CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. β Two teachers were recently arrested on child pornography charges, prompting local child safety experts to encourage parents to have difficult but necessary conversations with their children about abuse prevention.
"The violation of one of my children's safety is like the number one, two and three worst nightmare for any parent and so I think it's perfectly understandable that parent would panic," said Bob Nickles with Child Savers, a local nonprofit that uses prevention and intervention models to address children's mental health and help them recover from different kinds of trauma.
But the conversations parents and guardians have with kids and teens don't have to be overwhelming, according to Nickles.
"An incident like this in the community, as unfortunate as it is, is a great excuse or opportunity to start that conversation with your young person," Nickles said.
Nickles said often times parents find conversations about safety and sexual assault uncomfortable. However he says avoiding those interactions with children can result in instances of abuse being harder to recognize. He believes one of the best ways to prevent it is by parents having age-appropriate conversations as early as possible.
"So with really young children, I encourage parents to talk about body parts with the anatomical term, have clear family rules and expectations about your bathing suit areas. No one should be touching you in these areas except your mom or dad or doctor if your mom and dad is there with you. That's a normal expectation for a lot of families," Nickles said. "As our kids get older I want to make sure that our parents are talking to them directly about sex, dating, internet safety and asking and recruiting our young people to bring their questions to the parent so that they don't feel like they have to go to Google or A.I. or even their peers who may know even less than they do.
In this case, Nickles said transparency is key. While privacy is encouraged, secrets are not.
"Secrets are often make it really difficult for kids to understand when they can ask for help and what they can talk about. So for a lot of families, I encouraged them to have a 'no secrets' policy. You can have privacy at certain times, but especially for our young kids. We talk about having privacy is a good thing, having secrets is a liability," Nickles said.
Nickles said in instances of abuse, it's also important to teach kids and remind adults about personal and private boundaries and what to say and do if they're crossed.
"One thing they can do is to practice paying attention to, 'Stop, I don't like that,' and to practice 'Stop, I don't like that,' skills as a family," Nickles said. "Which is a way to set a boundary. So for example, if tickling or horse-playing is happening between a parent and a child and a child says, 'Stop, I don't like that,' we just stop. That's easy, that's practicing the skill that they may need in a safety situation."
Nickles says modeling 'Stop, I don't like,' is beneficial for children as young as three and as old as 13 as a way to develop those defensive skills early so that they know how to set boundaries, tell a trusted adult if they are targeted, and not feel pressured to keep secrets that could make them vulnerable.
Nickles says the vat majority of adults in the school system are their to be a positive influence on the students they interact with. While protecting children should always be the top priority the nonprofit says it is crucial that adults hold themselves accountable as well and that they speak up when they notice something wrong.
"Sometimes we can focus on making sure are children are ready to keep themselves safe, but this is a grown up problem. The kids didn't cause this problem this is an us problem," Nickles said. " We create a culture in which adults don't talk to each other about certain topics like sexuality, they don't talk to each other about safety, adults aren't supporting each other in parenting roles, adults are necessarily getting involved in their schools and getting to know their educators.
Most importantly, Nickles said fostering an environment where it's OK to speak up is key so that if something happens to your child, their peers or someone else you know, you can say something without any fear of judgment.
"There are a lot of parenting tasks that are uncomfortable, but it doesn't mean we don't do those things. And so lean in and it'll be uncomfortable for a moment and then you'll build on that relationship," Nickles said. "Our staff is comfortable working with parents and its not difficult to learn how to have those conversations."
If you would like to learn more information about how to approach these sensitive topics with your child, Nickles recommends using local resources like:
- National Child Stress Trauma Network
- Greater Richmond SCAN
- Challenge Discovery Project
- Communities in Schools of Greater Richmond
- Communities in Schools of Chesterfield
- NextUp RVA
"At the end of the day we want our kids to know that they count, we want them to know how to have healthy connections with people, we want them to be capable and we wont them to have courage. We call that the "Four C's,'" Nickles said. "Anytime we can pour our miracle grow on those four attributes and role model those for our kids, then they are going to grow to be better decision makers, because at the end of the day a lot of our kids are going to be parenting their own kids in the future."
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