An unpleasant but critically relevant topic to bring up since many of you are about to send your kids to summer camps is what precautions you need to take to make sure your child remains safe.
Unfortunately, summer camps can be places where sexual predators work or operate. Given this unsavory reality, what you should do with any anxiety that gets drummed up by reading this is focus on the most productive and practical steps you can take to maximize your child’s safety while they are in the care of other adults or older children you or your child may not know very well. And please don’t assume that summer camps do a thorough job of looking at the backgrounds of those who work on their staff. Thorough background checks are costly and not uncommonly summer camps trust what a person will write on their application.
With all this said, I believe one of the most timely blogs I can write is to clarify what you parents can do to protect your child. Writing a blog about this topic is very difficult for me because I’ve worked with many children who have been sexually abused and it is indeed a very sad and depressing reality. Sexual abuse can wreak havoc on a person’s psychological stability and sense of identity. All the more reason why I feel committed to offering to each of you and the Community network you are part of- very useful and strategic advice.
Given the very high popularity of a blog I wrote a while back about how to minimize the chances your child will be sexually abused, I feel it’s appropriate to simply give the link to this blog to you, since countless parents emailed me to thank me for giving them this advice.
Here is the link to the blog that I wrote, which you may find timely given your child is about to be around similarly aged peers or adults that may have sexually inappropriate tendencies.
Here is the link to that informative blog: https://www.doctorbrunner.com/effective-parent-responses-to-the-recent-child-sexual-molestation-of-three-tucson-girls/
I hope that all of you will take seriously the task of educating your child so if they were ever approached by a predator, they would know what to do. Do not make the mistake of naïvely trusting other adults to play the role of educator and protector. You need to take charge of that kind of education. Don’t shirk that duty!!