Childhood Child On Child Sexual Abuse?

[LydiaLove]

I feel like I'm still coming to terms with my childhood, memories still coming back... I'm not even sure if these particular incidents constitute sexual abuse, but here I am at 3am trying to make sense of what happened to me. When I was very young, probably around three, I remember I would dance around naked sometimes after baths or undressing, as children do, and my older brother and sister would ask me to spread my legs so they could gawk at me. I also have a memory of when I was a few years older, my brother shut me in his room with him and locked the door. He then decided that we would play a game where we both took off our underwear and pretended that people were coming to inspect our genitals. He also tried to get me to touch him. Was this just normal childhood curiosity or something more serious? I didn't know what was going on at the time, I was so young. As I got older and looked back at these instances, I felt deeply ashamed and humiliated.

 

[RussH]

Most of it sounds like kids playing doctor; demonstrating normal curiosity. I think, however, when he tried to get you to touch him, crossed the line.

 

[Suzetig]

I think it depends on both your ages, if you were both fairly young eg 5-10 it sounds like exploration, if he was creeping into adolescence maybe less so. That doesn't necessarily mean he was being purposely abusive, he may have been getting you to copy something done to him or trying to understand how bodies work but it's more likely he would know about sex and would have some awareness that it wasn't ok to have you touch him.

All of that also depends on the developmental age of everyone involved - if there's a developmental delay or learning disability, that would impact someone's sexual understanding too. Whatever happened, purposeful or not, it's had an impact on you which is real and for which you deserve support.

 

[Ronin]

Seconding the above posters; whatever it was, even though developmentally appropriate, doesn't mean it wasn't violating for you specifically, and you deserve support and healing from something that was unpleasant to you & leaving you emotionally scarred.

 

[Mytime]

I think what it comes down to, is how you feel about it. I hope your seeing a therapist to help you work out these feelings. Here to support you when you need it.

 

[LydiaLove]

I don't remember how old we were at the time, but he is about two and a half years older than I. The fact that he was touching himself in front of me and wanted me to touch him almost makes me think that he was exposed to something inappropriate for his age, but it might have been more explorative...

Thank you for the kind words. My entire childhood was fairly traumatic, and it's hard for me to sort out what was ok and what was not sometimes.

 

[Ronin]

it's hard for me to sort out what was ok and what was not sometimes.

You can always take it as 'everything not ok', then go back and take the route of 'everything ok', and then find what of it clicks with reality the most / is the middle ground, from balancing the two.

 

[Sideways]

I'm going to preface this by saying that I agree that the age of your brother changes the picture somewhat.

Thing about people saying "that's pretty normal behaviour for kids" makes it sound like you shouldn't feel ashamed about it, shut up with you and your petty "trauma". But that's not it at all - I did lots of stuff as a kid that are pretty shameful and humiliating, and even if kids just do that stuff, it's okay for me to still feel ashamed by it and even be effected by it big time.

Did I so some weird inappropriate exploration stuff with siblings and friends as a kid? Sure. Humiliating now that I look back? Absolutely.

Things don't have to "qualify" as abuse for your feelings and response to be perfectly valid. For me personally, intentionally NOT framing that stuff I did as a dumb kid is really helpful. It makes it easier to forgive myself, and it makes it easier to NOT see the other participants as "abusers".

People often seem to look for validation for the way they feel about something, and the impact it's had on them, by getting others to confirm for them that their experience "qualifies" as abuse. Me personally, I've found that letting go of the significance of the word 'abuse', and taking each event as it is, gives me much more freedom in the way I choose to reframe it and recover from it as an adult.

 

[LydiaLove]

I'm going to preface this by saying that I agree that the age of your brother changes the picture...

What you're saying makes a lot of sense. It came up because my doctor and I were discussing some health issues I experience as a result of a history of familial abuse. He asked if I had been sexually abused, and my response was I don't know. I don't know if what I experienced falls into that category, and I do know that it's minor in comparison to the horrors that many have been victim to. He seemed to think, though, that my brother's behavior was unusual and inappropriate and asked if he had been sexually abused by an adult.

 

[Sideways]

"I don't know if I was abused" is not just an acceptable response, sometimes it's also the best response. You don't need to "know" if it qualifies right now. Pencil it in as something you're aware of and uncomfortable with, and further down the track, the answer will come to you. It's better to leave a question mark over it for now rather than force a history of abuse with yourself.

It's walking a fine line with denial - but kids "playing" and experimenting is a grey area. Not calling it abuse, at least for now, leaves you open to deal with the emotions without the label being forced onto you when it may or may not be appropriate or helpful.

 

[Socha]

Most of it sounds like kids playing doctor; demonstrating normal curiosity.

Please tell me you're not serious!
I can’t believe people liked that invalidating bullshit.

 

[Suzetig]

I didn't read it as invalidating at all.

There's a lot of grey area in talking about young children and sexual exploration -v- abuse, I don't think it's helpful to take a line that if someone feels bad now it must have been abusive any more than it's helpful to assume no malicious intent ever. The labels that come with being abused or an abuser are incredibly powerful and, as others have said, not always helpful.

Children do explore their sexuality with other children, it's not unusual when a child reaches a different developmental stage for them to feel uncomfortable about what went before. It doesn't necessarily mean they were abused or that they abused someone else, they may just be reacting to societal taboos around sexual behaviour generally but in children specifically.

For the sake of clarity, I'm not saying children never sexually abuse other children, of course they do. Not am I saying that child on child sexual abuse isn't harmful, of course it is. What I am saying is that sexual activity doesn't need to be abusive for it to cause pain, shame and unhappiness and if someone has feelings about something that happened as a child they deserve appropriate support and shouldn't need to define what happened for that support to be available.