It’s more strange for children who’ve been sexually abused NOT to act out their abuse with peers, the same way kids act out every other aspect of their lives in myriad ways. It’s how kids learn, process, and make sense of the world they live in. It doesn’t make you a monster. It makes you a healthy/normal/clever child… doing what children do. That it was sexual instead of baking cookies? Is because of the adult(s) in your life, and their choices. If they’d have been baking with you, or biking, or belly dancing? That’s what you would have done with siblings/friends, instead. Kids are mimics. The more emotionally charged, dangerous, painful, strange, etc. a situation is? The MORE they mimic, not less. Abuse, regardless of what kind, is nearly always acted out. Even when abusers terrify a child into not telling? Because of the way brains work, it seeps out. In play. In art. In interactions with others. You were a kid. And you had a healthy developing brain. Doing what kids do.
