My child (5yr) is receiving sexual advances from neighbor child
Although I expected this is something every parent must experience "eventually" I never anticipated it would happen so soon. My family has recently relocated to a new state and consequently a new neighborhood with new children around. My 5 year daughter has been coping with this transition as well as can be expected for someone her age...then the follwing eevent happens:
She is playing in the community pool with other children and she makes friends with our nextdoor neighbor grandchild, a 6 year old girl. My daughter asks if her new friend can come over for a play date and since we're new to the community, well why not? She should make new friends, right?
Well, after the new friend goes home, our daughter tell us that her new friend wanted to touch bare bottoms and bare "fronts"...and that she should keep this a "secret" from us...and if she didin't she wouldn't be her new friend. We are very proud of our daughter becuase she obviosly was not intimidated by this event and of told us the story.
To say the least, my wife and I were absolutly shocked. We have never experienced or even heard other parents discusss a situation like this. We discussed this event with our daughter and explained that we (our family) do not keep sercrets and that it's OK to say "no" when somebody asks you to do something you feel is wrong.
Our first reaction is to go next door and tell the grandparents, but after putting the event into perspective and thinking it might just be an isolated occurance that sometimes this is what little girls may do "occasionally" we decided just to monitor the situation...very closely
We have since observed this girl is frequently in her grandparents care and acts very strange. For example, when my daughter and her were playing in our backyard, she kept asking me if I was going to stay out there with them. In retrospect, this girl acts very sneaky and continues to try to get my daughter to do things when we aren't looking. She asks my daughter to kiss her and touch her in the few secounds they run arounf the corner of the house out og our view.
We not sure whether to just forbid our daughter to play with this child, tell the grandparents, or speak directly to the other girl. Our daughter appears to be handling it well, for example when this girl asked our daughter to kiss her the other day, our daughter said she couldn't because she has a cold...pretty quick thinking for a 5 year old...but I'm freakin' out because I don't my 5 year little girl should need to be fending off these adavnces at such a young age...maybe when she's older she can forcefully communicate "no", but at 5?
any advise?
Thanks
Comments for
My child (5yr) is receiving sexual advances from neighbor child
My nephew is now 12 years old and has been kicked out of 4 private schools. This last one, he was kicked out with only 7 weeks left in the year. He's now been in a public school for one week and is close to being kicked out and going to jail for sexual harrasment. He's diplayed innappropriate sexual behavior for years and now that the parents have finally put him on anti-depressants, his behavior has worsened. He comes from an ugly bitter divorce and the mom believes he's been sexually molested by one of his father's family members. Because of this, she lost custody of him at age 3 or 4.
My question is this, how can you tell the difference between a child that has been molested and one that was born with the propensity for this kind of behavior? I believe, unless the parents get him into an impatient intense type of therapy, his life's future will be written and it won't be good. Any insight into this topic would greatly be appreciated. Of course, the boy displays other behaviors that are ugly such as hurtful remarks, calling people ugly, fat, etc.. He is defiant and spoiled wrotten. I've already told my 10 y/o daughter she is never ever to be alone with him under any circumstance no matter how old she is!! This boy scares me and I'm afraid there is no hope for him.
Jul 23, 2009
Warning! by: Anonymous
Keep your daughter away from this child and report her situation to Child Protective Services. We had the same problem with a neighbor boy recently. He kept grabbing and or punching my children in private parts. My oldest child has ADHD and so to help us deal with behavior issues we do family counseling through the same place where he gets his meds. We discussed this with our counselor and she told me that no matter the age (the boy is only 7) this makes him a perpetrator and to continue to let him be around my children is to endanger them and if something is reported again, then I could go to jail or have CPS called in for child endangerment. I believe that she even called CPS as this boy was just removed from the home, and apparently with good reason. Be very careful with your daughter's innocence! I was molested as a child and still deal with issues from this. She may be very smart, very quick and very moral and ethical for her age, but she is still counting on Mom and Dad to protect her and I guarantee she feels very intimidated and uncomfortable when this other child is around.
Hope this advice helps.
I know that as a society we always hate to get involved and justify this by saying, "Well, what if it is nothing? I don't want to get these people in trouble." But you have to ask yourself, "Where is this little girl learning this behavior?"
