S2 Ep10 Sleepovers and School Camps
===
Kristi: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the CAPE podcast. CAPE standing for the Child Abuse Prevention and Education podcast. My name is Christy McVie and I am an ex West Australian police officer who spent 10 years with the police where I was trained as a specialist child interviewer and a child abuse detective. This podcast is all about sharing what I learned, saw and knew whilst investigating child sexual abuse in the police force.
It is also about sharing the knowledge that I gained in that time that helped me with my own parenting of my then two year old daughter. My mission is to help share my knowledge and to help you in your role as parents to keep your kids safe along with guest experts in the field of child abuse prevention and education, both in person and online.
Thank you so much for joining in on the fight to prevent child sexual abuse. Your kids will thank you for it.
Hello, and welcome back to the Cape podcast. And I don't know why I [00:01:00] say it like that every time the Cape podcast. So today's episode is going to be just little old me talking about a couple of the blogs that I've put through, put up on my website the last couple of weeks. I just wanted to share some of this information.
Cause not all of you are subscribers to my mailing list. Not all of you are subscribers to my blog. And. This information is so important sometimes that I feel if I can get it in as many modalities as possible, you know, if it's on social media, if it's on the blog, if it's on the podcast, then we're getting, you know, it's getting shared around in as many ways possible.
So, and the other cool thing is, is that when I talk on the podcast, you're going to get the unedited. Crazy version of me, just dribbling stuff and thoughts and feelings, and you never know what might come out. So yeah, so in the last few weeks, I've put out two, two blogs because of yeah, people have just been asking for stuff [00:02:00] and it's so cool when I get requests.
Because that's what you know, helps me know what you wanna hear and what you wanna know about. So I'm always open to requests, which you can email through to me at [email protected] or go to my website and just fill in a, fill in a thing. Fill in a thing go into the contact form and you can, you know, send a request through, make a comment on one of my tiktoks or on my social media, wherever you, wherever you can get me.
You know, if you want me to talk about something, I'm happy to talk about it. Especially in the last few months, I have had lots of requests, lots and lots and lots of requests. So I am just giving what the people want. . So again, all right. So let's start at the sleep over safety guide. I've just released this is, this came out in my podcast.
I'm on the podcast right now. See, I'm dribbling. It's Monday. I'm recording this on a Monday. My brain's not braining very well. [00:03:00] Sometimes when I get on here, I think I'm going to try really hard not to sound like I don't know what I'm doing. And then I dribble and I sound like I don't know what I'm doing.
I really do know what I'm doing. Anyway, so on the blog, I released this last week, but it's in the newsletter. The newsletters already come out when you actually get this recording. And I talk about sleepover safety. And in that blog, I talk about the fact that, you know, when I was a kid, sleepovers were actually a escape for me.
And I say that because my own childhood family, my, and, you know, with no shade on my parents or on my family, it wasn't the greatest environment. And I've talked a bit about my parents and my upbringing over the last 30 plus podcast episodes, but you know, it wasn't the easiest relationship with my parents.
They were much older. They didn't really know. They didn't really have energy or time for young kids. And [00:04:00] so I was quite often went off on sleepovers. Had really good memories. I remember being, you know, 11, 12, and I, you know, you six, seven and sitting in my friend's kitchens with their moms talking to their moms.
That's how much I love sleepovers because I got to see moms in their element. Whereas I didn't really have that maternal figure in my life. So I used to think that their moms were the best. People ever. And in fact, I'm still friends with some of my friends from primary school and their moms still love me.
I mean, what's not to love really. So yeah, so I used to spend so much time with their parents and stuff. And then when I became a police officer and I started learning about child safety, I realized that sleepovers are actually very dangerous. When it comes to child protection and child abuse sleepovers enable and allow abuse so much quicker and easier than what, you know, if they weren't happening.
I'm not saying [00:05:00] that all sleepovers are dangerous, but. There is some very there's some major considerations that we need to have when we have kids in our care as a sleepover or when we send our kids to someone else for a sleepover. And that includes with family. Because sleepovers enable and allow For an adult to have power and control over a child, whether they are family or there's someone else.
And it's not just adults. It could be older siblings or older relatives or older children in the home. It allows, enables a child to be quite vulnerable when there's no safe adults around or their adults that are around now. If you've heard me talk about safe adults before, you know not all adults are safe to kids.
You know, I say in my blog that sleepovers are a huge risk factor if the family or person entrusted with your child's safety isn't safe. Even older children in the, in the care of an unsafe person and family are at risk to do due to many factors. Looking back on my time, [00:06:00] there was, there was at least one or two parents in my childhood.
That were unsafe. They actually had one dad had, has been charged with child sex offenses. Nothing ever happened when I was there to me, obviously. But he was charged. And there was a trial, et cetera, with the neighbor's child. I think that the circumstances were different. I was very, without even knowing about my early warning signs, I was very clued in.
I used to listen to my gut feelings. I used to you know, if I wasn't feeling comfortable or if an adult didn't make me feel comfortable or eked me out or whatever, I was very careful and cautious around them. I didn't put myself in rooms where they Could lock me in them. I, you know, I, I kept away, I kept my distance.
So I think my inbuilt early warning signs, which I didn't know what they were at the time, but you know, that's what we teach kids now is early warning signs were very strong. So I [00:07:00] had a you know, I didn't have that. There wasn't many opportunities for people to. Abuse me, but it could have been a whole different could have been a whole different situation had I not been as, as clued into my early warning signs as I was and clued into my feelings as I was you know, some children struggle to identify when they feel unsafe.
They struggled to speak up for themselves. I was quite not so much for myself. I wouldn't usually speak up for myself because I was a very big people pleaser as a child wasn't until I was in the police that I got that that kind of got pushed out of me. But when I was a, when I was a child, I would stand up for other kids first.
I would protect other kids first before I'd protect myself. It's interesting when I think back about it, how I became a police officer, et cetera. But anyway, so. Let's move on. So here are a few risk factors that we need to consider when our children go and sleep over at someone's house. I'll caveat this with, I [00:08:00] might be an ex detective, an ex police officer.
I have my own views and opinions based on the experiences that I've seen, the things that I've seen and heard. So I have, the reason why I share this stuff with you is because I have good reason to believe what I believe, but I'm never going to tell you what to do with your kids. I hope that you'll take what I say and listen carefully and take it, take it as advice and, you know, hopefully implement some of these things in your lives, but I'm never going to tell you what to do.
Okay. So back to the risk factors. So differing beliefs and values between homes. What I think is not okay or safe. Someone else might think it's okay and safe and allow children to do it whilst in their care. A. K. A. walking around in the streets at night. You know, if you've got tweens, teens allowing them to drink, staying up late, having their devices on them all night some websites, some movies.
I remember when my daughter was about 10 and she went for a sleepover, [00:09:00] for a birthday sleepover. And I know that I say, I'm not a sleeper. I'm not dead against sleepovers. I'm just very cautious about who I allow my daughter to sleep over with. And this one particular sleepover I was with her best friend and friends.
And when she came home, she had told me that they'd watched an R rated movie. It was a horror movie and all of the kids had nightmares for weeks after that. And. I was very upset about it at the time because I had had, I'd done my checks and due diligence, believed that this adult wasn't going to allow that to happen believed or anything like I, I trusted that.
And then, you know, obviously that didn't happen and I was quite upset about it. And she might have been 11 because I wasn't really letting her have sleepovers then. But anyway, so differing beliefs between the values and this happens in grandparents homes as well. Grandparents will just sometimes not even, you know, as soon as mom and dad are [00:10:00] away, they just do what you said they couldn't do.
So, yeah. So, the next one is lack of supervision and oversight. So, not supervising play for younger children due to the children being busy and happy. So when kids are little and they're, they're all getting along and everyone's happy, parents tend to go, Oh, well, they're happy and they're distracted, hands off.
Let's go relax, do, you know and that can sometimes lead to, you know, something happening in that time or just, you know, you don't have to be hovering over kids, but you know, just being around is important. When and that includes online usage, you know, most children will be shown, well, we know that children see porn for the first time by the time they're, you know, around eight, nine, you know, that's their first exposure.
And it usually happens by someone from school. Or a family member or they've stumbled across it, et cetera. So, you know, you might [00:11:00] not allow certain things online, but they go to someone else's house and they don't have the same checks and balances in place or the same supervision in place. And then they're saying online pornography or they're saying, you know, things that aren't, aren't age appropriate.
So that happens. So, and not overseeing older children, thinking they're old enough to take care of themselves. Yep. Our older kids don't need us hovering over them, but we still need to be finger on the pulse, ensuring that, you know, one or the other, or multiple kids aren't, you know, leading them down a stray path.
It was a very common, and, and Omegle has shut down now, but it was a very common sleepover Game activity to go on a meagle, which was their catchphrase was meet strangers. And so a group of kids would sit around, log onto a meagle and they would be seeing pedophiles, you know, masturbating and being asked for their Snapchat and stuff like that.
And because they're in a group, they think they're [00:12:00] safe. They think it's okay. They think it's funny and it's actually really unsafe. That was one of those You know, things that were, those activities that were happening when Amiga was around. Amiga was shut down because they were being forced to create greater security measures and they weren't willing to do it.
So they shut, shut down their app. But there's other apps like that. And like I mentioned before, you know, the, the drinking, the going off, you know, my daughter and I use her as an example for a lot, but, and she's just a, cause she's a typical teenager and we've had all of these conversations, but you know, she's come home and said, Oh yeah.
You know, everyone was drinking last night and she, you know, when she was 14 and that was normal for my age and I'm not, was, you know, we had a conversation about that and safety and, you know, and, you know, she's got a, she was meant to go to a party on the weekend, but she chose not to go because she knew that there was going to be drugs at this party and she didn't want to put herself in that situation because she didn't want to be the responsible one [00:13:00] if something happened.
So, you know. If you've got older kids, you think that they're safe. Yes. Okay. They're all going to be doing silly things and making mistakes, but have you had a conversation about it? Have you explained things to them? Have you given them an opportunity to make better choices? You know, et cetera. Anyway. Off track.
The next one is lack of autonomy and consent. So when your child's at home, they're more likely, more, I say more likely, but not always to speak up if they're not happy to tell you when they don't wanna do things, et cetera. When they're at someone else's home, they are less likely to do that. They're gonna feel the need to conform and go along with something that might not feel safe might make them feel uncomfortable because the pressure is there.
They're in their friend's home or their family's home and they don't think they can say, no. I ate a raw potato . This is stupid. I haven't ever seen this friend again since she left school because I grew up in a small community. So, you know, everyone knows [00:14:00] everyone. But this girl left in year seven, eight.
She, I went to her house for a hangout for the day, I think, or a sleepover and she said that there's no food. And she gave me a raw potato. I was so hungry. I ate raw potato. For reals, you know, we were, and that's because I thought I had no other option. It was really pathetic. I'm looking back on it.
Grandparents and older family members are also often not very good with respecting consent and children's personal boundaries because they haven't been taught them or they haven't been, you know, it hasn't been enforced in their world. And they just think children, they've got their own beliefs around children.
Children are seen and not heard. Children respect your elders, you know, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, That can be a factor as well, you know adults. So we know that 90 percent of all child sexual abuse is someone known to the child. This means our children are more likely to be abused by someone in the family home or in the immediate family, friends and their community.
[00:15:00] So not everyone that we trust with our kids are going to be safe and appropriate. We don't always see that side of adults because they keep it well hidden. That's why it's really important to know about grooming, which you can look at my blogs. I've got a blog on grooming. And you know, your child doesn't generally have the strength, confidence or experience to deal with an adult in the moment that abuse happens.
Most of the stories I can tell you about sleepovers and abuse happening is when an adult when a child's having a sleepover, they're asleep and someone sneaks into their room and sexually abuses them. And they haven't, you know, they feel frozen. They don't feel like they can fight back. They feel, you know, they're terrified.
Of course they're terrified. Like, so we can't just trust adults in a home, in any home, including our grandparents and other adults, because We just can't. I know that sounds very pessimistic and [00:16:00] very rude of me to say that, but I say in my blog, I spend time assessing adult behaviors more than I more than I listen to what adults say.
If they are acting like a safe adult, and I have a blog about that as well, you know, respecting children's boundaries, not singling out children on their own. You know, not trying to get them alone all the time. I will spend time assessing adults. Behaviors before I'll trust them. That's how I have learned to know whether someone's trustworthy with a child or not.
And if I, if I don't think they're trustworthy, I never let my child near them. Especially, you know, early years. 10, 10 minus 10 zero to 10, should I say it was when she got a bit older and I knew that she had a lot more confidence to speak up. I'd seen it, I'd seen her actually speak up to adults, you know, stand up for herself and, and advocate for herself that I felt confident that, you know, if something [00:17:00] happened she might be able to do something about it.
So yeah, I've got a blog on safe adults and how to identify safe adults, because once we know what a safe adult and how they behave, we know what an unsafe adult does, and yeah. The next point I made is siblings. Siblings, siblings friends, especially if they're older, are also a potential risk. 30 50 percent of all child sexual abuse is by another child or a peer.
And you just have to read the TikTok comments in my TikToks to know that so many people have been abused by siblings and siblings, friends or neighbors or cousins or other children at school or other children that they've had a sleepover. When I sat with this, when I was writing, writing this blog, I had a memory from my own childhood about a peer that I had a sleepover with back then.
I like, I haven't thought about this memory for a long time. And I don't want to get into it in too much detail, but basically, it was an [00:18:00] experimentation thing at 10 where she, it was her idea because I didn't know what it was like, I literally had no idea what we were doing. She had coerced me coerced.
Probably the best word is coerced into hiding in a, in a, Walking covered and kissing and doing other things. So without going into too much detail on a podcast but when I look back on that, like I haven't been, obviously, I don't feel that it would come under the child sexual abuse banner more.
So it would come under the experimentation banner, but. I look back on that experience and I didn't know what was happening. I didn't understand what was happening. I didn't know that she didn't really, I now look back and I say, I have a feeling something was happening to her because she knew way more about this stuff than I should at that age.
She had older siblings. In fact, I know that she went on to she went on to have a relationship with a cousin [00:19:00] and, and no hate or blame, shame to her, because I think that there was some grooming and abuse happening to her now that I look back on it, but, but I didn't think about this till this, and I, you know, it would happen quite a few times whilst we went, whilst I had sleepovers at her house, it wasn't traumatizing for me, it was just confusing, because I didn't understand it and, you know, I look back and I think, wow, like there was stuff going on there and I can't believe I didn't even think about it when I'm the police officer.
So yeah, so with regards to the siblings and you know, I've had people contact me about their children being sexually abused by older siblings or by older siblings, friends, when they have sleepovers at their house. We generally let our guard down with older siblings and we let the older siblings babysit and supervise kids.
I talk about one instance in my book of a teen uncle and a six year old [00:20:00] boy and in that it went on for six years. He was being abused for six years by his teen uncle then became an adult and and then he he stopped when he became sort of pubescent and I, you know, that six year old boy was being abused.
It felt nice. It felt good. Like similar situation to me. I didn't know any different. It didn't feel like traumatizing. But when you look back, you go, that actually wasn't okay. But sometimes. Older siblings actually hurt their younger siblings and then there's threats and bullying and coercion. Not just siblings, but siblings friends.
Like I said, I got, I get, got contacted by someone who I knew whose daughter had been sexually abused or sexually assaulted at a friend's house with her older brother there at a sleepover by the older brother's friend. I think I've explained that. Okay. So, you know, we, we let our guard down. We let them supervise younger Children.
And then, you know, [00:21:00] it, it's inadequate. It's inadequate to let older siblings and older Children look after Children. There's been a massive increase in, you know. Children abusing children and the highest risk factors are or should I say the, one of the risk factors is because our kids have unrestricted access to pornography.
The other risk factor is, is that pubescent kids might not have someone to, you know, we're seeing kids, young people have less. Interpersonal connections, so then they're less likely to talk to each other in person, less likely to connect to each other in person. Therefore, when they do go through pubescent stage, they're not experimenting with each other.
They're not trying these things with each other. And, you know, They are then, and in some cases, not all, they are trying, they are doing these things with their siblings if they've given unrestricted, unsupervised access to a younger [00:22:00] child, and in most cases we see the most likely age group that is You know, assaulting or harming another child is the 10 to 14 age group.
And the most likely child to be assaulted or abused is the three to nine age group. And that's what we see. And we call that, and I've talked about this before, but we call that harmful sexualized behaviors and that's the, the umbrella term for any kind of sexual activity between children and we don't like to say assault or abuse, we don't like to call them perpetrators or offenders because Their children, and in my experience, you know, children are children until they, you know, they don't have the critical thinking, the reasoning skills, they are children, and we need to help children understand that we don't do these things to our, to anyone without their consent, but definitely not to our siblings, definitely not to children in our care, it's not you know, I've done [00:23:00] some social media about this, but, you know, in order for, you know, You know, what's age appropriate, age appropriate development.
So normal sexual this is a bit off topic. No normal, what am I trying to say? Normal sexualized behaviors, because there is a, such a thing as normalized sexual, normal sexualized behaviors, normal sexualized behaviors are developmentally expected. So, you know, a three year old working out that they've got a penis or, or their vagina and it feels nice to touch it.
That's normal. It's socially acceptable. So, you know, it's normal for kids to experiment, but depending on whether they are, is it consensual, mutual and reciprocal? So, they're old enough to know what they're doing and they can consent to it. It's mutual, they both want to do it. And it's reciprocated, it's not one person doing it to the other person.
And that socially acceptable stuff, it could be that, you know, it's two 11 year olds having their first kiss. [00:24:00] It's not. socially acceptable for a five year old and 11 year old to have their first kiss. You know what I mean? And, and then shared decision making. Both children are deciding together that it's not one forcing the other, coercing the other, bullying the other, threatening the other.
It's both of them. And in some of these cases, you know, if there's a massive age gap between them of five, six years, seven, eight years, then how can that be? That's not socially, that's not normal sexualized behaviors. In my case, with regards to this girl, you know, I was 10, she was 10. I probably could have said something, I probably, I don't think, like, based off that list I just said, you know, was it socially acceptable?
Yes. Was it developmentally expected? Kinda. Was it consensual, mutual, reciprocal, a little bit of both, but consensual. I've kind of felt like I needed to because I was sleeping at her house. But I guess after the first time I kind of went, [00:25:00] okay, that felt good last time. And shared decision making.
Yeah, kinda like I wouldn't, you know, I look back on that, those memories. And like I said, they're not traumatizing, but I'm like, kind of. Where did that come from? That's what comes into my mind when I think back on those memories. And I've never shared those memories before. So I had a conversation with my husband the other day and I told him about it.
And we had a conversation. I thought far out, like so many things happen and we don't think twice about it. And then we look back and again, I I'm just using these as a way to help you understand some of these risk factors and why it's important to. Why is it, why it's important to consider, consider them?
Okay, next one. Other adults in the home. Whilst you might be okay with the parent or adults of the child in the home they are staying, what about other adults? Will there be any other adults going to be in the home whilst your child is there? I've been to one too many cases and I have of charge of a child being abused by visiting adults.
[00:26:00] During a sleepover. This includes grandparents homes and grandparents, close relatives and adult family. One of the first cases of this my first child abuse case when I came out of the academy as a young green junior Connie, was of an 11 year old who was abused at a sleepover. The little girl went over, she was 11.
Went over to have a sleepover with her best friend, the parents were having a party, there was lots of drinking, lots of adults everywhere, and that, and drinking is never an excuse by the way this man had spent all night hanging out with the kids, you know, playing Marco Polo and all sorts of things with the kids, water, water balloons, and then the girls went to sleep and the best friend The little girl of the, the family where she was staying, the best friend woke up with him in the bed with her sexually abusing her, and she couldn't say anything to anyone.
She froze, as you do that's a normal response [00:27:00] to abuse, obviously. She was 11, this big, hefty, Adult was, you know, abusing her and she woke up when she got up the next morning, she went home. She, and she didn't say anything to anyone until she got home and told her mum and dad. So that's just one case, but I can tell you I want to say hundreds, but I can tell you at least 10 more cases where even uncles and aunties and, and other people have abused at a sleepover with kids and grandparents.
So I want you to be mindful of the fact that if you're spending, if you're sending your child to someone's home, who else is going to be there? And then the last one of these considerations the lack of online safety and supervision. So different homes have different opinions, beliefs, and rules around online safety.
They might consider what's safe and appropriate to online usage, games, movies, or TV shows as, you know, safe and you might think it's unsafe or vice versa. I've seen my [00:28:00] daughter, like I mentioned before, but I've seen my daughter's friendship groups and in my job I've seen a kid, kids exposed to inappropriate content when at sleepovers.
It's the, it's quite high probability, especially if you haven't had a conversation around it with the people that they're going to. If you have a no, Technology rule or device rule. You can't be granted. You can't be sure that that's not going to happen when your child goes to their house. In fact, it's a bit of a funny thing because my mother in law.
My daughter used to go to her grandparents and I trusted her grandmother and stuff like that, but I couldn't trust her with online safety. My grandmother let her download, before it was even TikTok, Musical. ly games that, you know, she could have potentially all on her phone. I like, I had no access to it, so I had no, no idea what she was downloading.
Never asked me, never spoke to me. So when I say that, you know, [00:29:00] these things have all been a factor in my child, like, I'd have to pull her up on stuff and be like, have you even checked? Do you know what's this? You know, like sometimes grandparents can be the worst. They can just, they just don't know or they don't care.
And most of the time it's just, they don't know. And they don't care. Think twice about it. They just, whatever makes their grandchild happy. So these, those risk factors I also wrote. There's more to the blog and I'm going to move over to the school camp safety, but there's also more to the blog and I talk about what things you should talk about with your kids and what things you should talk about with the family or the people that your child's going to, you know, what can you, what kind of conversations you should have and kind of have, and, you know, it's not at the end of the day if you don't feel comfortable Or you're unable to have these conversations with the family where your child's going or you just get a vibe because you should always believe your gut, just suggest an alternative or say no.
You know, [00:30:00] change the sleep over to your house if you think that you can do a better job. And again, like I said earlier at the very start of this podcast. You have a duty to the kids that come into your care as well, and you have a duty to ensure that those children are safe and, and that you've considered all of those things as well.
But you know, if, if you can't if you can't, if you can't get what's the word I'm looking for? If you don't feel safe or you don't think that the, the, the place that they're going is going to be safe, then say no. Like I said, change it to your house. Organized to pick them up late and drop them back off in the morning.
I've, I've heard a lot of parents doing that now where they're like, we don't do sleepovers, but Hey, we can pick them up at 10 30 and bring them back for seven 30 for a breakfast. And there's a name for it, but I don't know if anyone knows the name of those types of sleepover playdate things, then let me know, or maybe change it to a daytime hangout somewhere neutral.
Or just make a blanket rule of no sleepovers, make it so, [00:31:00] you know, sleepovers like camps are not the, are not necessarily I used to have all the sleepovers at my house because I knew I could ensure that I'm, you know, lots of sleepless nights when my daughter had friends staying over, lots of me checking in, lots of me you Blocking things, taking devices away from kids at like 8.
30 at night and saying, right, guys, everyone handing their device. I used to tell parents that all the time. Like I take devices away from them. They can watch a movie and go to sleep. You know, there's other things that they can be doing that will keep them safe. And it might sound like you don't want to be that, that parent that enforces those rules.
But I can tell you now, like, My daughter's had sleepovers where I've, you know, checked in with the kids and I've been that safe adult and I've had like amazing conversations with the kids, you know, when my daughter was 13, we talked about consent and sex and they were asking me questions that they, and, you know, I always ask them, like, do you have conversations like this with your parents?
And they were like, no, no way. My parents [00:32:00] wouldn't ever talk about this stuff with us and being able to be that parent. For those kids made me feel, made my daughter feel good because she knew that her friends had a safe place to go, but it made me feel good that I could feel a void that I was obviously there and I used to always go back to the parents and say, Hey, just letting you know.
The kids asked me some questions and I filled them in on, on consent. They asked me about stuff or, you know, and I would just let them, their parents know what we talked about. And most parents were like, thank God you're talking about this stuff because I don't know how to say, have this conversation.
And that's just me, but I'd rather be that parent, right? Yeah, so go, go and have a look at the the blog. It's got heaps more in it. I didn't want to over, overshare that stuff. But The other thing I wanted to talk to you in this podcast, and I really didn't think I would take so long and I can dribble like no tomorrow.
I'm sure you guys must get sick of me is school camp safety. [00:33:00] So I'm going to try and keep this one short. I'm going to look at the time. So school camp safety in regards to. Kids going on camp. So school camps can be both amazingly exciting and nerve wracking in equal measure. I had both really bad experiences on camp and really good experiences on camp.
Again, I was usually trying to escape my home because my home life wasn't great. So for me, camps were awesome. But I know that camps aren't always like that for all kids, you know, it can be quite nerve wracking, can be very anxiety inducing, it can be really stressful, especially if children have any kind of anxiety around social anxiety or, you know, they might have some medical issues or they might have, I know that, you know, some kids still bedwet or have night terrors or, you know, any of those things, you know, I personally don't believe that camps are necessary for children under the age of 12.
I [00:34:00] don't see why we're still doing camps in primary school. It's really stressful for teachers and for staff. It's a huge liability and duty of care issue. So, so some of the things that I wanted to point out with school camps is it's not just, and I've said it in the last one, it's not just adults that we need to be mindful of.
It's actually kids as well. And again you know, some children have been. groomed on camp, they have been abused on camp or have done abusing on camp. And like, I tend to focus on victims or victim stories. But I'm also out here from wanting to encourage and facilitate conversations around children harming children because they're children and we should be doing our best to ensure that kids never get to the point where they go and harm another child.
And that's with no blame, shame. From me I know that if [00:35:00] your child is the one being harmed, you would definitely be feeling pretty pretty angry towards that other child, but we need to come to some, we need to realize that these are children and that there could be something else going on. They could have unrestricted access to pornography.
There's a lot of risk factors when it comes to children, harming children and. We need to have these conversations and we need to have this understanding that they're kids and we need to help them so that they don't become adults who harm kids. Now, on that point, only 3 percent of all children who go harm other children go on to harm children when they become adults.
It's three to five percent. It's not a lot. So it's not a it's not a given that if your child someone harms another child, you know, sexual has, you know, does sexualized behaviors against a child. It's not a given that they'll do that as an adult doesn't make them a pedophile. For want of a better way to put it, it just means that we need to investigate why.
We need to educate. [00:36:00] We need to empower all of our kids to know what's appropriate, inappropriate, safe and unsafe and we haven't done our job properly and we need to do better with that. And it still happens even when we do educate, but we need to do better at educating all kids. Right, so, back off my soapbox.
My daughter recently, we went on camp. Had a great time, but there was some still some things that happened that weren't so great. She is 16. She's in year 11. She went on camp to a rural, remote, rural community. I had conversations with her before she went on camp about safe and unsafe safety network.
You know, who are the people she feels safe on? You know, what teachers, what people, does she feel safe enough to go? Does she feel like she would be heard and people would listen to her? Who does she connect with in her peer group that she can lean on for support if she needs to. So, and I had a conversation with the camp organizer and in [00:37:00] my blog I go through a whole heap of like questions for you to, a checklist kind of thing, like checking in with the school and before you give consent, you know, what are their protocols, what are their first aid provisions, how many chaperones are going, how many supervisors going, you know, like, Don't assume that school's got everything handled because you might ask a question about this stuff and they haven't thought about it or haven't put in a, the plan isn't in place and then you're going to prompt them to go and make it better.
You know, speak to the organizers about your, your child's individual needs medical conditions, any medications, mental health concerns and get an emergency contact. You should be able to find out at least one teacher or supervisor will have a contact for you to be able to call if your child's not able to take their phone with them, because that's quite for a lot of parents, that's the biggest fear that they, their children can't call them if they need them If that's why we need to have those conversations, we need an emergency contact and we need to ensure that the teacher, school [00:38:00] or organizer knows that you're expecting your child to call you or to get in touch with you if they're unhappy.
But not to force them or, you know, coerce them or dissuade them from contacting you. I know that camp's about, you know, spreading their wings and becoming more independent and finding themselves. But a child, if they don't feel safe with them, then they need to contact you, their safe person. And that should never be, they shouldn't be dissuaded from ever doing that.
If they can be you know, if they really need to contact you, they shouldn't feel like they can't. And yeah, so that's, these are the things that I have talked to my daughter about talk about the safety network. I've already talked to about that. Go over their body safety rights and consent, you know, their body is their body.
No one's allowed to touch their body, especially their private parts. You know, if anyone touches them, you give them permission to yell, scream, kick, But, you know, whatever they need to [00:39:00] do to get away, why it's important to actually have that conversation with your kids is if, you know, we quite often tell them, you know, we don't use violence, we don't do this, we don't do that, you know you know, we should talk it out, we should go and seek help from a teacher.
And sometimes, I'm sorry, teachers, if you're listening, you guys don't do your job. Good job. I know that you get overwhelmed with the amount of complaints and whinging you get. Sometimes, when a child is in distress, you don't observe it or don't notice it because you're too busy with everyone else and everything else.
And, or, you're so hyper focused on what you're doing next, et cetera. So, give your kids permission to make noise and demand attention or to do whatever they need to. You will not be, they will never be angry. You will never be angry with them. They will not get in trouble with you. You will stand behind them and advocate for them if they do get in trouble.
And that's it. Because, you know, [00:40:00] it's really important that your kids know that you've got their back for the right circumstances and reasons. And, you know, talking through scenarios, so I talked through a few scenarios with my daughter before she went away on her camp. Some of the scenarios involved, you know you're in a, like it's in the middle of the Pilbara where she went.
If, what, what do you do if there's a snake bite? And, What do you do for a snake bite? What first aid do you do? What if someone falls over and, and smacks their head against a rock? What do you do for head wounds? Or what do you do for a broken leg? I talked her through, you know, first aid. And then I talked her through, Hey, so if someone was making you feel uncomfortable or a bit ick or whatever the wording or terminology they use these days, someone's making you feel a bit ick.
What would you do? What would you do if someone was taking videos and photos of you and you didn't want them to take them? What, what would you do? What would you do if someone was following you, wouldn't leave you alone? What would you do if someone started [00:41:00] touching you and you didn't want them to?
What if you, what would you do if someone forced themselves onto you or was trying to kiss you or arm you? I mean, at 16, these are potential possibilities in a group of people. you know, 40, 50, 60, 16 year olds going away, you know, away from home, having late nights, hanging out in communal areas and, and et cetera.
Potential for that is, is there. So what would you do? On the blog, I go through, you know, some of the scenarios and some of the things that they could do to help you talk that through with your kids. And so with regards to that, you know, ultimately, our child needs to feel confident, safe and empowered and by reminding them of their safety rights.
And that you've got their back and that they've got options and you're giving them tools in their toolkit for how to behave and act if something happens, because nothing, not everything's going to be roses and cool. And, you know, they've got to learn how to, to navigate all [00:42:00] of the different personalities and the people that they're dealing with, and not all the people they're dealing with are going to be safe people.
They're not going to be great people. You know, we can't wrap them up in cotton wool. We can't ensure, we can't ensure their safety. Whilst they're with us in our own home, we can do our best, but when they go out into the world, they need to be prepared for it. And that's the point that I make. It sounds like I'm trying to some people go, Oh, you're just scaring kids.
And I'm like, no, I'm not. I know that this stuff works. I know that this empowers them and makes them stronger when they know that they've got tools to help them when they know that they know how to handle shit. And you know, we, they, they feel stronger. They feel empowered. They feel safer. It's when they don't know how to handle shit or they don't know who to go to when they need help.
You know, we, we can't always be there to shelter them from it. We, but we can give them proper education around this stuff to help them through it should it happen. And it's, You know, with one in three girls and one in five boys being [00:43:00] sexually abused before 18, it's, it's potential that it could happen. It really is a potential that it could happen.
So, you know, if, if any of this stuff is freaking you out, check out the blogs. I hope it empowers you more so than freaks you out. It is possible to have these conversations without freaking out your kids. We talk about body safety with them. We make sure that they've got the, like the groundwork and the essentials of body safety down before we send them on anything where they have to deal with shit on their own.
It's not their job to protect themselves from child sexual abuse or from abuse, but. You know, that's our job, but they need to know what it is. They need to know how to, how to identify people being a bit icky or a bit uncomfortable, unsafe. They need to know who they can talk to. They need to know how to be empowered to do something instead of the freezing up if they, and even if they do freeze up, the next step is to go and tell their safe adult.
So that they can help them. That is how we're, we're going to empower them. But if any of this [00:44:00] stuff freaks out I've got other resources in on my website. Obviously, I've just released the conversations with kids cards from 1 to 12. 13 plus is coming. It's just my brain has kind of had a fight and decided I can barely, I can barely write at the moment.
So yeah, they're coming as well. The book, obviously my book with Operation Kidsafe is there. Ready to go. It's got all of this stuff in it, in depth. About all of these topics and how to talk to them, my blog, my social media, everything, there's free resources, the podcast, there's heaps of experts, you know where to go.
So hopefully that is going to help you feel empowered and have those conversations because all your kids need from you is to be an open, And approachable parent, that's what they need from you. And that's the best gift you can give them. So thank you very much for another episode. If you got to this far and hopefully, hopefully I'll see you next week.
[00:45:00] Thank you for listening to this podcast episode. Education empowers children and empowers parents and education prevents abuse. That is why I'm here and that is why you are here. So thank you. If you want any further information or support, follow me on social media, either under Christy McVie or KAU social media accounts.
I'll put the links in the show notes. You can also purchase a copy of my book Operation Kids Safe via the [email protected]. Also, on my website is a free ebook titled 10 Tips to Keep Your Kids Safe from Abuse. and self paced courses for parents to help you in your journey of child abuse prevention.
Please see the show notes for any extra information, links and help should you be looking for extra support. Thank you once again for giving a shit about preventing child sexual abuse. See you next [00:46:00] time.
