Tell me how you warn your teenage girls about older men

[PaxAeterna]

My 13 year has started to get her own life a bit more. I don’t know her friends parents as well as I used to when she was younger. She is doing more on her own. I just want to make sure she is capable of dealing with the inevitable creepy adults or older teenagers she may encounter.

Tell me how are you talking to your kids about abusive situations?

I’d focus on her and your relationship with her. Our feelings are our best compass so teach her to be tapped into what she feels all the time - whether it’s big or little things. If she chats to you about difficult friend situations etc, validate how she feels and encourage her to do whatever feels right to her (like having a break from them or finding new friends). Give her a healthy example of a relationship between the two of you so that she’ll have a measuring stick to inform her choices. When she comes across people who don’t meet the standard you’ve set, and she’s tapped into how it feels off in comparison, she’ll automatically bat them off herself. That’s the highest form of protection you can give. Don’t teach her to lose herself for the sake of others or please others (including you). She’ll carry those principles into romantic/sexual situations. Teach her about consent through every day stuff - you can teach children this from babyhood (e.g. not making them kiss grandparents/aunts/uncles when they’re not in the mood, or stopping tickling them as soon as they say stop).

Some people can move through life feeling they have a label on their foreheads asking people to be abusive towards them (from personal experience and from meeting other child abuse survivors). It can be because they haven’t had a great example of relationships and love from their parents, so they don’t have that emotional protection woven around them.

To say. Safe adults don't want to hang around kids. They do it to take advantage and because they're deviant or deficient

I think keeping it age appropriate is important

I am not sure it is warning her about "older men" (younger ones could pose the same issue) but I get your point. Mine were given quite a lot of freedom, but a few things I did with my 5, were

• if they were privileged enough to have a phone, then they had to accept it was with conditions (tracking, via snapchat, IOS or whatever). I NEVER snooped, and only used it as an absolute last resort. Bought the worst 2 of my 5 little battery packs because their phones were always "out of charge"
• With a friend always. No sleepovers unless I had made text contact with the mum, it was a condition. No permission from other mum, no sleepover.
• That if they met troublesome people (on the tube or whatever) they just moved away from them calmly and distance themselves. And if they were worried they would talk to someone official, driver, tube staff or at worst if no-one available, talk to a female in the carriage.
• Never get into a car, never go into a house unplanned unless you have checked in with me first.
• Helped them understand that their body was theirs, and nobody should be making them uncomfortable with how it was used (this is a bit clumsy but you will get my point - more when they were 15 than 13)
• Only the drink supplied - again it is a bit early for this, but when they were going to parties at 16, they were given a alcopop can or two to fit in (and drink, I was fine with this, some mumsnetters will be clutching their pearls at this)

I think it is really easy to think that older men are the bogeymen in this situation (and maybe they are lots of the time), but actually there are a lot of situations where a more benign and "acceptable" person is the cause of a young person being in an uncomfortable situation, including females, and their own friends. You tell them that the second they feel a bit uncomfortable, they call you. Sorry I have gone on a bit, but I realise that today they grow up sooner and hope it helps x

Thanks so much that is loads to think about. It’s frightening to see them launch out into the world on their own.

My dad's 80s/90s parenting techniques were always questionable. He told me at 14 as I was starting my first after school job that from now on and until I'm old, every man I meet will look at me and think about what it's like to have sex with me. What I do with that knowledge is up to me.

It was crass and he was probably drinking at the time, but I have to say I have thought about this at many points in my life from walking down a street to professional office environment. He could have phrased it better, but he's not wrong.

I told a male boss this conversation years ago and it really troubled him. He agreed it was true in general (without admitting the obvious). But as the father of a young girl with special needs, it really hit home for him. He told me he pondered this for quite some time how he will handle it when she's older. He died before she was old enough to have that conversation, unfortunately, and I wonder what and how he would have chosen to tell her.