CALIFORNIA
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on March 20, 2014

A breaking story today has kept my phone ringing off the hook: A southern California third grader has been accused of sexually assaulting a classmate numerous times during the past year. School administrators only found out about it when other students at an after-school program reported what they saw. (Kudos to those kids!)

Tragic? Yes. Horrifying? Yes.

Preventable. YES!

But fear, panic and over-reaction are not how to prevent this kind of abuse.

Remember: third graders know little to nothing about sex. For the victim in this case, authorities believe that he didn’t report because he didn’t even have the vocabulary to describe what was happening to him.

So, what do you do?

You go back to the four ways to protect your preschooler from abuse. Number 3 is the relevant lesson here:

3) Looking and…