Family,

I would love your help in reviewing and providing feedback on my notes for my an abuse prevention presentation for kids age 8-13.

Please go to:

Abuse Prevention Presentation

to view the presentation notes and post your feedback.

Thank you.

Brad

Here is a link to a .pdf file if you don't have a facebook account.

Kids Abuse Prevention .pdf

Withholding medical care is an example of neglect, my parents were big in a cult faith-healing religion, several of my therapists have even called them addicted to religion. Neither my sisters or me ever saw a doctor for anything other than required school shots, which my mother fought really hard over. I saw a doctor once other than school shots, 3 days after I broke my leg and faith-healing didn't work, then she wouldn't allow the ER doctor to use a pain injection to reset my broken bone with either. On other occasions I had to just walk off a sprained ankle a couple of times, grin and bear the pain of broken bones in my hand or a broken nose, grin and bear the pain of a serious stomach wound, blood poisoning, or a couple of cases of road rash from crashing on my bicycle or my dirt bike. We couldn't even use aspirin or antacids, just pray then grin and bear it. Pretty bizarre for this to happen in modern America, eh?

These days a number of States have revoked this religion's healthcare exemption, yet this kind of abuse/neglect still goes on among 100,000 ultra-devout followers of Christian Science here in the US, who think nothing of subjecting their kids to this kind of abuse/neglect. Throw-in both violent physical abuse and emotional victimization at the hands of both my parents, my sexual victimization, 2/3rds of it at the hands of church members, and the fact that therapy was for other people, not people from our church, and my upbringing was highly abusive in a very secretive environment. My mother greatly distrusted any kind of government educational or social oversight or intervention, all the while spouting off about her "right" to her "freedom of religion", unfortunately for my sisters and me, mother's religious freedom was a 24/7 thing, a complete lifestyle where serious neglect of her own children was justified in her own mind to scrupulously adhere to the tenants of her religion.

I might include something under neglect about withholding medical, dental, or psychological care. Freedom of religion does not include freedom to abuse or neglect your own children on religious freedom grounds.

You don't mention rape, though in this age group it might be considered an inappropriate wording, despite the fact that there are numerous rape victims by the age of 13. You might look into some way to include it under a different name, perhaps as an example it is considered highly abusive for a person to insert their sexual organs into a child, which would be one way around some of the sensitivity over the "R" word.

Just my opinions, otherwise you have written a decent presentation considering the target age group. You might try to send a PM to Ken Singer about what he thought about your presentation too.

Mark

Mark,

Thank you very much for your comments and the time you took to reply. I will indeed include the withholding of medical, dental and/or psychological care in my presentation.

I have been fighting with many people over the strong words I have already used in my presentation and I think many adults would faint if I used the word Rape. I am trying to keep it age appropriate yet more informative then what the schools provide. Baby steps...

Thanks again,

Brad