So if you have chatted with me by now you realize that I am from the United States. I am frequently surprised by some of the different perspective of people here vs. there.
What originally caught my attention and brought me to the website was a news article about parents being upset of a missing child ad before a movie. Here in the United States our missing children our posted on milk cartons that are distributed at school. But in the UK people seemed to feel that there children were unnecessarily being frightened. In the United States parents are encouraged to role play "strangers with their kids." I pretend to be a stranger approaching my children with something that might attract a child like a puppy or candy. Then they react to the stranger. The theory is practice now and later your child will put those skillst to work. Like a fire or an earthquake drill.
The next difference that really shocked me was a parent stated that it was sad that children in the US had to be taught about good touches and bad. I have posted two websites related to your Britains child sexual abuse rates. The government sites shows that 12% girls had been sexually abused before 16 and 8% of boys...in the UK. And yet I have had serious arguements with mothers from the UK over educating your children about good touches and bad touches. Help me understand the how we can have such different opinions.
Pasted is a copy of the report and the website it was pulled from
"Of 2019 men and women (aged 15 years and over) interviewed as part of a MORI Survey of a nationally representative sample of Great Britain, 10% reported that they had been sexually abused before the age of 16 (12% of females; 8% of males). There was no increased risk associated with specific social class categories or area of residence. For all types of sexual abuse, the mean age of victims when first abused was significantly lower for females. Subjective reports of the effects of sexual abuse indicated that the majority (51%) felt harmed by the experience, while only 4% reported that it had improved the quality of their life. We estimate that there are over 4.5 million adults in Great Britain who were sexually abused as children, and that a potential 1,117,000 children will be sexually abused before they are 15 years of age. At least 143,000 of these will be abused within the family. The social and mental health implications are enormous, and the authors suggest that an effective intervention and prevention policy is urgently required."
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=4084825&dopt =Abstract
home.earthlink.net/~elnunes/stats.htm
Pitch in and make this one interesting. Maybe we can learn from each other.