It’s something no one should have to hear.
Your child has been taken advantage of by another person.
It doesn’t matter the circumstances or age – no parent ever wants to hear that their child has been through some sort of tragedy.
Being taken advantage of doesn’t necessarily have to involve something physical or involving an adult. This could be a bully treating your child unfairly or a person who is pretending to be your child’s friend for some ulterior motive.
For my family, we received a call after an incident at my child’s school. We didn’t know how serious the situation was at first, but it didn’t matter. I felt sick to my stomach, I had so many questions, and most importantly, I wanted to be with my child right away.
Too, hearing that someone took advantage of my child brought me back to a time when it happened to me. It was in college and I was able to recognize right away what was going on and took action. Knowing that my child had been taken advantage of at a much younger age than my incident was heartbreaking.
But for any child, adult, heck – human being, to be taken advantage of is devastating in and of itself.
No matter how often we talk to our kids about the difference between what is right and wrong, they might not understand or be at an age to understand. Even if they know something is wrong, but are told they shouldn’t tell anyone, would your child still come to you?
I assumed my child would. Instead, my child said they didn’t know they were victimized. My husband and I didn’t try to force anything out of our child. We asked if they knew if something happened to them that wasn’t right. We wanted to push for more concrete answers but recognized that we didn’t want to bring our child potential pain that they said they weren’t having.
We can only assume our child was telling the truth. Thankfully we have not seen any indications that our child was traumatized by what happened.
However, we are the ones who will remember seeing on a security camera what happened to our child. We are the ones who will remember sitting down with our child to see if they had any recollection of the incident. And as our child grows up and hopefully continues to not remember what happened, it will be our decision as parents to divulge what happened many, many years from now.
If you are ever in this horrible situation, stay strong, Momma. Take a deep breath, and get your support system lined up. Some situations may involve you taking your child to a Child Advocacy Center. Other times, you may want to seek out counseling for your child (and/or you) to process what happened. If nothing else, talk to a friend, a relative, someone because you don’t want to go through this alone.
And above all else, remember, your child and you did nothing wrong, and you will get through this.
