Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 66

Child Abuse, Part 2: Personal Defense

SEX ED (Photo credit: 707d3k)

One of the comments on yesterday’s post took issue with the idea that teaching children about their dignity as human beings, and in particular the dignity of the body, can be any protection against predators. I’d like to address that as a starting point today.

Realistically, there is no foolproof way to protect our children from any of the dangers they may face. But to me it seems self-evident that whatever defenses we can arm them with are wise investments. I do believe that young women and men who truly understand their value and dignity as human beings are more likely to be capable of protest when they are pressured, either by peers or by authority figures, to do things that violate that dignity. It’s no guarantee, but it’s another tool in the arsenal.

I used to believe young children should be shielded from all references to sexuality, because it would sully their innocence. But this implies that sexuality is a) not innocent, and b) something separate from personhood, when the truth is that the two are braided together so tightly that separating them leads to dysfunction.

I am now convinced that lessons about sexuality cannot be imparted in a single conversation upon the onset of puberty, but must, MUST be introduced a bit at a time. You don’t dump Pi r squared on a student without laying the foundations first; they’ll never, ever understand it. They might be able to plug in numbers to a formula, but they won’t understand. The same is true of sexuality. A child’s psyche isn’t prepared to deal with so much earthy, bodily frankness if it’s never been introduced before.

So in our family we start in early childhood by laying foundations.

1. The key concept is this: the body is holy because it is the dwelling place of God. God lives in the soul, and the soul is housed in the body. Our bodies were given to us in order to make the world a better place. A place that looks more like what God’s vision for it.

2. Because of this, we take care of our bodies. We don’t play with them as if they’re toys, and certain parts of us are not meant to be touched by anyone other than a parent or perhaps a doctor in an examination, and beyond a certain age, not even by a parent. We care for our bodies by keeping them clean, well-nourished (healthy eating and exercise are part of this lesson) and well rested.

3. We call body parts by their proper names. Euphemisms and slang imply that there’s something that needs to be hidden because it’s bad to talk about. The kids are comfortable with words like breast and penis and labia and scrotum. (More comfortable than we are, to be honest.)

Once these foundational concepts are worked into life, it’s not such a stretch to talk about where babies come from. God puts the baby in the mommy’s tummy, but you know the child is going to ask how. It would be easy to punt and say something lame and evasive, but I think that’s shortsighted. Kids need to understand that something holy and miraculous happens in the sexual act, and that they have a part to play–that their choices and their dignity are relevant.

So I tell the kids that mommies and daddies have a special hug they give each other, and sometimes when they do, God takes something from the mommy and something from the daddy and makes it into a baby that grows inside the mommy.

Alex has probed further, and I have had to say, “You don’t need to know that yet.” I think of Corrie Ten Boom’s story about the suitcase a lot.

Now, when we need to address abuse by authority figures or even something Alex sees in the movies that doesn’t add up, we aren’t constructing elaborate evasions in a misguided attempt to preserve his innocence. This weekend we were watching Superman Returns and Alex, puzzled by the complicated relationship between Lois, Superman and Richard, and how that boy could be Superman’s kid, asked, “So…are they married?”

“Alex,” I said, “the thing you have to understand is that the special hug is meant to be given by people who are married to each other, because that special hug makes babies, and every baby has a right to grow up in a family with a mom and a dad who are married to each other. But the hug can be done by people who aren’t married. That’s not how it’s supposed to be, but sometimes people do.”

What I’m trying to get at is that the issues of sexuality are all tied together. You can’t just address child abuse in a vacuum. Because then, yes, it does destroy a child’s innocence. But if you give them a vision of their own dignity as human beings, that facilitates those other, more difficult, conversations. It gives them one more ring of defense in case, God forbid, they do face a situation you can’t protect them from. And in the long run, it should help them live an integrated, holistic life, too. This is my theory. I’m the first to admit it’s unproven, but it’s in the testing phase, and so far the indications look good.

Child Abuse in the Church: A Parent’s Response, Part 1

Rhodes – What light through yonder window ….. (Photo credit: BR0WSER)

When I was twelve years old, a teenage kid working the ticket booth at the movie theater told me I could pass for seventeen. I developed early and I had the curves to attract attention. But although I may have looked older than some of my peers, emotionally I was far behind them. I was sheltered and dreamy and utterly naive. I was in a dangerous place, but I didn’t know it. I could have become a target for anyone with a twisted sense of morality, or just a raging case of hormones.

Fortunately for me, I had protective parents. The distance between their farm and the town didn’t hurt, either.

Not all kids are so lucky. During the thick of the sex abuse scandal in the Church, I was working as a liturgy director. As one who worked closely with schoolchildren, I went through the training that was put into place in our diocese. Volunteers, staff–everyone has to take it. We use Protecting God’s Children, or Virtus. I went to a two-hour training session, and every week thereafter I was expected to read a lesson that came via email, along with a test question at the end. They tracked compliance.

Most of the time (I’ll be honest) I was impatient with it, because the lesson imparted was common sense. But now I think maybe that’s the point. If we take time to think about issues related to the safety of our children, most of it is common sense. The trouble comes when we get distracted or complacent and aren’t aware. The point of the training is awareness.

In the long run, the most important thing the Virtus training did for me was to sensitize me to the issue. The fact is that if there is a pedophile around, he (or she) will find a way to subvert the procedures put into place to protect our children. That means the impetus is on me as a parent to teach my children about their inherent dignity as a human being, especially where matters of sexuality are concerned, in such a way that they recognize threats to that dignity, and have the confidence and courage to respond.

The lessons of sex I learned as a child dealt with the danger of premarital sex and the value of chastity, but I don’t remember really learning why. Maybe this is because I was a rule follower, so if you told me to do something, that was all I needed; any other information given might well have gone in the “useless information” file.

In adulthood, though, outing the damage and dysfunction caused by obsession with unrestricted, no-strings-attached sex has become my passion. When even Catholics resist making the connections between the dysfunction in the culture and the birth control they depend on, I’m very aware that my kids are besieged. They’re not going to get a holistic vision of the human person unless I give it to them. And they’ve got to have the whole picture; they’ve got to know why, or there’s no chance that they’re going to resist a cultural paradigm that pushes so hard in the opposite direction.

Until recently I always thought of this in terms of peer relationships–hookup culture, pre-marital sex, etc.–but recently I realized that the lesson is just as important in helping prevent abuse by authority. Because when you know the incredible dignity of this body you inhabit, you are much less likely to allow someone else to do something to damage that dignity.

I planned to write a single post on this topic. I woke up at 2 a.m. this morning and, unable to sleep, pounded out almost 1200 words on it. In the light of day, fleshing it out, I’m about halfway through it. So I’m going to hit “pause” for today and beg you to come back tomorrow, when I’ll talk about what we are doing with our kids.

In the meantime I’d like to know what your dioceses and/or parishes are doing to guard their young from predators. If you can, please leave comments here rather than on Facebook (even if you do so anonymously), so that everyone can see.

How Julianna Feels About Having Down Syndrome

Have I mentioned this is the last time we have proof that she had her glasses?

Last week Huffington Post ran a story on “how I told my 7-year-old he has Down syndrome.” I admit I saw that headline and thought, Huh. He doesn’t already know? See, we’ve always made Down syndrome an ordinary part of the fabric of life in this house, like bad eyes or an aptitude for music–it simply is. You don’t waste time analyzing good and bad or trying to shield the kids from the knowledge–you just weave it into ordinary life, and there it is.

Last night at dinner, it came up in the context of Christmas shopping. Alex had wanted to get Julianna a jewelry/bead-making kit for Christmas, and Christian told him, truthfully, that he and I had wanted to do it, too, and chose not to. The problem is, she’s not quite ready for it yet. We want her to be, but she just isn’t. It’s a great idea, but she doesn’t have the interest in and skill to do those sorts of things yet.

But “If she didn’t have Down syndrome, that would be…” was as far as he got. Because at the words “Down syndrome,” Julianna lit up. “Oh! Dow see-dwuh?” she cried.

Christian smiled at her. “Who has Down syndrome?”

“ME! YAY!” shouted Julianna, putting both fists in the air and pumping them repeatedly.

It’s one of those stereotypes that lives on because it so often turns out to be true: people with Down syndrome tend to have really, really high self-esteem.

***

(Disclaimer: she did think we were talking about ‘Down syndrome group,’ which is what we call the bimonthly social hour we do with other T21 families in the area. But it’s a great story anyway.)

7QT for the Second Week of Advent

___1___

I spent almost three minutes sitting in front of a blank screen just now, trying to figure out what to write this morning. I’ve been tired and anxious this week, focused on all the wrong things. Life is really pretty good, but when there’s uncertainty about something you’ve poured yourself into it’s easy for your whole emotional state to revolve around that to the exclusion of all other things.

___2___

All other things, such as: We’ve had a very good first half of Advent. (If you’re a regular reader, that was probably already clear.) This week was probably the peak of the excitement, what with Trans Siberian Orchestra and Christmas tree and Santa visit and ringing the Salvation Army bell. It was also the peak of the fatigue for all of us…at least I hope! The kids were up late three school nights in a row this week.

___3___

Nicholas in particular had been reacting very well to Advent. Quite suddenly one day late last week, the head-butting between the two of us eased. I knew we’d had one amazingly good day, in which he was delightful and cooperative, but it didn’t totally process until the next morning while he was helping me make eggs. Michael did something that earned a parental snap, and when I turned around Nicholas had done something with the breakfast that needed redirection–I don’t remember now what it was. There was an edge to my voice as I did so, and I had a pang of conscience, because I knew he hadn’t done anything wrong. So I took a deep breath and put my arm around him and said, “I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you. I was just frustrated with Michael. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

His face broke into a radiant smile and he laughed giddily. “I thought I was in trouble,” he said, leaning into my hug. It was a very enlightening moment, to say the least.

___4___

Lost : Devil Horns (Photo credit: beefy_n1)

Nicholas’ angelic behavior continued for three or four days. I was beginning to hold my breath that we might have crossed out of that preschool testing stage and into full upper-childhood. But we had a bad regression yesterday evening. It involved me telling him no, you may not have a THIRD snack between lunch and dinner, and him hitting me on the head. Yes, I did say hitting me on the head. I’m going to hope and pray that was an aberration based on not enough sleep this week. Last night we had our normal routine. We should be past the late nights now.

___5___

I’m trying very hard not to write about writing, but it is weighing heavily on my mind. I have sent three queries on my novel to test the waters, and the first two came back unsuccessful. It’s not enough to know that something is wrong with the submission package, but the mind goes there anyway. I’ve spent a lot of emotional energy the last two weeks fretting about whether I need more feedback, more input, more opinions, so I don’t burn through agents.

___6___

I set a goal this year not to have any deadlines during Advent. This is our sixth year doing Advent calendar activities, and I’ve learned that it’s better not to have extra “must do”‘s. The season has enough of those already; organizing them was the point of the calendar in the first place. But factors outside my control intervened. I have two projects due around the holidays: Liguori asked me to write an examination of conscience booklet for children, which I just sent off yesterday. The other project is still underway. I hope to finish before the kids get out of school next week.

___7___

I am tremendously grateful to my aunt, who asked me if she could keep Michael with her a couple mornings a week while everyone else is at school. That unexpected help has allowed me to have a few really focused mornings of work. It’s made a huge difference! That examination of conscience wouldn’t be finished without her. I will say it is really weird to have no one in the house at all. Might have to explore that topic at a later date.

Happy Third Advent!

Ringing Bells and Taking Pride

The last few days of Advent have been big activities, beginning with getting the tree on Saturday and progressing through a choir party, a tribute concert to the Trans Siberian Orchestra (think head banging with laser show…the kids were mesmerized) and, on Monday of this week, ringing the Salvation Army bell.

Ringing the bell has been on my list of service activities for a long time, but this is the first year I thought we were ready to do it. As I scheduled it I crossed my fingers for good weather. I didn’t win that one. It was below 20 degrees outside that night. But we put the kids in their snow pants, and I had invested in forty-five dollars’ worth of hats and gloves the week before in preparation for the cold snap. And we sang Christmas carols while we rang.

(And they marched in circles in front of the door. Not getting past this bunch without acknowledging them.)

Plus, we were at Bass Pro, and Santa has a workshop there, so we took turns outside and the kids spent some time enjoying the freebies inside.

I’m proud of my kids this year. Nicholas needs a post of his own, but for now I’ll just share this: Monday night during his turn outside, Christian said Nicholas sang carols any time someone was walking up or leaving. “As long as he was singing people were putting money in the pot,” Christian said. “When it was just me by myself, they walked on by, but when he was there, they gave. That kid’s a born salesman.”

He’s not the only one to make me proud. On Sunday, Christian came up short of cash while trying to pay someone back for popcorn. Why? Because the day before, Alex made him give money to a homeless man standing at the highway intersection.

It makes me feel like we’re doing something right.

Michael Meets Advent

By the time the fourth child passes milestones, they often slip past without much fanfare. Not that they don’t get noticed at all, but it is a little more muted.

Still, in the first nine days of Advent it’s been fun to watch Michael really connect with this season for the first time. I realized that the concentration of spring birthdays in our household means my other children have been pushing three before they had their first real Advent experience. So with Michael I’m seeing Advent in a whole new way.

First, a portrait of Michael. He wants to do everything, and he gets very bent out of shape if he’s passed over. He’s beginning, finally, to attempt to talk a little bit. Not spontaneous words, but increasing willingness to repeat (or attempt to repeat) words. Some spontaneous signing. He’s also toilet trained, as long as you don’t put any clothes on his lower half–even to the point where he’ll tell me he needs to go. I’ve never toilet trained in the dead of winter and it makes me wince, but it doesn’t seem to faze him. I’ve targeted the week after Christmas for knuckling down and making the transition to toilet-trained-while-clothed. And he’s singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” sans words, with enough pitch/rhythm accuracy that we can identify it. (“Is that normal for a two year old?” Christian asked. “I don’t know,” I said. “That’s not one of those skills they put on developmental charts.”)

Lately people who know Michael’s propensity for destruction through exploration have been pointing me to that U. of Iowa study about messy kids being smarter. It was really about babies smashing food, but it sounds good, and I made the leap as quickly as everyone else. The kid is impossible to keep out of anything: the iPad, the Advent calendar, the refrigerator, the pantry where the graham crackers are kept (on the up side, since he can get into anything now, maybe I can move them back to their old location on the lazy susan and free up that pantry space at last). You can see the intelligence in his eyes, just before he pounces. He’s a whirlwind, into everything. He knows how to turn on the computer speaking voice from the “unlock” screen,” and twice we’ve caught him almost purchasing something from iTunes via the iPad. The difference between him and Julianna, who has always, from age two to age almost-seven, been content to sit quietly and rifle through books and cards, is quite profound. She just never did get into things the way he does.

So it’s been really, really fun to watch him make Advent connections. I kept him (and Julianna) home while Christian took the big boys to get the Christmas tree on Saturday, because it was just so brutally cold. But when it was finally time to put ornaments on, he was so excited. He had to do it himself, and he had to point every one of them out to me afterward. Making cookies was Heaven. I get to measure spices, snitch batter, AND spread icing and sprinkles? And last night, when we bundled up and rang the Salvation Army Bell at Bass Pro, he was the cutest thing, walking up to people and ringing the bell at them, grunting for attention.

I’ve enjoyed every Advent since we started using Advent calendar activities to keep us organized and able to make time for service in December, but it’s different this year. I thought it was because I’d finally mastered the appropriate balance of activities, and I’m sure that’s part of it, but I think it has at least as much to do with watching Michael process it all for the first time.

Santa Purgatory

English: Thomas Nast’s most famous drawing, “Merry Old Santa Claus”, from the January 1, 1881 edition of Harper’s Weekly. Thomas Nast immortalized Santa Claus’ current look with an initial illustration in an 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly, as part of a large illustration titled “A Christmas Furlough” in which Nast set aside his regular news and political coverage to do a Santa Claus drawing. The popularity of that image prompted him to create another illustration in 1881. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I learned the ghastly truth about Santa Claus in the first grade. I’m pretty sure I even remember which one of my female classmates told me, clearly intending it to be an emotional earthquake. I say that with confidence because even through the haze of thirty-three years’ distance, I remember feeling a need to play it cool because she was trying to get a rise out of me.

 

I was taken aback, but it did not crush me, because I was already well aware that other girls had much bigger Christmases than I did, and it made perfect sense to me to think that the difference in our parents’ incomes, and not the whim of some big guy in a red coat, was what made that difference.

 

Christian found out in the fourth grade, and it ruined Christmas for at least a year.

 

Alex is in the third grade. He’s asking probing questions about the nature of Jesus, and reality and fiction have been completely separated for over two years, except in this area. I’ve been punting all Santa questions to my husband in that time, because Christian was the one who thought we ought to let it continue. I am tremendously ambivalent about this whole Santa thing. “Christian,” I said this fall, “it crushed you because you believed too long. He’s starting to act like a tween. This is ridiculous. We need to get out ahead of it.”

 

“All right, I’ll have a conversation with him,” he said…but he’s been procrastinating waiting for Alex to bring it up for six weeks.

 

So last week, Alex asked at the top of his lungs, “IS RUDOLPH REAL?”

 

I looked pointedly at my husband, who sighed and sent me upstairs with the three little ones so he and Alex could have The Conversation. I tried to keep an ear out, but since I was also trying to make sure the noise level upstairs covered the revelation being imparted downstairs, I missed most of it. The gist of it was that he tried to let Alex down easy, using this book The Autobiography of Santa Claus

 

, which does, I must say, a lovely job of covering every base. At the end, Santa talks about how kids realize even he can’t give gifts to every person in the world, so at some point they decide to give up their Santa gifts so someone else can have them.

 

“That doesn’t sound like you really told him,” I said dubiously, when we talked it over later.

 

“We talked about it,” he said. “We’ve started the process.”

 

I sighed and let it go, because maybe he’s right that slow and incremental is the middle ground between holding onto the magic and being crushed because it lasted too long.

 

Yesterday evening, though, we were watching Santa Claus is Coming To Town with the kids, and Alex, who is deep into the Autobiography, looked at Nicholas knowingly and said, “Just so you know, this isn’t really how it happened.”

 

“Uh…” I said, caught between the child who’s supposed to know and the one we’re trying to preserve the magic for, “Nobody really knows…”

 

“Santa knows,” Alex said. “And I’m reading his autobiography. That’s what an autobiography is. Right?”

 

Speechless, I looked at my husband, who looked at me helplessly. I said to him said softly, “I don’t think that conversation ‘took’.”

 

He shrugged. “What can I say? I tried.”

 

Good grief. I’m in Santa Purgatory. Come on, some mouthy third grader, can’t you put me out of my misery?

(We’re going to see Santa tonight. I swear if the “is he the real one” conversation comes up, I’m just going to tell him already.)

 

Sunday Snippets

Time for another gathering of bloggers at RAnn’s place for Sunday Snippets: A Catholic Carnival. Come on over!

The question of the week is: What is your favorite title for Mary, and why?

That’s a tough question. I think my favorite set of titles come from this poem: Mary the Dawn. I like it because the imagery is so beautiful: Mary the dawn, Christ the day, Mary the grape, Christ the sacred wine. I like how it keeps the focus on Mary as a conduit to Jesus, who’s the real focus.

My relevant posts:

Waiting

Down Time

Contemplating Crazy: A Christmas Shopping Manifesto

And then there are the kid posts:

Vignettes and

In Which Going To Church With Kids Completes My Entire 7QT post

Happy Second Advent! We’re thick in the middle of Advent activities and mostly enjoying it.

In Which Going to Church With Kids Completes My Entire 7QT Post

My mother told me once, “There were a lot of Masses when you girls were little that we didn’t get much out of.” This week was one of those for me. To wit:

1: Processional Cross A

Me? You’ve got the wrong girl, lady.

Because I walk with the toddler, I’m always the last one into church. I shepherd Michael through his attempt to saturate every piece of clothing in the baptismal font, and we start toward the pews to discover Julianna wrestling with the cross bearer, who gives me a panicked look of desperation. “Mah-ee, I wah kay-ee!” (I want to carry.)

2. Before Mass

While I’m coordinating logistics with the singers, Michael tests the stability of our guitarist’s stand. You are perhaps not surprised to learn that a toddler’s fingers can, indeed, fit between guitar strings.

3. Psalm

I’m sitting beside the piano playing my flute when Michael decides he’s a lumberjack and Daddy’s microphone stand looks like a tree. I stomp on the weighted base and then wrap him between my feet and reel him back in. All those Jazzercise leg exercises are good for holding a toddler captive while I finish playing. (Also a good reason to wear slacks to church.)

4. Budding Sound Engineer

But I’m cute!

We are singing “On That Holy Mountain” at Communion, Christian and I doing the duet, when Michael takes a plunge from my arms. While I’m singing I cannot fight the force of 30 pounds of child determined to escape, so I let him down and he holds my hand. Until he senses his opportunity. I turn a page, and I don’t quite connect that he’s left my side until I see his hand on the slide control for the guitars, and rapidly edging toward screaming feedback zone. I have two seconds’ worth of rests, so I lunge forward and correct the damage. My turn to sing again. Twisting my head toward the mic, I start singing as I step backward into place. Except Alex has decided he has to intervene with Michael, too, and his leg is right in my way. Mid-solo I trip and stagger back into line.

5. Processional Cross B

Mass ends at last; with only half an hour between Masses, we start resetting for the next group. Six minutes later we draw breath and do the obligatory Kid Head Count. Where’s Julianna? Someone points. She’s up in the sanctuary, behind the altar, trying valiantly to liberate the processional cross from its stand. It’s at a 45-degree angle and dropping by the millisecond. I decide this is an acceptable excuse for skipping the reverent bow before vaulting into the sanctuary area.

6. Recovery

“You know,” I say to Christian as we walk out of church, “I think the kids just wrote my entire 7 Quick Takes post in one hour.”

7. Justification

Lest you think I’m a horrible mother for this series of craziness, you should know that we had a verrrrrrry long day on Saturday. One playground + two sets of cousins + a holiday light display + camel and pony rides = out of control Sunday morning.

(They went to the playground because I was signing books at Catholic Supply’s Small Business Saturday event)

Cousins (and uncle) A

Cousin B, and a camel

Julianna’s very first horsey ride ever. Yay for aunties who are willing to take the risk!

[image error]

Let’s just call this one “mischief managed.” Does this explain the above mayhem?

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Julianna’s Letter To Santa

This….

Julianna’s first pony ride

leads to this…

Dear Santa Please can I have a horse (heart) Julianna