Dear Parent,
The recent rape of a 11-year-old girl child in a school in Delhi allegedly by senior students, has outraged and shaken the confidence of the community of parents countrywide.
But while sexual safety awareness, personal safety videos and guidelines can help, they need to be supplemented by parental vigilance and guidance.
Videos of children’s cartoons, and the characters they love, often has inappropriate content, uploaded in the same format and made to resemble children’s favourite cartoon characters.
Likewise, mobile apps and downloads could introduce them to undesirable content, exposing children to graphic images which could linger in the mind, creating confusion.
A close family member like a grandfather or cousin could be using such apps and content to win the confidence of children, with malicious intent. An unknown person could be sending sexual images to your child on facebook. A classmate could be passing on a pornographic video to your child.
In addition to making children aware of sexual predators, we need to literally watch their backs. Paying attention to every aspect of your child’s life isn’t easy, especially when both parents are working. But it’s the only way to protect children.
So monitoring your child’s every activity is as important as scanning the environment. Make the extra effort to educate yourself so you can educate your child in an age-appropriate way about the dangers posed to children by mentally sick sexual predators.