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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 142983" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>Heather I understand your concern. We went through similar things (although maybe not quite so extreme; but almost) with easy child. In her case I remember arriving to collect her from after-school care to find her pulling her dress up and showing her knickers to the boys in the playground. She was 5. When I scolded her, she told me the boys had told her to. I said the usual things, "If the boys told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?" and when she began to be much more modest after that I was relieved. Then it went almost as far as it did with your daughter. A year or so later we changed schools to the local school near our home. While she bathed with her younger siblings, she began to be very self-conscious about other people, including her grandparents, seeing her naked. I can't remember when she wouldn't let her father in the bathroom any more. We always used bubble bath, she would cover her body with bubbles.</p><p></p><p>Then when she was 7 and watching "Degrassi Junior High" on TV and it was dealing with Spike's pregnancy, she said to me, "I don't understand how anyone could ever let themselves get pregnant."</p><p>I thought that was unusually astute and judgmental for a 7 year old, so I asked her to explain a little more.</p><p>"To get pregnant you have to have sex, and sex hurts." Then she seemed to realise what she had said and began to clam up. Within minutes she was sobbing in a heap on the floor and finally told me a fragment of what it was about - when she was 5, a boy at school (7) had molested her. She wouldn't give me any details, I never did find out and she has since blocked it out of her mind (and now she would like to know!). But the gist of it was he had got her in a place she identified (it was a hidden space that was part of the playground equipment), held her down, removed her knickers, told her he was going to have sex with her and it would hurt. What happened after that, she refused to say. Wouldn't even tell her counsellor, who later blocked me out of any information at all on the grounds of client confidentiality - at the age of 7! But she did say that he had told her that if she ever told anyone, he would send his father round to our house and he would kill me by running me over with their lawnmower.</p><p></p><p>This poor kid had lived with this awful secret for two years. And although I got hr into therapy fast, it was fairly useless in terms of us helping her from then on. She was always more self-conscious about her body, always covered up more, avoided wearing anything remotely sexy. </p><p></p><p>When her little sister had to start her schooling back in the city, attached tot he school community where the abuse had happened, easy child insisted on being transferred there too. I asked her if she was doing it to protect easy child 2/difficult child 2, because that boy was no longer there. I had actually tried to do something but the boy and his family had moved on and nobody knew where. I didn't go to the police because easy child begged me not to, and with her refusing to tell the details anyway, I knew we would get nowhere.</p><p>She wanted to transfer partly to look after her little sister but also because she hated the school she was at.</p><p></p><p>I was worried about how she would handle puberty, she managed OK perhaps because she saw a few friends going through it; but she hated the whole concept of growing up and becoming a woman. She was very much in denial.</p><p></p><p>First bra - didn't want one. Didn't want to know about it, but then changing at school was an issue and she wanted to be covered, so she reluctantly accepted she needed something to not only cover her up but to stop anything jiggling. She wanted something to flatten her a bit. I tried to find pretty bras, there were nice ones with little bows or jewels, but no, they had to be white and unadorned.</p><p></p><p>She wouldn't wear make-up except for dance concerts. Any toiletries had to be unperfumed where possible. She didn't object to smells in general, she just didn't want any on her.</p><p></p><p>Like your daughter, easy child was very pretty. More than that - she had the sort of beauty in childhood you saw in Brooke Shields or Elizabeth Taylor. It was a beauty very dangerous for the child and I had always worried.</p><p></p><p>(There is a family anecdote, rather funny - when easy child was a baby only a couple of months old, we were at a family reunion sitting with mother in law's family. One aunt, noted for being a loud gossip with her foot always in her mouth, exclaimed loudly over easy child. "What a pretty baby!" she said. "She's absolutely beautiful! And who'd have thought YOU'D have such a pretty baby!" She didn't mean to be nasty, and I was laughing too hard to be offended. Besides, I knew what she meant. Her husband, however, was mortified.)</p><p></p><p>I worried about how easy child would handle boys. I wondered if she was a lesbian. But she was just anti-everything, when it came to sexual attraction or anything to do with it. And she began to binge on junk food, she became obsessed with always having her share (or more) of food, and the weight began to pile on. </p><p></p><p>Then at a camp for teenage carers she met BF1. He lived in Newcastle, we lived three hours' drive away. She was 14, he was 15. They rarely saw each other face to face but would talk once a week on the phone, usually for several hours. Having him for a boyfriend meant all other boys knew she was off limits, and it was also safe because they rarely met. The best of both worlds.</p><p></p><p>Whenever he DID travel to see her, she would be so anxious she would be vomiting. Amazingly, he stuck around, despite having a weak stomach and unable to cope if someone is vomiting near him (he will join them). As their relationship became more serious and several years passed, I told him about her history - I didn't want them getting to the sex stage without him knowing what he was likely to be in for.</p><p></p><p>Over the years they broke up twice and each time she was devastated. Each time they got back together a few months later, the last time when she was 17. They have been together ever since. </p><p></p><p>They both have a weight problem and it's getting worse. She is less self-conscious now about her body and sexuality, but she's still far more a prude than her sister. I suspect sex is for her nothing special, something she endures because she wants to be near BF1, she feels safe with him. She will talk about her body and health problems with me a little bit now, but this has only been in recent years.</p><p></p><p>While easy child's problems are not to the same extent as your daughter's, I was still very concerned. I organised counselling for her again when she was 15-16, but her anxiety issues could never be fully dealt with. And as I said, by then she had blocked out the memory of the original abuse, although she knows intellectually it happened.</p><p></p><p>I do wonder if at some stage your daughter was molested in some way. If easy child hadn't told me, I would have said there was no way such a thing could have happened to her, we were too vigilant and the school had guards on the gates and good playground supervision. However, much of that supervision was focussed on keeping the danger outside. They had no idea that their elementary and pre-school kids could pose such a danger to each other. The school age range was from 3 to 7. Why would you ever think kids of that age could be sexual predators? easy child had been in child care with that boy, from only three months old.</p><p></p><p>For easy child, BF1 has been her best therapy. I think we've just been lucky, but even so, she's clearly still got problems. I wish I could have helped her more effectively when she was younger.</p><p></p><p>As for what you can do for your daughter - I just don't know. You're already doing all you can. But some advice - we didn't force things with easy child, we let her develop at her own pace. We reassured her that she was free to choose her own pace to develop emotionally.</p><p></p><p>Possibly because we were concerned at how she would cope emotionally with a physical relationship, we didn't push the morality thing with her as hard as we might have. I didn't want to give her any more hang-ups than she already clearly had. We were almost grateful when we discovered she and BF1 had been sexually active for some time, and she hadn't come apart. I only found out when she got a Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) and symptoms got so bad she finally had to tell me she had a problem. She was darn lucky it hadn't gone to her kidneys by the time she told me.</p><p></p><p>Hang in there. I'm not sure what more you can do, except pray.</p><p></p><p>About the porn - it sounds to me like her curiosity is getting the better of her hang-ups. This could actually be a good sign, if only you can turn this interest into something more positive and communicative. She needs to know it's OK to access good knowledge, but not OK to look at stuff that will give her a distorted impression of it all. She needs to get away from the 'sin' side of it, and towards fact-based knowledge. Sometimes medicalising it can make it more acceptable to access? That was what we had to do with easy child (still do).</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 142983, member: 1991"] Heather I understand your concern. We went through similar things (although maybe not quite so extreme; but almost) with easy child. In her case I remember arriving to collect her from after-school care to find her pulling her dress up and showing her knickers to the boys in the playground. She was 5. When I scolded her, she told me the boys had told her to. I said the usual things, "If the boys told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?" and when she began to be much more modest after that I was relieved. Then it went almost as far as it did with your daughter. A year or so later we changed schools to the local school near our home. While she bathed with her younger siblings, she began to be very self-conscious about other people, including her grandparents, seeing her naked. I can't remember when she wouldn't let her father in the bathroom any more. We always used bubble bath, she would cover her body with bubbles. Then when she was 7 and watching "Degrassi Junior High" on TV and it was dealing with Spike's pregnancy, she said to me, "I don't understand how anyone could ever let themselves get pregnant." I thought that was unusually astute and judgmental for a 7 year old, so I asked her to explain a little more. "To get pregnant you have to have sex, and sex hurts." Then she seemed to realise what she had said and began to clam up. Within minutes she was sobbing in a heap on the floor and finally told me a fragment of what it was about - when she was 5, a boy at school (7) had molested her. She wouldn't give me any details, I never did find out and she has since blocked it out of her mind (and now she would like to know!). But the gist of it was he had got her in a place she identified (it was a hidden space that was part of the playground equipment), held her down, removed her knickers, told her he was going to have sex with her and it would hurt. What happened after that, she refused to say. Wouldn't even tell her counsellor, who later blocked me out of any information at all on the grounds of client confidentiality - at the age of 7! But she did say that he had told her that if she ever told anyone, he would send his father round to our house and he would kill me by running me over with their lawnmower. This poor kid had lived with this awful secret for two years. And although I got hr into therapy fast, it was fairly useless in terms of us helping her from then on. She was always more self-conscious about her body, always covered up more, avoided wearing anything remotely sexy. When her little sister had to start her schooling back in the city, attached tot he school community where the abuse had happened, easy child insisted on being transferred there too. I asked her if she was doing it to protect easy child 2/difficult child 2, because that boy was no longer there. I had actually tried to do something but the boy and his family had moved on and nobody knew where. I didn't go to the police because easy child begged me not to, and with her refusing to tell the details anyway, I knew we would get nowhere. She wanted to transfer partly to look after her little sister but also because she hated the school she was at. I was worried about how she would handle puberty, she managed OK perhaps because she saw a few friends going through it; but she hated the whole concept of growing up and becoming a woman. She was very much in denial. First bra - didn't want one. Didn't want to know about it, but then changing at school was an issue and she wanted to be covered, so she reluctantly accepted she needed something to not only cover her up but to stop anything jiggling. She wanted something to flatten her a bit. I tried to find pretty bras, there were nice ones with little bows or jewels, but no, they had to be white and unadorned. She wouldn't wear make-up except for dance concerts. Any toiletries had to be unperfumed where possible. She didn't object to smells in general, she just didn't want any on her. Like your daughter, easy child was very pretty. More than that - she had the sort of beauty in childhood you saw in Brooke Shields or Elizabeth Taylor. It was a beauty very dangerous for the child and I had always worried. (There is a family anecdote, rather funny - when easy child was a baby only a couple of months old, we were at a family reunion sitting with mother in law's family. One aunt, noted for being a loud gossip with her foot always in her mouth, exclaimed loudly over easy child. "What a pretty baby!" she said. "She's absolutely beautiful! And who'd have thought YOU'D have such a pretty baby!" She didn't mean to be nasty, and I was laughing too hard to be offended. Besides, I knew what she meant. Her husband, however, was mortified.) I worried about how easy child would handle boys. I wondered if she was a lesbian. But she was just anti-everything, when it came to sexual attraction or anything to do with it. And she began to binge on junk food, she became obsessed with always having her share (or more) of food, and the weight began to pile on. Then at a camp for teenage carers she met BF1. He lived in Newcastle, we lived three hours' drive away. She was 14, he was 15. They rarely saw each other face to face but would talk once a week on the phone, usually for several hours. Having him for a boyfriend meant all other boys knew she was off limits, and it was also safe because they rarely met. The best of both worlds. Whenever he DID travel to see her, she would be so anxious she would be vomiting. Amazingly, he stuck around, despite having a weak stomach and unable to cope if someone is vomiting near him (he will join them). As their relationship became more serious and several years passed, I told him about her history - I didn't want them getting to the sex stage without him knowing what he was likely to be in for. Over the years they broke up twice and each time she was devastated. Each time they got back together a few months later, the last time when she was 17. They have been together ever since. They both have a weight problem and it's getting worse. She is less self-conscious now about her body and sexuality, but she's still far more a prude than her sister. I suspect sex is for her nothing special, something she endures because she wants to be near BF1, she feels safe with him. She will talk about her body and health problems with me a little bit now, but this has only been in recent years. While easy child's problems are not to the same extent as your daughter's, I was still very concerned. I organised counselling for her again when she was 15-16, but her anxiety issues could never be fully dealt with. And as I said, by then she had blocked out the memory of the original abuse, although she knows intellectually it happened. I do wonder if at some stage your daughter was molested in some way. If easy child hadn't told me, I would have said there was no way such a thing could have happened to her, we were too vigilant and the school had guards on the gates and good playground supervision. However, much of that supervision was focussed on keeping the danger outside. They had no idea that their elementary and pre-school kids could pose such a danger to each other. The school age range was from 3 to 7. Why would you ever think kids of that age could be sexual predators? easy child had been in child care with that boy, from only three months old. For easy child, BF1 has been her best therapy. I think we've just been lucky, but even so, she's clearly still got problems. I wish I could have helped her more effectively when she was younger. As for what you can do for your daughter - I just don't know. You're already doing all you can. But some advice - we didn't force things with easy child, we let her develop at her own pace. We reassured her that she was free to choose her own pace to develop emotionally. Possibly because we were concerned at how she would cope emotionally with a physical relationship, we didn't push the morality thing with her as hard as we might have. I didn't want to give her any more hang-ups than she already clearly had. We were almost grateful when we discovered she and BF1 had been sexually active for some time, and she hadn't come apart. I only found out when she got a Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) and symptoms got so bad she finally had to tell me she had a problem. She was darn lucky it hadn't gone to her kidneys by the time she told me. Hang in there. I'm not sure what more you can do, except pray. About the porn - it sounds to me like her curiosity is getting the better of her hang-ups. This could actually be a good sign, if only you can turn this interest into something more positive and communicative. She needs to know it's OK to access good knowledge, but not OK to look at stuff that will give her a distorted impression of it all. She needs to get away from the 'sin' side of it, and towards fact-based knowledge. Sometimes medicalising it can make it more acceptable to access? That was what we had to do with easy child (still do). Marg [/QUOTE]
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