A school bully and a trip to the ER forced me to take a reactive approach to teaching my daughter about predators. Prior to the incident, I thought I had more time to teach her this unfortunate life lesson as she is only 4 years old. The bully however, a mere kindergartener, countered with a lesson of her own – children can lose their innocence all too soon.
Thank goodness the facts regarding my daughter’s incident actually look a lot worse in the opening sentence than the way it concluded. A kindergartener forced my daughter a preschooler to swallow a rock on the playground. The girl was quickly punished, and the staff at the ER deemed that my daughter’s emergency was actually no emergency at all, and that the best course of action to take was to simply let the rock pass.
I was fortunate because even though I didn’t have the opportunity to take a proactive stance cautioning my daughter about bullies, the school, the ER staff and I reacted very well to the situation and my daughter recovered with no lasting injuries physically or emotionally.
However, the recent allegations at Penn State reminded me that adults don’t always have the opportunity to be proactive in the wrongdoing of a child, and what could tragically go wrong when they don’t react properly.
Allowing the burden to pass in my daughter’s case was the appropriate course of action for her. However, passing the burdensome knowledge of an adult violating a child is unthinkable. Unfortunately, the circumstances regarding the children involved in this case are a whole lot worse than what was printed with no peaceful conclusion.
Article first published as Penn State: Leaving a Child Behind on Technorati.