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
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?"
