Second Child Abuse Class

Monday started with teaching a second child abuse prevention class to a group of 7-9 year olds. They were super cute and did a great job talking about some difficult topics. We started teaching at 8:00 and sadly my Spanish part of my brain had not yet woken up. After stuttering though the directions to heads up seven up, I finally began to regain my minimal language skills. It is still very difficult when kids shout out answers to questions or tell stories. Being able to understand their little high pitched voices takes all my concentration and even then I will still often look for approval from my co-teacher before blindly saying “Oh yes, wonderful job”.

There were about 18 students in the class. At the end of class, we asked if anyone wanted to talk privately, they are more than welcome and that we would hang around while they colored their activity books. Nine different students came outside to talk about bullying, physical abuse, and sexual abuse. The younger kids do not have any filter and are extremely honest about what is happening in their lives. Hopefully the class was able to start some discussion that can be continued at home or in the classroom in the future. When we were talking about your “rights of being human” we talked about physical abuse. This began quite a class discussion. Physical punishments in the home are illegal, but it seemed very common. A handful of students gave stories about beatings for being bad and we tried to emphasis that that was not ok. Just giving kids the information and an outlet to talk to someone will hopefully lead to safer homes in the future.