Mama Monday: Protecting the Gift

I am not going to normally recommend books to parents since everyone has their own view of how best to parent their child. Of course, I believe the Bible to be the best guide of how to parent our children ever written.

In light of the Penn State and Sandusky scandal, which I wrote about in my Thoughtful Thursday post last week, I want to encourage every parent to read this book:

I checked mine out of our local library. This book will give you a plan of attack on how to talk to your children about sexual predators. It will give you as a parent a way to feel confident in protecting your child. It will teach you how to communicate with your children about what to do if your child gets lost and how to react to sexual advances by an adult.

These are the most important statistics I learned from this book:

• 1 out of 3 girls will have sexual contact with an adult before their 18th birthday (In my college education classes, this stat was referenced as 50%).
• 1 out of 6 boys will have sexual contact with an adult before their 18th birthday (My college class had this one at 1 out of 4).
• 90% of sexual abuse is committed by someone the child knows. The idea of beware of strangers is just not true.
• Nearly 100% of sexual abuse is committed by heterosexual males.
• On average there is one child molester per square mile, and that molester will have victimized between 30 to 60 children before he is ever arrested.

These facts are not to scare you but to encourage you to read the book. It will give you knowledge about how to protect your children from a threat that most of us don't even want to think about. But knowledge is power, and as moms we have to use all the power we have to protect our kids.

Anxiously waiting for heaven in the treehouse where no one has to worry about children's safety,

Chelli