Childhood Do Children Automatically Know What A Good Or Bad Touch Is?

[Melody coates]

So after replying to a post regarding sexual abuse i got the idea for this thread. I've never been a victim of sexual abuse (thank you Jesus) but i still knew the difference between an appropriate touch and an non appropriate touch. strangly my parents never told me but i still sorta knew. do you believe children know the difference out of common sense?

 

[Lady of Longbourn]

I believe children can be taught by adults and maybe other children that it is okay to be touched inappropriately. They can be taught to keep it quiet. People can unlearn things even if it's deemed "common sense".

Child sexual abuse isn't simply about the child knowing if the touching or contact is wrong IMHO. There is so much more to it then that and it's never so cut and dry.

 

[Intrepid]

I couldn't figure out, at 6 years old, why I was being touched the way I was. I was sick, and thought my grandfather was using an anal thermometer. Found out later that's how he treated all of his children/grandchildren. Wretched man, he was.

 

[scout86]

I think that what's "appropriate" varies from culture to culture and you learn that. You might not learn it with specific training. You learn it by growing up in the culture. Personally, I think that what makes a touch, or anything else "wrong" is the motive behind it and the relationship between the people involved. Most of what we call sexual abuse is perfectly fine, between consenting people who are able to freely consent. It's abusive when the consent isn't there. It's not the act that the issue, it's the lack of consent. Sometimes you grow up thinking that your consent doesn't matter and that confuses things a lot.

 

[Seagreen]

I was touched inappropriately as a young child and told it was a game. I sensed something was wrong about the situation but was not sure what. A couple of years later when I told my Mother I cried and felt ashamed for the first time.

 

[Kas_Can_Fly]

I knew it was wrong but I was certain that somehow I must have caused it, that it was my fault and I didn't want me or my father to be in trouble. Now I know that it was unfortunate that the way I had been raised by several narcissistic caregivers and the bullying and staff collaboration I'd experienced had taught me time and time again that no matter the problem, no matter how unrelated to me it might have seemed it was always my fault because I was a bad person. At the beginning of the sexual abuse, my father broke down crying asking for forgiveness only to go and do it again the next week, this mixed with odd bouts of screaming at me for several hours straight made for a very different form of grooming to what I've read about. I internalized it all and grew to hate myself the more and more the worse it got, dissociating from everything inside and out until I didn't exist.

 

[user27357]

No, kids don't just know. And neither do adults all the time. No one can possibly know whats in the mind of the other person and what can be a normal pat on the shoulder could be inappropriate because of the sick intent of the perpetrator.

c'mon, if you think we are born knowing we have the right to control who touches us where and how or that as we get older we can somehow know whats right and whats wrong all of the time with every situation, you aren't thinking it through far enough.

 

[Rumors]

I don't mean to like your post Kas, but I just wanted you to know I read it and there are parts that resonate with me as well. Sucks..

 

[digger]

do you believe children know the difference

What age of children are you talking about? Did you have the same awareness say at three or four years old as maybe nine, or again at thirteen? Are you suggesting it's something you were born knowing?
I'm not really sure what your post is getting at. Are you saying that you think those of us that were sexually abused as children should have inherently known it was wrong?

 

[Melody coates]

@digger I just wanna know if it goes against a child's instinct to be touched a certain way

 

[digger]

Hmmm....well, no, I don't think it's something you are born knowing.

I think a lot depends on what you are brought up to know and probably to some extent from what age. You're saying that you knew, but I'm still interested to know at what age it occurred to you that you knew? If it is something you'd grown up with, do you think it would have been so clear cut for you?

I think children can pick up on, even very small non-verbal cues from their abuser though that something isn't quite right about it sometimes, even if it's being presented to them as okay and normal, but that doesn't necessarily happen in all cases.

If all the information you are receiving as a child comes from your primary carers and you don't get a lot of other input, it's not always until you start having more contact with the wider world that you start getting different cues about things.

 

[digger]

i still knew the difference between an appropriate touch and an non appropriate touch.

How, if you weren't ever inappropriately touched, do you know that you knew this. I really don't think you can be so sure of that if it was never 'tested' so to be speak. How do you know what you would have understood of it if it happened when you were very young?