SIO364: How To Prevent Child Sexual Abuse, According to the Data

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:11 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 364. I'm Thomas, and so much to say. I guess I can't say it all right now, but I'm working on something with regard to this show. I think it's really exciting. I am excited to announce it, and of course, people on patreon.com/seriouspod will be the first to know, as always, so please consider becoming a patron. And in the meantime, today's topic. Okay, I'm sure you saw whatever I titled this. And I hope I went for informative, but not too alarming, but still enough to grab sort of attention because, you know, that's the industry I'm in. Got to grab some amount of attention. Hopefully I nailed that triangle or whatever. But here's the thing. I wanted to say a couple of things about this. So for one, this is a more recent recording.

0:00:58 Thomas: I have a bunch saved up, which is part of what I need to talk about when I can announce things, but that'll be probably in a few days. But anyway, this one was more recent. This is not a situation. This is a LIFO situation for the few people who know what that means. Because I saw this Catholic Church news and just get, if you haven't seen it, just take a guess, a guess what it is. Guess what the news, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. My only reaction can be rage and making jokes. So I think maybe making jokes for now and then we'll see about rage later. But yeah, just guess. Why would they be in the news?

0:01:44 Thomas: What would be top reasons that the Catholic Church would be in it? Oh, yeah, it's because of the systematic abuse of children, sexual abuse of children. And of course, content notes on this episode. We also, Dr. Alan Smerbeck and I issue plenty of content notes in the actual episode. But I saw that news and I wanted to push this episode up to the front. But I want to say a word about it. I explain a bit of this in the interview. I'm going to try not to repeat myself. So here I'll just say, this is a topic that you might be sensitive to, as I definitely am, I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW THAT ACTUALLY THIS EPISODE IS MOSTLY ABOUT PARENTING, YOU KNOW, THERE'S NOT, THERE'RE, I PROMISE, THERE ARE NOT GORY DETAILS, THERE or not, you know, of course, terminology is used and sort of slight examples of, you know, child sexual abuse have to be mentioned, but only in the most feet terms, you know, no details, no real cases, no nothing.

0:02:42 Thomas: And I just wanted to let you know that because as a parent, the info that is in this podcast is really important. So if you're somebody who's sensitive as I am, don't, you I'm not issuing any guarantees. Don't, you can't hold me liable or anything, but this is very much not a, for least as far as my mind goes, this is not like a triggering episode or anything. Just, just for whatever information that gives you, mostly about parenting. It's mostly, honestly, it'S mostly about how actually kind of hard to know to handle certain situations with your own kids, you know, like certain awkward body part, part questions, you Know, not having the talk per se, because we're talking about younger kids, but just stuff like that. Incidents between siblings. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff that I feel like as a parent, I never hear anyone we want to talk about because it's embarrassing.

0:03:30 Thomas: It's, you know, you might think it's weird. You're worried that like, oh, is my kid weird? You know, no one wants to talk about it. And I actually really appreciate that this episode, this interview gave me a chance to talk about it and Stormy Decisus, Dr. Alan Smerbeck, who is an expert in relevant fields here. And it gave me so much more information about a topic that honestly it's not talked about a lot because no one wants to talk about it. It's uncomfortable. It could be, you know, sad if we're talking about actual abuse and all that. But I just want to let you know that there's as bare bones as you get when it comes to actually talking about any sort of abuse. And this is more about warning signs. And also we go into quite a bit about different situations I've had with my kids that that are just, you know, the awkward, like normal stuff and knowing what's normal and what's not when it comes to your children and their curiosity about bodies and stuff.

0:04:24 Thomas: Uh, and so I'll stop talking now and and let's get to this. What I think is a very important interview with a ton of really useful information. Some of it is a little counter intuitive too. So even more useful when it comes to being a parent or just being in the care or charge of children and knowing what to look for and how to possibly prevent child sex abuse. And so fuck the Catholic Church and here's the interview.

0:04:51 Clip: The only reason why I bring it up is some people thought maybe you went a little too far, you, I don't even know what I mean, we did maybe two jokes about that. Yeah, exactly. Don't you think the Catholic Church went a little too far?

0:05:03 Clip: More so than my cartoon? All right, listen, a couple of jokes, I know this is a morning show, you can't bring up all those crimes, you know.

0:05:09 Thomas: And I'm joined again by Stormy Decisus, Dr. Alan Smerbeck. How you doing?

0:05:14 Stormy: I am spectacular.

0:05:16 Thomas: Awesome, yeah. So today's topic, I think already before even introing it, we should introduce some, uh, some trigger warnings, possibly content notes, right?

0:05:25 Stormy: Yeah, yeah. So what I was going to talk today was about the prevention of child sexual abuse. And to talk about that, I'm going to talk about child sexual abuse. I don't intend to be very graphic, but I am going to tell you about some specific behaviors that occur in the context of both contact and non-contact abuse, as well as grooming behaviors, things that abusers might do to sort of win over a child's trust, and the kinds of reactions that parents and other people might have to learning about or suspecting child sexual abuse. So given that, I would encourage your listeners to just think carefully about if and when they would want to listen to this.

0:06:19 Thomas: Yeah. On that note. I think just to talk about that for a second, on a personal note, you suggested this this is a topic. And initially I didn't quite know what you meant. And so I wasn't really wanting to do it because honestly, I just want to say I'm who this content note is for. I just don't want to talk about these kinds of subjects most of the time, just because it's too sad. It's too distressing for me. But when you elaborated on what you had in mind and you wanted to talk about to prevent, things to look out for, prevention, then it turned in my mind to well, maybe this is very useful info for, I guess, not just parents, like anybody who's to be caring for children or in any relationship where you might want to look out for this. And I think that kind of turned it around in my mind to where it's like, yeah, I'm all for having the tools that need, I might need to do the best I possibly can as a parent.

0:07:11 Thomas: And so I just wanted to note that like, this is not something I want to talk about willy-nilly, like this, you know, it's not, it's that super Pleasant. Yeah.

0:07:18 Stormy: Yeah, I certainly don't want to make anyone feel criticized if they don't feel up to listening to this content. At the same time, I can tell you that I present it to my undergrads every year, every semester, and the pretty consistent response I get is that it was hard to listen to, but ultimately they feel it was really worthwhile.

0:07:41 Thomas: All I'm glad for that, and on that note, why don't we get into it though, but again, just all the content, consider it noted, everybody.

0:07:48 Stormy: Yeah. So I think the first thing to go into is prevention even works. So we're talking generally about, in this case, I'm talking about abuse of prepubescent children by someone who is almost always bigger than them. And if that person is willing to be violent, if that person is a psychopath, then prevention isn't going to do a hell of a lot.

0:08:17 Thomas: Yeah.

0:08:17 Stormy: So it's important to start with the fact that that's not most offenders. Most offenders are not using physical violence. Most offenders want to believe—they are incorrect in this belief—but they want to believe that the behavior is consensual. So they're not likely, most, and I want to be clear, there are some who are we would call psychopaths, who really lack a conscience. But most want to believe the behavior is consensual. Of course it isn't. So say if the child says no, actually works quite often. So that's why prevention strategies tend to work, because the person, most offenders don't want to see themselves as someone who is hurting a child. And so if the child says, no, I don't Want this, that Actually has a pretty good chance of working. Working. Another thing that people are generally not very aware of is that about a third of child sexual abuse is committed by children. Now, about half of that is one adolescent sexually assaulting another. And so that's not exactly what we think of when we talk about child sexual abuse. But the other half is more what we would typically call child sexual abuse.

0:08:59 Thomas: Wow.

0:09:47 Stormy: It might be a teenager abusing an elementary school child. Offenses really vary a lot in their severity, in their type, and the nature of the offenders varies a lot. A lot of these offenders very amenable to treatment. They might not have even realized that what they were doing was harmful.

0:09:52 Thomas: Yeah.

0:10:10 Thomas: When you're you're talking about when it's like kids or older kids doing the abuse. Yeah.

0:10:14 Stormy: So you might have like a 14-year-old who is curious about sex and makes an unfortunate decision to a younger sibling into engaging in some sex behaviors. Behaviors, that action is very, very harmful. But that 14-year-old is not necessarily a cruel and heartless person. That 14- year-old might not have a full understanding of how harmful their actions are, and they can be very amenable to treatment. They can respond really well. In fact, one study found that of children who commit these offenses, only 7% go on to re-offend.

0:10:39 Thomas: Oh, wow.

0:10:58 Stormy: Yeah. So Yeah.

0:10:58 Thomas: That's really low. That'S surprising.

0:11:01 Stormy: So one thing that I'm going to talk about later is that sex offender treatment is 100% a net good to society, and we should be supporting it. Um, No.

0:11:11 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Gosh. Thorny issues.

0:11:13 Stormy: One wants, yeah, no. One want to be like, "Oh, I'm gonna devote tax money to sex offenders," but At the same time, unless your plan is for all of them to have life sentences, sentences, which is not going to happen, treatment is a benefit to society.

0:11:15 Thomas: Right. Yeah right.

0:11:31 Thomas: Well, and that's not even like justice. I mean, depending it's it's like, this is such a thorny topic, obviously, because our society is just so, you retributive or whatever. Is that the right word? I mean, we're just like, it's hard. And I get it. Like, obviously I have kids, like I totally get it when it comes to this stuff. Anything with kids, especially, well, it'S like, I think so much of our society just wants to murder in that case. They just want to absolutely wreck these people in every way. But especially when you're talking about, as the example you just gave, you you know, maybe a 14-year-old or something, I think it's very valuable to know those figures so that, you know... Sure, it doesn't undo the harm that's caused by any means, but it could also prevent us from, you Know, ruining two kids' lives when perhaps that isn't necessary.

0:11:42 Stormy: Yeah.

0:12:20 Stormy: I'll talk about it later, but a lot of juvenile offenders are not pedophiles, some of them are. And pedophile does not mean the same thing as child molester. A child molester is a person who has committed an offense against a child. Only about 50% of child molesters are pedophiles. A pedophile is a person who has a preferential sexual attraction to children. We have no idea what percentage of pedophiles never commit an offense, right?

0:12:26 Thomas: Right, yeah. Oh, wow.

0:12:50 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Yeah. You wouldn't know. They're just out there somewhere.

0:12:54 Stormy: Well, because how would you ever admit it? Think about, I always say to people, if that were you, who could you tell? Think about actual human beings in your life that you would tell who you are confident would not reject you. And most of my students come up with maybe my mom and no one else.

0:12:55 Thomas: It's kind of creepy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:13:15 Thomas: Yeah maybe a therapist if as long as you're very clear that you're not about, does that count as like, what is the word where you have to report stuff? Stuff.

0:13:23 Stormy: Risk. Risk. So the way that works is if you tell a therapist that you have abused a child or that you are an imminent risk of abusing a child, then they have to report it. If you tell a child well I have these fantasies but I have no intention of acting on them, then they shouldn't report that. But not every therapist knows that or behaves that way. And so what little data we have suggests that people who have these urges unlikely to tell even a therapist, which is really, really too bad because therapy does seem to be helpful in preventing a non-offending person from going on to commit an offense. So

0:13:23 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:14:06 Thomas: And, that's the thing. And we don't have to stay to this part of the conversation too much, although it's, it's just such a interesting thorny, like philosophy issue of like, did these people choose to have this desire for children? Like Like it's, it's so hard for us to not blame, you know?

0:14:21 Stormy: Far as we can tell, pedophilia—remember, pedophilia is an urge, not a behavior. Pedophilia urges emerge around puberty. They're unchosen. Acting on them is absolutely a choice. Um, but young people need to be told what sex behaviors are unacceptable early on. You know, if you're 13, probably no one has taken you aside and said, you know, it's really, really wrong to engage in sex behaviors with people younger than you. Not a message we send to kids very often.

0:14:27 Thomas: Yeah, I guess it's just not a mindset that, wouldn't it wouldn't really occur to me much at that age, like 13, you give know, to that message. Yeah, I see what you mean. But anyway, and that was an introduction to this statement, which is, even if you're not like me, like I'm somebody who wants to have as much compassion as possible for any kind of criminal offender, you know, at all.

And, and, and I want, want to the kind of, you know, justice system that obviously we're nowhere near having, that does the best to rehabilitate and all that stuff.

Even if you're not like me, like set that all aside, even if you're someone who's just, you know, vengeful, whatever, what's the worst part of all this is, is that you, as as you mentioned, so many of these measures, these, this treatment, all this stuff is in fact better if you want to just prevent your own kids from being abused. Like, that's what's it's it's that not just a question of like, oh, we should have compassion for these, you know, some of the what we consider the worst people in society. That's a hard thing for Americans, at least, to swallow, and I get it, but like the part where it's like, yeah, but all the things we're doing because of that, like, revenge nature that we have, are preventing us from preventing them from hurting more people. It's really frustrating.

0:16:06 Stormy: Yeah. So, if we're talking about people who have committed an offense, the sex offender registry has some real unintended consequences. Obviously, no one wants to, you know, have a sex offending live right next to your child. But the way the rules are set up is that, for example, you might not be able to live within 2,000 feet of any library, school, playground, park. That's most of the places, if you draw a 2, 000-foot radius around every school, playground, park, and so, for example, in Miami-Dade County, is a parking lot where sex offenders sleep in their cars, because that's the only housing they can have that fits those things. And on recidivism in general, not just for sex offenders, but for them too, shows that if you make your life out of prison absolutely shit, you don't have a lot of motivation to stay out of of prison.

0:16:07 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

0:17:12 Thomas: Gonna say, like, I mean, It's It's so Hard. Yeah.

0:17:13 Stormy: So if you're forced to sleep in your car because you literally cannot live anywhere else, then your motivation to stay out of prison isn't that high.

0:17:24 Thomas: Like, so much of the motivation to not do crime is actually just living in a society, you know. It really is, like, it's the it's the embarrassment, it's whatever, the sense of, you know, as the kind of animal that we are, needing to belong to some sort of community. And if we say, okay, you just have to have a complete shit life now with no connections of any kind to any people, what if, you're somebody who has all these urges or whatever, wouldn't that make you feel like, well, what the fuck do I have to lose? You

0:17:52 Stormy: Yeah, that's pretty much, we want you to have something to lose. We want you to be able to get a job. Now, I think it's very rational to put reasonable barriers on what kind of job. I wouldn't want that person working in a very very sensitive position. But again, if you literally can't get a job, then it's almost impossible for you to comply with your parole. Actually, during COVID, for a lot of sex offenders, a common condition of parole is they can't access the internet, so they can't use it for offenses. But another condition is that they attend treatment. And during COVID all the treatment was online so the the ACLU was the only one who would take up the the suit and they they sued to say that well if you're going to insist these people attend online treatment you have to give them access to the internet treatment, not for other purposes, but they have to have, you know, an hour a week online. But think about that, had to be a lawsuit, um.

0:17:55 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The only other thing I wanted to add there is I think a lot of people are really keenly aware of how bad the justice system is, how much they might get it wrong, how many, know, false, all this stuff, innocent black men might be behind bars for different things, until the minute you talk about this particular thing. And then all of a sudden people act as though the justice is in bats a thousand, like, oh, well, but for sex offenders, obviously every single one of them was guilty a hundred percent and we never get it right. Wrong. And don't, I have no idea what that percentage would be, but it's just one more reason why, like, you know, this horrible mindset of like we should just like publicly execute these sex offenders is just really kind of disturbing to me, because the idea that you could never make a mistake, well,

0:19:28 Stormy: Think there's a desire for emotional congruence. So it's to assume that sex offenders re-offend at very high rates. And I mentioned that for juveniles, the rate is about seven percent. Even for adults, for those deemed high risk, the reoffense rate is 22 percent, which is lower than the reffense rate for assault, for drug offenses, for a variety of other offenses.

0:19:52 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:20:01 Stormy: They're actually not the most likely to reoffend. Now, again, those reoffenses could be more harmful than a simple assault. We very much should take them seriously. But one thing I do want to touch on, I was going to get to this at the very end, but I might as well mention it now, which is that there are almost no services available for people who have pedophilic urges who haven't offended. And if we're thinking about prevention, providing services to those people is just about the best thing you can do. Again, no one wants to say, like, oh, I'm helping pedophiles. But turns out that when you offer these people therapy, for one thing, they have very high rates of suicidality and depression.

0:20:51 Stormy: Imagine waking up in middle school and realizing you're a monster. You know, that's pretty tough to deal. But we can also break down any pro-offense beliefs. If the person says, well, I won't do it because it's illegal, but, you know, it's probably not that bad. A therapist can say, well, how about I'm going to show you some letters written by people who experienced this act and let's see what they have to say.

0:21:17 Thomas: Right.

0:21:17 Stormy: And so we can get them to say, well, it's not just illegal, it is wrong, too. So we can build up those anti-offense beliefs. So there is a program in Germany called Prevention Project Dunkelfeld, which provides services for people who have identified pedophilic urges in themselves that has been quite effective, but it hasn't been replicated in the United States.

0:21:44 Thomas: Right, yeah, all right, we, we can definitely move on back to the, uh, the topic of prevention, but, but yeah, just to reiterate the point, like, if, even if not for any sense of compassion, just for the fact that, like it is safer for our children if we were to do these things to help prevention, it, it s, that's what it frustrates me so much. Okay. So let's to get to the meat of the topic here.

0:21:48 Stormy: Okay. Yeah. Yeah, All right. So the first thing to know is that don't have a ton of data about specific sexual abuse prevention programs, because to get that data, we would have to deliberately give the prevention to some children and deny it to others and then find out what happens. There was a study where they asked college students whether they have had sexual abuse prevention at school and whether they had ever been abused. Now, that's not a perfect study, there's a lot of things that aren't great, but they did find that those who had undergone a prevention program were about half as likely to report they had been abused. Yeah.

0:22:19 Thomas: Right. Yeah.

0:22:45 Thomas: Wow. That seems really huge.

0:22:48 Stormy: I, my, my suspicion is that it's a bit exaggerated because of a recall bias, but some of the better data we've got. The biggest thing that parents can look for is that, remember, most offenders aren't going to be using violence. They're going to somehow convince the child to engage in the behavior, And that's going to take time. So most offenses begin with small actions that grow steadily. And that means there's definitely time for parents to notice and intervene.

0:22:52 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah,

0:23:25 Stormy: Intervene. We don't say this too often because we don't want to make families of kids who've been hurt feel like we're blaming them, but uninvolved or neglectful parenting is a major risk factor for sexual abuse. We also don't Want involved parents to let their guard down because it can can happen to anyone. But if parents aren't involved, that puts the child at much, much greater risk.

0:23:54 Stormy: Because again, we're usually talking about things that build up, and there's going to be some red flags, at least in many cases.

0:23:25 Thomas: Yeah. Right? Yeah. Right, yeah, mm-hmm.

0:24:02 Stormy: So this gradual process of breaking down children's defenses plays another role, which is testing the waters to determine if the child is going to tell, if the parent is goingto intervene. So if the child reacts negatively during the grooming phase, it's very unlikely to go further. The person is trying to figure out what's going to happen if I go further, and if the child suggests, oh, I'm going to tell my dad, then very often it stops there.

0:24:33 Thomas: Yeah. They'll move on to someone else. Yeah

0:24:35 Stormy: Well, ideally, if you identify some more alarming things, you might take further steps beyond just keeping your child away from them. I found a paper where they compared what might be grooming behaviors from just normal behavior from an adult who you're close to. Because, Because, you know, some behaviors that have been identified as grooming were things like paying compliments. Well, lots of people pay compliments.

0:25:08 Thomas: All. Yeah That's all adults do with kids like all all day, pretty much at least the ones that want to interact with them.

0:25:12 Stormy: Right. And so what they found were things such as good behavior with rewards, to work in a youth-serving organization, and even engaging in childlike activities like playing kids' games with kids. None of those were more common among people's relationships with someone who had abused them than not.

0:25:36 Thomas: Gotcha.

0:25:36 Stormy: So are things that were the percentage of people who had been abused reported this more often than the percentage of people who had not been abused. And honestly, most of them are kind of directly sexual. So things like showing pornography to a child, talking about your own sexual history, watching the child undressing, exposing your own naked body. The ones only ones that weren't explicitly sexual were providing drugs and alcohol and seeking to separate the child from other people, trying to get the child alone, this

0:26:16 Thomas: Now, I know we talked about kind of the age stuff earlier. Are we talking about like, this is adults toward kids specifically, or is this just any possible abuse?

0:26:24 Stormy: Is, I'm talking about abuse of prepubescent children because sexual offenses against teenagers are a very different thing. They tend to resemble sexual offenses towards adults a lot more, as far as who the the perpetrator is, that could be an adult. It could also be an older adolescent. Remember, I said about a third of offenses are committed by teens.

0:26:44 Thomas: Right. This is a very dumb question, but, can you, um, define these age ranges, at least in so far as kind of the science you're looking does, like, what, what range is adolescent versus whatever? And I don't know why I don't have a good grasp of that.

0:26:58 Stormy: Prepubescent, we're generally saying under 12-ish. I mean, some people go through puberty earlier or later, but the definition of pedophilia is an attraction to bodies that haven't gone through puberty. And that doesn't mean that offenses against 13 and 14 year olds aren't really bad. What it means is that things that most people find sexually attractive are secondary sex characteristics. Think about, you know, I'm not going to ask you what you personally find attractive, but think about people might enjoy beards, broad shoulders, buttocks, breasts, secondary sex characteristics. Most people don't find prepubescent bodies attractive at all, the same way most people don't want to steal dirty socks. So that's what makes offenses against prepubescent children scientifically distinct. It doesn't mean that they're necessarily distinct in terms of their harmfulness. I don't

0:27:13 Thomas: I see, right. Yeah. Yeah. Of course, I

0:28:03 Stormy: In any way want to minimize the harm to adolescent victims. But that's what I mean when I say prepubescent children. And then when we talk about offenses committed by youth, guideline for a diagnosis of pedophilia is attraction to children at least, I think, four years younger than you. So if you're 13 and you're attracted to an 11-year-old, we might say, well, that's a bad idea, but we wouldn't call that pedophilia. But if you are 18 and you are attracted to an 11-year-old, that's quite unusual.

0:28:32 Thomas: Yeah. So basically every rock star from the 60s, you mean?

0:28:41 Stormy: Most of the time when people say that someone's a pedophile, first of all, they're referring to child molestation, not pedophilia. But of the time, those people are committing offenses against adolescents, again, I do not know.

0:28:58 Thomas: This the classic like libertarians, you always bicker on the definition of it, yeah, you're not one of those, yeah,

0:29:00 Stormy: I know, and this is why I hate to get technical on this, because people who get technical on this are usually being assholes, but from a scientific, from a legal standpoint, I have no, of course, an offense against a 13-year-old is very, very wrong. From a scientific standpoint, again, it's the difference between stealing socks and robbing a bank. Most people want money. They don't rob banks because it's wrong. Most People just don't even want to steal socks. That's just not even a desire. You're not holding yourself back from doing it. So from a scientific perspective, there is reason a to differentiate, even though like the libertarian legal where they're saying like, oh, well, this shouldn't be classified. That's bullshit.

0:29:06 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. Right. The only reason I brought it up was some of those things I was just thinking like, oh, I would definitely see them as for sure warning signs that would be incredibly alarming if it was an adult toward my kid. But if it were like, I don't know, a kid one year older than my kid and they were doing things like, some of Those things that you mentioned, I'm not sure I would have, you you know, necessarily considered it like a super dangerous red flag or anything.

0:30:14 Stormy: So children engaging in sex play with same age peers or very, very close, within about a year or two, if everybody is agreeing to it and it's not getting too intense, um, is generally speaking normal and healthy. So if two kids are like, you know, "Oh, what's that between your legs? Huh, that's interesting. What happens if I poke it? It doesn't look like mine. It kind of wiggles in the breeze." "That's interesting, look at mine."

0:30:44 Thomas: This is my fucking kids. Yeah. It's a, yeah,

0:30:45 Stormy: Yeah. That's, that's normal, that's healthy, that's no big deal. Um, if kids are engaging in adult-like behavior, oral, anal, or vaginal sex, um, you definitely want to wonder where they learned that, that could come from abuse. They could also have just seen porn. Occasionally it's a weird coincidence. My mother was a preschool teacher, and she one day saw a kid, a boy, kneeling in front of another boy with his mouth on the other boy's zipper, and I mean, like, that looks very sexualized.

0:31:00 Thomas: Yeah. Right.

0:31:22 Stormy: But then it turned out that these boys, um, lots of preschoolers practice with like zippers and buttons and stuff, and so they were practicing that, and they decided to play puppy dogs, and so, so they were doing everything with their mouths. And that was it. That was the entire thing. They had no sexual connotations of any kind. So a good rule of thumb is, yeah.

0:31:43 Thomas: Yeah, it's a fine line. Yeah it's like as a

0:31:47 Stormy: I

0:31:47 Thomas: Parent it is freaking, there have been a few times when, you know one of my kids has said or done something where you're like, oh that's, but also they're kids. You have to remember they have zero content. They are not looking at things sexually. At I'm talking about my five year old, my four year old. They have no context for it. They're not thinking of anything in that sexual context, hopefully, unless something weird has happened. And so like things they might do seem really to an adult brain. You're like, oh, that's weird. But then you have to be like, well, to them, they're just they're like literally they're just body parts that they don't know anything about, you know?

0:32:21 Stormy: To them, it's just, a fair number of little girls discover that their vagina, that things can go inside of it. That's less common. But there's definitely little girls who are just like, oh, I could put a Lego in there. And it's not masturbation, it's not really an erotic thing, it's the same reason they stick a pee up their nose, because, oh, it's a hole and I can put something in it. That kind of curiosity driven, spontaneous behavior between kids of similar ages, sometimes you need to redirect it For various reasons.

0:32:55 Thomas: Mm-hmm. Right.

0:32:56 Stormy: But it doesn't need to be alarming. Even those behaviors I mentioned, like making accidental contact or exposing one's naked body, it's important to note that 1 to 10 percent of the non-abused sample also reported those behaviors. So that doesn't mean it's an okay behavior, like providing a child with drugs or alcohol, generally not a good behavior. But

0:32:59 Thomas: Right. Okay. Right. Yeah. Well, especially for, again, if we're talking prepubescent, like what? That feels pretty not good.

0:33:28 Stormy: No, these aren't good things. But this is where the math gets tricky. Because a relationship is much more likely to not be sexually abusive than abusive, even if a behavior is a lot more common among those who are abused, in any given instance of the behavior, a lot More people who haven't been abused. If we take like inappropriate sexual language, so 9% of the general population said they had an adult in their lives who used inappropriate sexual language. People who had been abused said that their abuser was, they, 45% of them said their abuser used inappropriate sexual language.

0:33:29 Thomas: Yeah. Right.

0:34:14 Thomas: Right. What is this called again with those tricky statistics problems where it's more, is it Bayesian stuff where

0:34:19 Stormy: Yeah, it's called the base rate fallacy.

0:34:22 Thomas: Where it seems, maybe not time to go into that now, but I take your point. It's the kind of thing where if you observe one of these behaviors, even though in your mind, you're like, oh shit, warning sign, pedophile. It is like, yeah. Statistically, it's still unlikely, but that is hard for the human brain to fathom. Obviously, I am not suggesting that you should do absolutely nothing because of that. I'm just saying, I'm just describing what you're talking about with the kind of the statistical counter intuitiveness there.

0:34:47 Stormy: Yeah, and I'll talk about this later, about what to do if a child does disclose something concerning, and not panicing is a big part of it, which I realize is very, very difficult. But if, for example... your kid comes home from Boy Scouts and says, oh, the scoutmaster was peeing with the door open. That's concerning. That's a red flag. But immediately panicking and freaking out will cause your child a lot of distress that can be avoided.

0:35:17 Thomas: Well, yeah, and they might avoid telling you things in the future, right? I mean, if you make this experience for them very dramatic, that's got to be one of the biggest worries of mine is like, I want to make sure that my kids are always comfortable to tell me things like this, because because again, prevention. And so, yeah, not freaking out. Okay. Key tip there.

0:35:21 Stormy: Yes. Yeah. So let's talk about different CSA prevention approaches. I'm going to give you two that are common that I actually think are bad idea. One is stranger danger, telling kids don't talk to strangers. The first thing is strangers commit very few offenses. They're less than 10%. So telling kids to avoid strangers isn't all that helpful. Two, kids don't actually know who a stranger is.

0:35:44 Thomas: Oh, okay. Yeah. Right.

0:36:03 Stormy: Go ask your kids whether like a store manager who's nicely dressed is a stranger. They'll say no. And they sure as hell aren't going to think a kid is a stranger. So telling them to avoid strangers isn't helpful. And the final problem is if your kid is ever lost, which is very likely that that will happen at some point, a stranger is just who they need, need. So the alternative I recommend is to tell your kids that if they need to talk to somebody and they can't find someone they know, is look for an adult with children.

0:36:04 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right, yeah right.

0:36:38 Stormy: That's a pretty good guide that they'll find somebody who can help them. So I don't think stranger danger is a very effective technique.

0:36:45 Thomas: Anything invented in the 80s or 70s isn't good. So yes.

0:36:50 Stormy: The other one I'm not wild about is good touch, bad touch, telling kids that some touches are good and some touches are bad. There's three problems. One, there are good touches that feel bad, like getting a shot.

0:36:54 Thomas: Interesting.

0:37:04 Thomas: Right.

0:37:04 Stormy: Bad touches can feel good. Some kids do experience erotic sensation, most enjoy enjoy touch on a non-erotic level, tickling, cuddling. So you're telling them it's a bad touch, but it actually feels good, and to realize that it's a bad Touch if it feels good. But the third and the biggest is non-contact offenses are the most common kind of offenses. So things that don't actually involve touching. Kids are very literal. So if you tell them it's about touching, they're not going to realize that a non-contact offense is abusive. And almost all contact offenses are preceded by non- contact offenses. And we want want to put a stop to it as early as possible.

0:37:58 Stormy: So you want your kid to realize, like, oh, this person wants to take my picture in an inappropriate way. That's not okay. And a bad touch, I promise you, no five-year-old in the world will think of that as a touch. They're just too literal. So I don't think good touch, bad touch is a good approach. So here's a few that are more useful. Generally speaking, promoting physical autonomy. Yes, you sometimes have to manhandle young kids, but as much as possible, let your child control who they touch.

So I don't know about you, but when I was growing up, I was told, like, go give your grandmother a kiss and now we are much more likely to say, do you want to give your granddaughter a kiss? And that's great. I think tickling games with little kids are a great time to practice bodily autonomy, because most kids have a sort of ambivalent feeling about tickling. They kind of like it at first, but then they stop liking it. So it's actually a great way, say, like, hey, do you want to play tickles? If they say yes, give them a tickle, and then let them say stop, and

0:37:34 Thomas: Yeah. Right, Yeah, yeah, Right?

0:39:08 Stormy: Then stop. Stop.

0:39:08 Thomas: Yep. This is stuff that I'm so glad we know better, at least. Who knows what the next generation of scientific insight will bring? But I was just saying the other day on a dad's that I don't know if it's out or not, but I'm really glad that this is the kind of thing that I think we've, you learned a little bit. I do this nearly every day with my kids. I, I do a little bit, I'll start a little bit of tickle with Arlo, and he does almost the same thing every time, where he goes, ah, he likes it for a second. Then he goes stop. And I go, of course I'll stop, you're in charge of your body. I say the same every time. Of course I will stop. Absolutely, Arlo, you're in charge.

0:39:43 Stormy: That's that's a great way to rehearse that. And as soon as your kids hit, two you or three you, can insist that they respect other people's bodily autonomy. And that's a way kids know that a rule is important if it applies to everybody. So saying, like, you know, if your kid just, like, lots of kids will go and like pick up a smaller child, tell them, like, well, you, you should ask first. So just generally teaching bodily autonomy. Another really big one is teaching the correct names of sexual body parts. If Kids have something to report, they need to know what to say.

I can tell you that worst situation is when a preschooler says, you know, I don't like him kissing my tummy. And then we have to really wonder, does tummy mean belly? Or does the child not know the word vagina, and then we have to really, because the child doesn't know the word. So Using the words and model that you can just talk frankly about these, you know, say take the soap and wash your vagina, or ow, that that hit my penis and it hurts, and just use those words frankly and openly.

0:40:07 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

0:40:54 Thomas: We did this, um, and then Phoebe started, she said, at first, this is years ago, she said it first, kajina, for some reason. Um, now is That Okay, yeah, I was like, I was, I was, that's the new word for it, because that's so cute, I can't not say that.

0:41:02 Stormy: That's that's fine. Yeah. And I mean, the kids mispronouncing things is no big deal.

0:41:12 Thomas: No. No, that's what I, that's now the term I'm saying, that's the household term for it. No, I'm just kidding. We, we do teach her the real, uh, word, but I can't help it. Like, the very example you just gave, if I, you know, we're doing bath time and I ask Phoebe to wash her vagina, I do say vagina because I can. I mean, it's just, how are you not going to say vagina, giant, yeah.

0:41:31 Stormy: So there are some parents who just, they're, they're just too embarrassed to use the correct names. And I really encourage them to work on that, but if you're gonna use slang names, use ones that people can understand. So kajina, everyone's gonna figure that out. If you call a penis a peepee, I think everyone's going to figure that out. But like peeper for penis?

0:41:36 Thomas: Yeah. That could be an eye your peepers.

0:41:56 Stormy: Right. And so I would encourage people, if you have to use slang names, use, you know, like peepee for penis. So at the very least, if the child says something about a pee-pee, everyone is going to know what that means.

0:41:56 Thomas: Yeah yeah I've, what I, what we've done is we've made sure, I say we, this is me, I'm the insane person who loves using the kids' fake words. Um, so I, I won't speak for Lydia, but what I do is I just make sure they know, they, I make sure they know the correct one, and then also still like to use the cute one because it's funny, and that's not just these terms, that's all their words for everything, I use their old words for stuff long after they stopped using it, and they're, they're like, what are you saying? But it's too cute, I can't help it. Okay, but good tip. All right, so

0:42:25 Stormy: Yeah.

0:42:37 Stormy: Actually, one of my favorite linguistic games to play with children is called the FIS phenomenon. And it's that kids know what a word should sound like before they can say it. And so if your child points to a fish and says, that's a FIS, if you say back to them, oh, a Fis, the kid will get really mad and be like, no, it's a fis.

0:42:48 Thomas: Yeah yeah Oh, my gosh, that's so funny. A long time ago, I have wondered, wow, okay, I wondered about this, this, it must be on comedy shoeshining, because it was when Phoebe was still, like, just learning stuff. This phenomenon happened. Phoebe would do this. And I asked the choir, like, I literally was like, does this mean that they know, like, not only how it should be said, but they also know, like, their word for it? I outlined that exact thing. I had no idea that was a real thing.

0:42:59 Stormy: Oh, absolutely.

0:43:21 Thomas: That's so funny.

0:43:21 Stormy: You can do this to almost any child ages two to four. If, when they mispronounce something, if, if you say, like, oh, it's a fist, they'll be like, no, it's office, stop calling it fists.

0:43:32 Thomas: Yeah. This is particularly challenging with Arlo right now because we're actually in the pre phases. We're starting a little bit of speech therapy because he can't do the throat sounds like that, like guh or cuh or any of those. He just does T for all of them. And and he'll get fucking pissed. I wish I could think of a good example just to let you know the kind of stress that this causes because I'm not sure if there's a real one, but it's kind of this kind of word. He'll be Like, oh, look at that tat over there or, you know, or something like that. And yeah,

0:43:43 Stormy: Yep.

0:43:59 Stormy: And yeah and if you say, oh, a titty tat, they'll like, no, you're doing it wrong.

0:44:03 Thomas: I have, I'm like, oh look at the tat. He's like, no, and they're mad too. They're not like, oh, I believe you've misunderstood me, father. What I actually meant was tag or something like that. He'll be like, you idiot. You know, he's so mad at me for not knowing. And he'll like do the slow, no tat. Like saying it slower somehow makes it the right thing. He has it really bad. Okay, that's super, that's super interesting. Back to our tips though. Use the real words or at least make sure they know the real words. Got it.

0:44:03 Stormy: Yes yeah yeah use the real words. So a common, again, an approach I don't like, is telling kids that they can't or shouldn't keep secrets. The reason not to is every kid keeps secrets. And if it's like, if you tell kids not to do something that they're going to do anyway, then the rule is meaningless. Lists. Instead, there's two approaches that both have some evidence behind them. One is teaching the difference between a secret and a surprise. A surprise is something that will be revealed in the near future, like what I got you for a present. A Secret you're supposed to keep forever, and at least for young kids, no secrets, but surprises are okay. Um, And so that's a pretty reasonable one, and then another approach that I I really like is you tell kids, "In our family, we don't keep secrets about people's bodies."

0:44:47 Thomas: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Hmm. Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's funny. I was just going to ask if that's a good way to do it. Okay, cool.

0:45:34 Stormy: And The best thing about that is that you can practice this using safe non-sexual things. So like, put a sticker underneath your shirt on your stomach and say, like, "If I tell you I have a secret sticker, can we keep that secret?" And show that, pull up your shirt and show them the sticker, and, "No, that's about somebody's body, that's right, we don't keep body secrets." And That one's really effective. Um, biggest thing is just directly saying what is and isn't acceptable. A lot of parents are scared to do this because they don't want to scare their kids. You don't want to tell kids like, oh, you know, the world is full of rapists.

0:46:14 Stormy: But the thing is, don't really get that this stuff is bad and scary. So if you just say like, hey, if anyone ever tries to lick your knees, you need to tell me because that's really really bad. Your kid will be like, okay, whatever. Because that's

0:45:59 Thomas: Got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. What else is

0:46:31 Stormy: If, exactly.

0:46:31 Thomas: New? Yeah. Okay that's a bit of information I've just now learned as a kid. Cool. Got it.

0:46:35 Stormy: And that's how most kids feel if you tell them, hey, if anybody ever touches your penis, tell me. They'll be like okay, whatever. Cause to them it's like you told them if someone tries to lick your knees. And be sure to tell kids, about the range of things that are and aren't okay. If you say no one should ever touch your penis. Well, you might touch your child's penis when you're bathing them. The doctor may touch your child's penis. And so if you told them no one, then again, your child is going to conclude, well, that's not really true. So if you say, these are the people who can, and these are The People Who Can't,

0:47:10 Thomas: Do you make a database? Okay. Here's the following people can. Can. I was thinking it would be, people can't do it without your permission, but is that not kind of enough?

0:47:13 Stormy: I That could be, that can be the, what you say you're, are you saying you're the parent or the kid?

0:47:24 Thomas: The kid? No, the child.

0:47:26 Stormy: The kid I would not go with, because remember, most offenders convince the child to say yes.

0:47:28 Thomas: Okay. Right. Yeah. Okay, gotcha.

0:47:34 Stormy: So saying, you like sometimes a doctor might want to look at your body, and you can ask me and mom if it's okay, and I'll tell you if it's okay. So that asking the parent's permission is a pretty effective thing. When you're giving kids lists of what is and isn't acceptable, remember non-contact defenses. So say something like, hey, if somebody wants to show you their private parts or look at your private parts, or show you pictures of people's private parts. You should tell me about that. Because again, almost all contact offenses begin with non- contact offenses, and kids will will not make the leap to figure out that that's what's happening.

0:48:20 Thomas: This is great because I have a real example that I wrote down, but I was too embarrassed to talk about. And I think this is actually the, well, by too embarrassed, I mean, I didn't want to to embarrass my kids. So some kids that will remain nameless, maybe you can help me with this interaction in what complicates this most for me when I'm trying to think about how to do these recommendations, is that my kids still take baths together. And that's, you know, that's just, they're just, that all bets are off.

0:48:31 Stormy: Okay? Absolutely. They're what, four and five?

0:48:50 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. There's... there's just they're going to do all that stuff. And so one time. Oh, so one time they were taking a bath together, which they do all the time. We were kind of just in the next room over while they splish splashed for a little bit and and I hear Phoebe say "Arlo touched my vagina," and we're like, "Oh, oh shit, okay, this is one of those things." Uh, and so I'm trying to figure out, like, balancing, like, I don't want to freak out. I don't want be like, "No, never," you know. I don't want to do any of those reactions. It's going to like make it worse than it is, kind of thing. So I'm, and again, here's the thing about parenting that I'm sure everybody knows: this shit will get sprung at you at the weirdest times, you know.

0:48:50 Stormy: That's totally normal.

0:49:27 Stormy: Yeah.

0:49:27 Thomas: Like, you're just, you're not ready for, like, we're busy, we're doing, you know, probably doing work, folding laundry, and all of a sudden you got to go into, "Oh, I have to respond perfectly to this riddle by a sphinx." That's good, you know. "You better solve my riddles three, or else your child will do heroin for the rest of their life." So I'm trying to figure that out.

0:49:44 Stormy: It's even worse if you have another kid from another family over. My cousin, his kid was maybe five and had a little playmate over, and he came into the room and the boys had taken off their pants and underwear, underwear, and tucked like toilet uh paper in between their butt cheeks and they were just playing with it like it was a tail. All they wanted was to have a tail. Yeah.

0:49:48 Thomas: And Oh gosh. Yeah.

0:50:11 Thomas: Yeah, that's so kids. Oh, that is so good. And yeah, yeah.

0:50:14 Stormy: But then you're like, "Oh my god, now I have to tell this other kid's parents that again."

0:50:18 Thomas: Oh God. Yeah. So what happened was I go in there and I was, my and first answer, again, not prepared to have this conversation to that particular day, but it did my best. I said, Phoebe, we don't make people touch our private parts. We just don't do that. That's not, that's against the rules. She's like, oh I understand. Got it. Totally fine. So I walk away and I'm not 20 feet away when she says, was, hey, Arlo, do you want to touch my vagina?

0:50:46 Thomas: And I was like, wait, fuck. Damn it. I was like, did I mess up? I don't know. And then I came back. I Was like, all right. Hi, I'm back. You may remember me from before. I'm your dad. Let's just not do any of that. I was at a loss because she stumped me. And so I would like your help with this interaction. I can't remember how I resolved it. But for that time, again, I am trying to be casual. I don thing. Like, I don't want to make it super weird because, again, to her, she's five. She doesn't even know what that is. I just said like, hey, Phoebe, maybe let's just not have your brother touch your private part. Let's just not do that. What do I do in that situation? Got any advice for me?

0:50:46 Stormy: Kids are really literal.

0:51:04 Stormy: Yep.

0:51:27 Stormy: Yeah, so, so that's definitely not an alarming behavior. That's It's just kids being kids. So when kids are engaging in age-appropriate, we call it sex play, which I actually don't love that term because it's not really sex-related.

0:51:30 Thomas: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I didn't like that either. It sounds way worse than it is. Yeah.

0:51:42 Stormy: Yeah. You've got a couple options, especially if the kid's really young, just distracting them. So, you know, if you've got a two-year-old who just won't stop masturbating and you're, like, trying to, you know, take them to this funeral, just be like, here, look, Play-Doh. Put your hands on that. Way to go. For older kids, you can tell them just a simple rule. Like, no one touches your private parts but you. A good way to not be shaming is to tell people, tell kids that they can touch their private parts and tell them when and where that's okay. Like, you know, some kids like to touch their private parts, and that's a-okay in your room with the door shut. And so you can say something like that. In some cases, it's about curiosity and sating that curiosity. Like a lot of kids of want to know what another gender's genitals are like. Kids who are circumcised want to know what uncircumcised, what's going on there, and vice versa. Getting an age-appropriate book with cartoon drawings and just, this is a penis.

0:51:42 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Redirect, yeah.

0:51:59 Thomas: Yeah.

0:52:47 Stormy: This is what a penis looks like. It's for peeing. Here's how it works. And sating that curiosity. But this just sounds like just a like, Like, hey, you know, do you know like this is the same way a kid might just be like, hey you know stick this this pee up your nose. You know it's it's just a thing to do to a body because it's there.

0:52:54 Thomas: All That Shit. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

0:53:08 Thomas: Okay. My question there was, I guess, my... I hesitated on the hard and fast rule of no one touches your private parts but you, kind of think, like, because earlier, you know, I was worried about that backfiring, you know, uh, again, Phoebe being a literalist.

0:53:23 Stormy: Well that's that's it depends on her age. I wasn't sure if she still needed assistance with bathing or toileting or anything like that. I mean if you want if in the moment if you're not if you have to like really think about it, you might just say, brothers and sisters don't touch each other's private parts.

0:53:30 Thomas: Right.

0:53:42 Thomas: So okay, here's my concern was I didn't want to do the hard and fast rule of we don't touch other kids' private parts, you don't touched whatever, because I was a little worried about creating, again, going too far and creating a thing where it's like, now I'm saying that that curiosity they have is not okay and they can't do that at all. You know, like that's what I was, that's what I wasn't sure on, you know, but is it, is it fine to just say, you know, Hey, we don't touch other kids private parts.

0:54:08 Stormy: So what I would say if you want to preserve that curiosity, which I think is good, is tell, especially once a kid's about, you know, five or six, they can understand that there's different ways to be curious, and some of them are okay and some aren't. So if You're curious about animals, some of the things you're about, some are not. Some of wild animals, but it's not always good to touch them, so you could say, like, you know, hey, if you want to know more about bodies, some good ways to learn about that are, you know, here's a book, here's, you know, these other options. So, you know, again, when kids are like three, I don't think they can understand that distinction, but, like, five Or six, they can understand there's there's more, more and less acceptable ways. I can also tell you that children are not harmed by not engaging in childhood,

0:54:25 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Yeah. It makes sense.

0:55:04 Thomas: Right.

0:55:04 Stormy: Like playing doctor. So it's not like if you, yeah.

0:55:05 Thomas: No, it wasn't that it was that I didn't want to make it seem like a forbidden thing. That's all. I don't. Yeah. Whatever.

0:55:12 Stormy: Yeah. I mean, I usually tell parents to reinforce that curiosity is normal and that touching yourself is normal. And so like Like, lots of kids like to touch their own private parts. That is a-okay, but only in your bedroom, you know. And again, by the time kids are five or six, they can understand the concept of a behavior that's okay in one place and not another.

0:55:35 Thomas: Right. This is a good time, I think, to remind people that you're not a scientist or a doctor or anything. You're just a person who wanted to come talk about. No, I'm kidding. Imagine if you're like, no, this is just a hobby, like I just tell people about kids.

0:55:46 Stormy: Yeah, no, man, this is just for fun.

0:55:49 Thomas: That's a red flag. All right, we- I've- I know I've distracted you so much, let's make sure we get, get to the, uh, to the info. Hmm.

0:55:51 Stormy: Yeah, okay, so I've said, like, give your kids some examples of things that they should should tell you about. And be sure to include some non-contact behaviors. And then tell your kid what to do if this happens. Tell them, you know, say no or stop and tell an adult you trust. For young kids, I like the mnemonic of no, go, tell. If something is bad, if it's uh-uh, say no and go. Easy to remember. So again, it's pretty rare that an offender will continue after a child says no and walks away. Obviously sometimes that might occur, but kids to say no is pretty effective. The next part I was going to get into is what to do if your child discloses something to you. The first thing is that it's pretty rare for a child to just say, like, "Oh, this abusive thing happened." Very often they'll say something less embarrassing, either a sort of mild beginning thing, like, "Oh, um, he took off his shirt," or even something, something ambiguous, like, "You don't like that movie."

0:56:16 Thomas: Yeah.

0:57:03 Stormy: What they're doing is testing to see how you react. And they're also building up their own courage to say something embarrassing. So you always want to just, you take that as it is. The tricky part is that sometimes he took his shirt is just he took off his shirt. So it's really, really important to not ask leading questions. And it is almost impossible for parents to not Ask leading questions, because you're really, Really concerned. So if you say, you know, well, did he take off his pants? A lot of kids will just say yes, because they say yes to questions. There was a study with kids ages 6 to 11, where they asked the questions.

Some of the questions were rational, things like, which is bigger, a frog or a car? And some of the question were just nonsense, like, which is louder, water or milk? And more than half of the 6 to 11-year-olds were just like, yeah, man, milk's louder. So it's really, really hard not to accidentally ask leading questions, questions. Because what's happening in your head is you're panicking. You're like, oh God, what happened next? And I need, this is the information I really need. I don't care about his shirt. What happened to his pants? But you're going to ask a follow-up, just a very general question like, Oh, tell me about that or what happened?

0:57:31 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. God. Yeah.

0:58:29 Thomas: I've had to have this argument with Lydia a lot because she'll- she'll get in there and she'll want to already have the narrative going. It's just like, can you please just let our kid tell us the thing?

0:58:37 Stormy: Really hard for parents. And that's why if you are pretty sure that this is a disclosure of something, or even if you you're like, you know what? I really don't know. I tell parents, don't even ask the questions yourself. Obviously, don's stop your child from talking. But if your kid's like, yeah, I don't like when he takes his shirt off, you could be like, oh, okay. Yeah, that's really tough. Thank you for telling me about that. And then go get a professional. And the reason to get a profession is that it is, one, almost impossible for you to not ask leading questions. And that could taint your child's testimony if this ever became a legal thing, right? So someone might be like, well, we don't know what your child really means because you questioned them and you're not a professional. Another reason is that if this does become a legal thing, they're usually called like a child advocacy center. They can videotape the thing and that can become testimony so your child doesn't have to be questioned again and again.

0:59:06 Thomas: Right. Geez.

0:59:36 Thomas: This feels tough because I feel like this is an interaction that could be just normal every day and like the time and the resources it's going to take to be like, all right, I got to get a professional every time

0:59:42 Stormy: Well, that's why if your child says, you know, he took his shirt off, I would go with, you know, oh, what happened? Tell me about that. But then if your child says, like, and then he took his pants off, what you want to do then is like, and then what happened and did he touch you? And, you Kno, and that's where you really want to be like, okay, youknow, if the child wants to keep talking, let them. But you really don't want to be the one asking those questions because it's actually something that takes a ton of training to learn to do in a non-leading way. The other reason is that you're going to naturally have a lot of emotions at that point, and your child is going to think that you are feeling that towards them.

0:59:47 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

1:00:28 Stormy: So if you're angry at the person who might have hurt them, your child might think you're mad at them. So it's really better if there's something that you're like, okay, this is definitely a concern, is to get a professional involved.

1:00:28 Thomas: Yeah, they might shut down.

1:00:43 Thomas: But how but aren't you worried about especially I know with my kids, amount of time that could take, they will forget things, you know, like they can't remember yesterday. So like, is that something you can get in a reasonable amount of time that's going to preserve it.

1:00:57 Stormy: In most cities, there will be something called like a child advocacy center, even Just the police department will usually have someone who regularly handles child abuse cases, who's trained to do sensitive interviewing. Doing, I would, I would definitely tend to it

1:01:01 Thomas: I'm going to call the cops on my kids. Yeah. I don't know. That's a, that's a tough one.

1:01:17 Stormy: Is, if you're not sure if you do want to gather more information, um, what I would recommend is keeping your emotions just tamped down to just like, okay, and then what happened, and then keeping your questions to the most general role, like, okay, and then what happened? Kind of like, you know, well, did this happen is going to be potentially leading.

1:01:34 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, no, it's. And this is something that I think if you're a parent who's tuned into your kid, you will have realized anyway, because it's not just about, you know, sex stuff, just anything. When you're trying to figure out what, oh, the two kids got in a fight and you're starting to figure it out. And happened? And by not, I don'T mean like fist fight. I mean, like they had a spat. You're trying to figure out what happened. The minute you start injecting any of your adult conception of things into it, they just agree with you. It's like, it's so hard with kids at a certain age. So that's always important.

1:02:10 Stormy: Sometimes kids are not particularly distressed by something that is clearly wrong and illegal. And it's to their benefit if you don't make them distressed. It doesn't mean that it's not wrong. And it doesn't mean they might not feel hurt later. But for example, a kid might come home and say, you know, oh, you know, he wanted me to be a model and he had me take my clothes off and took my picture. And your kid's like, yeah, okay, that's great.

1:02:37 Thomas: Okay. That I will go to the police over.

1:02:39 Stormy: Yeah. But the kid's like, okay. And now I want a grilled cheese sandwich because You're a kid and people take your picture and you don't understand what pornography is. So someone just took your picture. And that's if you're just for the kid, it would be more upsetting if you said like someone has abused you. Again, that's a very difficult tightrope for a parent to walk, and that is a reason why it can be better to have a professional, because for you to be like, "What happens when you are just, you know, your fists are white and you are digging your fingernails into your legs?" Because, you

1:02:39 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah for sure. Yeah

1:03:17 Stormy: Know, like, and then I'm going to find him and I'm kill him, and then I'm not gonna, um... the one other thing about children disclosing is, um, it's pretty normal for kids who have experienced a definite event that they are quite upset about to disclose and then recant and then disclose. And that doesn't mean that it didn't happen.

1:03:39 Stormy: That usually means that at some point they got sick of talking about it, and saying it didn't happen was the easiest way to make it go away.

1:03:18 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah yeah oh

1:03:50 Stormy: So that pattern is normal and doesn't mean that nothing happened. And it doesn't means that the child is lying per se. The child is saying what what they need to say to manage their emotions.

1:04:03 Thomas: All right. So kind of coming to the close of our time here. Have you gotten through all the tips that you wanted to intended to get through? Maybe we can kind of recap the main takeaways so that parents like me can, we can reinforce and remember what to do here. So let's see. Can we go over the highlights? The one, the one sentence highlights real quick.

1:04:21 Stormy: Sure. Remember that offenses can be committed by children and adolescents, not just adults. Remember that offenses can be non-contact. So advice you give to kids, if it's just about grown-up strangers touching them, that's not as effective. Prevention is effective. Teaching kids what to say no to and how to say no is really effective in stopping child sexual abuse. Looking for red flags. Don't panic. They don't always mean something is wrong, but generally if an adult is trying to get a child alone and is behaving sexually toward them, those things are at least a reason to be concerned. Less useful approaches, stranger danger and good touch, bad touch, more useful approaches generally promoting physical autonomy, teaching kids proper body parts, teaching kids which kinds of secrets, body secrets or surprises are good and healthy, and then just directly telling kids what is and isn't acceptable and what they should do if anything happens.

1:04:38 Thomas: Right.

1:05:35 Stormy: And then if a kid does make a disclosure to you, keep your questions very neutral. And if you do think there is something that, you know, might need to be investigated, go to a professional instead of investigating it yourself.

1:05:50 Thomas: Yeah. Wow. Well, this is really helpful. And, uh, I think this is important information. I'm glad we did this. Uh, Oh, and as always, you know, instead of in lieu of a plug, usually have a tip for us, don't you?

1:06:01 Stormy: Yeah, I have my offbeat acts of kindness and I All right, this is a good one. Do you have a little free free library in your neighborhood. There are those little boxes people put up in their yards where people can just like take a book, leave a book.

1:06:11 Thomas: Oh yeah. We actually do have that. Yeah,

1:06:13 Stormy: Yeah. One of the neat things about those is they're a great way for people to get books without their families finding out because they don't have to go to the store or the library. So consider dropping off a pro-LGBT book or a book for people who are are dealing with domestic violence, those are great books for people to be able to sneak in their home without their family knowing. So if money's tight but you have a few dollars to spare, Better World Books has dozens of bargain bin and used copies for under 10 bucks of the kinds of books that I think would be great to just drop in a little free library so someone can pick them up if they need it.

1:06:48 Thomas: Huh? There you go. Love that tip. Dr. Alan Smerbeck, thank you so much, as always, for coming on the show. Really appreciate it.

1:07:01 Stormy: Thank you for having me.