children often retract disclosures for fear of what might happen. It’s very common for them to say it was only a game, I was ok with what happened etc etc because they know on some level it’s not ok and now people know. Leave things as they are, SS have a duty to investigate and will do that now regardless of your daughter saying it was a game.

Keep reassuring your daughter that it was right to tell you, even if it was a game and she was laughing etc. It’s ok for her to tell you and it’s ok for her to change her story afterwards, it’s a normal reaction in these situations. The very worst that can happen is that she learns you’ll always take her seriously, and that’s a good thing.

The game is inappropriate and school have an obligation to ensure that it does not continue. You have not overreacted. You have asked for advice from NSPCC and they do not believe you have overreacted. It does need to be dealt with gently but firmly by the school. She may not be the only child who thinks the game should stop based on the 'Pants are Private' lesson in school. She knows the game should stop, that might be enough for her.

she's a child she can't possibly know the seriousness of the situation exactly. It is good that she is laughing and joking, it shows she is no longer worried about it, now she has told you melmo

She will most likely forget about this once it has blown over, as kids do forget these things with no ill effect usually. It is much harder for a mother though, as we worry about our children and have fierce desire to protect them.

If she does feel sad about it again, remind her that she has you and that you had to tell to make sure the boy got help to save him from a nasty situation. Remind her none of this is her fault- she did the right thing telling you.

((((hugs))) to you melmo and yumsy and others on here. You will get through this.

Although I was shaking and tearful for a few days afterwards when it happened to me, I had no idea that what I had let those boys do to me was so wrong. It hurt, it made me feel humiliated and powerless but I had no idea of the seriousness of what I had done wrong until I was told off so soundly by the teacher.

At 9 or 10 children are still very innocent of these kinds of games , but it i snormal for a child to keep something a secret for fear of being told off. I did blurt it out to my mum because I was so distressed I could not hide it but also because I did not realise the seriousness of what I had done (in the eyes of adults).

Had I realised the seriousness of what I had been doing I would have kept quiet I think. It is the adults who know these "games" are wrong, children have little sense of that in most cases.

OP's DD sounds very normal and both OP and DD have handled things well.

All the best melmo and do not let them blame your DD.

Notavictim36 You hadn’t done anything wrong.

notavictim36 Dear lady, you did nothing wrong, that teacher was very wrong to have told you off and to make you feel ashamed for what was done to you. You were not asking for it, regardless of how it was framed at the time. It is impossible to tell how we will react to things that happen in our lives and we are the sum of all of our experiences. Your feelings about what happened to you at the time and the other events in your life are valid and real. It can be helpful to frame things in a different way to allow ourselves to deal with them, but you can also face the things that happened, accept them for what they were and accept your feelings about them at the time and how other events frame our feelings about them. Finding a way to heal and not allow them to overshadow our lives is difficult but accepting that things that were done to you were wrong is part of this. I wish you healing and love.

The nspcc are very experienced in dealing with incidents like this and will investigate approximately.

It may simply involve the school adding something to the sex education class about appropriate behaviour.

But if something more sinister is involved then at least it's on their radar.

Op, even if you told nspcc that it was a game and it's fine, they won't care, they will still pass it for investigation because they HAVE TO. And that is absolutely the right thing to do.

Just because your dd doesn't see the situation as an adult would, doesn't mean it's ok and just a game. Maybe it was to her or maybe she's worried about being in trouble, but nobody knows the motives of the other kids or why they were doing that, so it NEEDS to be looked into.

Tbh, I would have struggled to send her to school until the school had investigated and ensured it would not happen again. I hope everything turns out ok

I don't quite understand why you've asked your DD more questions tbh. NSPCC told you not to probe further and just let her talk about it if she wanted to, so that would have been the best thing to do.

Tbh, at this age, if the boy is 9, he could still be just very immature, and being very silly, in which case he will simply need a firm chat about private parts being private. If it is something more complicated that has come to light, the school will be able to deal with it with the help of SS.

It's that kind of minimising that results in this crap in the first place. Always an excuse? Boys will be boys. They are just sily and immature. Meanwhile in the rest of us have told kids since they are walking not to be rude and pull their pants down.

And the nspcc may have advised not to. However I can't imagine how impossible it must be as a parent to not be able to talk about it. I don't think we should comment on that tbh

bless you forgiveness and jengnr Thanks. I think I need to learn some self validation skills- I thought I had but I keep getting stuck

I think you did the right thing in questioning further, I'm sure you would have used your judgement as to whether dd was ok with that.

One of the very first things you are taught in safeguarding (at least our class was) is the importance of clarifying a situation. Things don't always mean the same to us as they do to a child and you need to report the right thing. I made that mistake with my own dd, training right out the window. Got an overview, thought best to leave it and not probe, and later found out although equally mentally awful, the issue wasn't (thankfully) on quite the level we first thought. Gentle questioning is a good idea.

It's that kind of minimising that results in this crap in the first place. Always an excuse? Boys will be boys. They are just sily and immature. Meanwhile in the rest of us have told kids since they are walking not to be rude and pull their pants down.

Lougle was not minimising. She made the sensible point that it might not be an indicator that the boy is being abused or exposed to sexually inappropriate material, but that it also might indicate that so best to call it in.

I played and instigated games like that. We would pretend to be doctors and inspected each others' private parts. We were children with childish curiosity. There was nothing more to it than that.

OP was right to call it in though, just in case.

Thanks all for your messages.

I’m not minimising anything. I want my daughter to feel safe and protected but at the same time don’t know if it was natural curiosity or not.

After speaking with NSPCC again, they advised that once the referral is made, it’s made. SS decide what happens next. And I’m fine with that. I told them I’m more than happy for them to come see us and speak with my daughter so they can decide for themselves what has been happening.
I informed school this morning of the situation, they are going to speak with NSPCC themselves and see where we go from there.
I’m so glad it’s the weekend coming to try and clear my head a bit.

melmo26 I'm glad you got further advice from the NSPCC that reassured you, and that the school also reassured you that they would speak to the NSPCC. As redoceanwave said , I wasn't minimising anything, but was simply commenting that there is no definite line at which this behaviour becomes 'definitely sinister' and a sign that a child has been inappropriately sexualised versus benignly, albeit inappropriately, investigating bodily differences. I remember 'playing nurses' with a (same sex) friend in her bedroom and getting caught. I also remember a boy who used to expose himself to us in the playground in some 'game' in a corner of the field. Neither were seen as anything other than 'high jinks' and neither were anything other than bodily curiosity.

OP, you did the right thing. Keep going with your instincts and give yourself time to process and react as you find out more and any action is taken.

Your DD did the right thing too, she is so brave to open up and it's clear that in doing so she is asking for help and she trusts you implicitly.