How can I tell if my 3 y.o. grandson was molested?
About one in three girls and one in seven boys will be sexually abused before the age of 17 (Briere & Elliott, 2003). Most of them will be abused by someone they know (Snyder, 2000), not some unemployed crazy person on the street. Yes, that’s true. What you’re leaving out, of course, is that the vast, vast, vast, VAST majority of those cases the “someone they know” is a family member or friend of the family. Not a child-care worker. You don’t say so explicitly, but if this is a child care facility or pre-school (vs. an in-home care situation) there are likely firm rules in place about two-deep adult supervision that would make the odds of this happening – especially during a routine diaper change – so low as to be virtually impossible. Whatever else you do you should stop talking to him about it. Things will only get more confusing if you keep asking him questions about it. Instead, ask yourself these questions: does he seem excited to go back to school? Or scared? Anxious? That in and
It’s easy to become alarmed by things very young kids say. Our neighbour’s four-year old told us last week that ‘mummy keeps falling down the stairs because daddy pushes her’. We know this hasn’t happened. It’s just one of half a dozen ridiculous things she makes up every day. The next day it was an imaginary kitten that fell down the stairs and had to go to hospital. And boys, especially around age 3-4, seem to be completed obsessed with their penises (peni?) I have at least one bizarre conversation a week with my four-year-old son about his ‘winky’ (I’ve no idea where he got that name for it). Thirdly, little boys do get various bits of crud stuck around the base of the penis, and this needs wiping away when you change a diaper/nappy. I’d be fine with someone wiping my child’s penis as part the post-toilet clean-up, if necessary. But most importantly, you can’t really take some random thing a small child says in isolation and act on it. You’ve got to look at the whole picture – patte
I have a decent amount of experience with this age, and there are a few things for you to think about: Some kids are prone to make things up. Some kids have better verbal skills than others. In terms of a statement like this, I wouldn’t automatically dismiss it just because of the age of the child. I used to watch a 3-year-old who would definitely know the difference between wiped and licked. He was not prone to imagining things and insisting they were true. Obviously, I wouldn’t take everything he said at 100% face value, but he was reliable enough that I would be concerned about a statement like this. I wouldn’t dismiss it just because of his age. Of course, you know better than we do whether your child is more reality-based, or more prone to horse-in-the-backyard kinds of things. One factor to consider. The other part to consider is the amount of access the male daycare worker has to your grandson. Do daycare workers regularly have access the the children behind closed doors? What a
But I needed to make it explicit that this something that must be dismissed unless you find much more compelling evidence than the stories of a toddler. No, this is wrong. If a child speaks up, you don’t dismiss it. You bring in knowledgeable, expert people to determine through a proper investigation if it’s likely true, or a made-up story. The attitude of “this doesn’t happen to children, and if they say it does, they’re making it up,” is not new-found wisdom after the excesses of the 80s and early 90s, but actually an outdated and pernicious way of thinking that must never again be the standard for how children are treated in our society. Were I you, I’d call Child Protective Services.
I would talk about it with his parents and encourage them to speak with the director of the daycare center. Perhaps it is something as simple as the employee saying “Just a lick and a promise” when changing children/helping them change (for those not familiar with the US saying “Just a lick and a promise,” it means “instead of a full bath, one gives a quick rinse or wipe-down like a cat licking its paws, as one promises to do later”). Perhaps it is something as simple as vocabulary confusion (we use “lick” to mean a lot of things, like “put a lick of paint on that”). Or perhaps your grandson was molested. But the thing is that it’s something to take seriously and inquire into, but not to freak out about.
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