If you have following my CALL OF (Parental) DUTY series of posts, you will know that my 13-year-old son and I are in an ongoing dialogue about video gaming. It began last October when he asked for CALL OF DUTY: Black Ops II for his birthday – and did not receive it. (You can read more about that in the post Part I Introduction.) Over the past year, his father and I have stood by our decision not to allow our son to play violent M-rated games in our home. We feel that it is our own duty as parents to draw that line as to what is appropriate for our son to play. While we have reached a truce on the subject of Black Ops II and other M-rated games, we continue to have discussions about the pros and cons of gaming. Not surprisingly, Sevrin is more dedicated than I am to finding and sharing the pros of gaming.
Recently, Sevrin shared with me information about a charitable giving initiative in the gaming community through the Humble Bundle. I’ll let him describe it.
I originally learned about the Humble Bundle when I was on vacation, talking with my cousin Aidan. We were talking about one of the most common things known to teenage boys: video games. He mentioned an event going on in the gaming community where people donate as much as they want to charity and in return get 10 games. When I went home I decided to see what this whole thing was about. I was touched. Some parents do not approve of their kids playing video games for many reasons. Some think its a waste of time, others just straight up hate them. Then there are those who don’t see the point of buying them because they feel like it doesn’t benefit anybody. Well, for those people I introduce The Humble Bundle. The Humble Bundle is an organization that partners with game developers to help raise money for charity.
Basically, The Humble Bundle is a collection or (“bundle”) of digital games or media that are sold and distributed online at a price determined by the purchaser. This “pay what you want” model has proven very popular, and there have been Humble Bundles for music and eBooks as well as video games. With the Humble Origin Bundle, which launched on August 14, 2013, there was a twist: all sales from the bundle went to charity. Instead of “pay what you want”, it was “donate what you want”.
Here is Sevrin’s description
The best part of The Humble Bundle is that the choice is up to the buyer. You can donate as low as $1.01 to get the games. You can also choose what charity you are donating to. Best of all is, unlike most charities, YOU choose if you want to make a donation to the Humble Bundle organization or not. Personally, I found the whole idea ingenious. It’s beneficial to everybody involved in it. The organization itself gets the money to do these sales more often, the game developers involved get more publicity, the buyers get great deals on some of the best games of the time and the greatest part is that people get the satisfaction of knowing that all of the money they spend goes directly to charity.
And so, for the first time in my life, I bought a video game. A bundle of video games, that is. The only problem was that the Humble Origin Bundle contains some games that are M-rated and therefore not allowed in our house. Since there was no way to separate out the inappropriate games, Sevrin agreed that he would only play the games he is allowed to play. I agreed to trust him to keep his promise.
After talking it through with Sevrin, I decided that I would make a $10 donation for the bundle and let him choose which charities to support. He did some research into the charities and choose the following:
This provided a good opportunity to talk about charitable giving. (Since I work at a non-profit, I feel that this is an important thing to teach my kids about.) Sevrin chose to give the largest percentage of his donation to the Human Rights Campaign because equality and LGBT rights are issues that he cares about. He also chose to support Watsi, an organization that provides a global crowdfunding platform for medical care. What he liked about Watsi was that 100% of the donation directly supports medical treatment. The American Red Cross was so giant (number one on Charity Navigator’s 10 Super-Sized Charities list) and therefore must have so much administrative overhead that he decided not to support it. GameAid just didn’t grab him. But he thought it was reasonable to give Humble Bundle 50 cents of the $10 so they can keep up the good work.
The current bundle sale is the Humble Comedy Bundle. With this bundle, however, you can support artists, charities or both. If you like standup comedy, you may want to check it out. But you have to hurry – as I write this, there are 5 days and 13 minutes remaining.
While we are not changing our policy on video gaming because of the Humble Bundle, it is good to see that the industry is taking steps to make a difference in the real world. I’m surprised that this kind of creativity in charitable giving has not been reported more widely in the mainstream media. So I will say it again:
Humble Bundle has raised more than $22.5 million dollars for charity!
Good on you Humble Bundle. That is truly gaming for a good cause!
Other posts in the CALL OF (Parental) DUTY series:
I spent some time in my daughter’s classroom last week talking to the second graders about human rights. I’ve been a guest speaker in all of my kids’ classrooms and have done this presentation (a kind of human rightsy mash-up of show-and-tell and career day) pretty much every year since my oldest was in second grade. But this time was different. I discovered the night before I was scheduled to speak in her class that my daughter, who just turned 8, was planning to do the presentation on human rights WITH me.
I have a more-or-less standard routine and she knew it well. (I wrote a post called Same and Different about doing this human rights lesson in my sons’ classrooms.) First, I do an activity that I call Same and Different. I have several photos from West Africa that I had blown up and mounted on foamcore. I show the kids a photo and have them point out what they see in the picture that is the same in their lives and what is different. It always generates great discussion and often the kids see things in the photos and make connections that I never did. Hopefully, by showing that all humans have similarities in spite of our differences, it also plants some seeds of respect and tolerance.
When I got to her classroom, my daughter brought her small plastic chair to the front of the class and set it down firmly right next to mine. After introducing me (with the class microphone), she sat down beside me. She had assigned herself the assistant’s job of holding the photos for all to see while I led the discussion. A couple of times I had to remind her to hold the photo out so that all the kids could see, but overall she did a great job.
The next activity I do is to pass around a selection of items that I have picked up on my travels for work. As we pass them around so that everyone gets a chance to touch them, we again discuss what is the same and different in our lives. This time, I didn’t gather a thing for the activity; my daughter collected everything the night before our presentation. A yak wool blanket from Nepal, a wooden statue of a traditional palava hut from Liberia, coins and bills from Cameroon – all went into a bag I had brought her from Ghana. She even added her pink beaded pointy-toed slippers from Morocco. When I reminded her that she would have to share and let everyone touch them and try them on, she hesitated for a moment. In the end, though, her slippers went into the bag.
To close out the presentation, I usually read a children’s book or two about human rights. I have a couple of favorites. For Every Child, A Better World by Kermit the Frog is one that we own two copies of, but of course we couldn’t find either when we needed it. I went to library to check out a copy and discovered shelved right beside it I Have the Right to Be a Child by Alain Serres. This beautifully illustrated book presents the concept of human rights, especially those of children as set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
When I brought the books home from the library, I asked my daughter,
“Which do you want me to read to your class?”
“I want to read them both,” she said.
She did a beautiful job of reading both books to the class. I was so proud that I teared up, right there in front of all the second graders and their teacher.
In some ways, it is easier to talk to kids about human rights than adults. Because children generally see things in terms of black and white, right and wrong, it is easy for them to understand that we all have rights – the right to voice our opinions, to go to school, to be free from violence. The right to have food and shelter and clean air and water. The thing about kids is that they have a very strong natural sense of justice (as it applies to them, at least) they understand the inequities of a world where not everyone is able to access those rights.
One girl came up and hugged me after the human rights lesson.
“It makes me sad,” she said, “to think that not all kids have enough to eat.”
“What you are feeling is empathy,” said the teacher. “And that’s good.”
Knowing about the problem – caring about it and wanting to do something about it – is the first step towards change.
The last thing I heard as I left the classroom was another little girl saying,
“I think I am going to write a letter to President Obama and ask him why we are not part of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.”
There are a lot of things about working in human rights that are not easy, but this was a very good day!
More ideas for human rights activities to do with children:
She asked me this in the bathroom, as I was drying my hair. No matter what I am doing, my two youngest kids seem to hover around me, fluttering like moths to a flame. The lack of privacy – not to mention personal space – doesn’t really bother me anymore. And often, as on this particular morning, it provides the opportunity to talk about whatever is bubbling to the surface of their young minds.
I weighed my possible responses. My daughter just turned eight. What could a second-grader possibly know about regret? In the end, I answered that, in general, my regrets were not about things that I had done but rather about things that I had NOT done.
“Do YOU have any regrets?” I asked.
After a pause, she admitted, “Sometimes I’m not so nice to some kids at school.”
“But recognizing that you aren’t always nice means that you can do something about it,” I pointed out. “Right?”
She shrugged and wandered off with her American Girl doll. Maybe the message would sink in.
But for me, a question remained, left hanging in the humid, post-shower bathroom air.
What do you do when you have regrets but you know that there is not a thing in the world that you can do about them?
The truth is that my daughter’s question brought me back to a conversation that I had in a very different context. Several years ago, I spent some time in the Buduburam Refugee Settlement in Ghana. I was with a team taking statements from Liberian refugees for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia. It was almost exactly six years ago – May 2007 – and it was grueling, emotional work. I interviewed more than 40 people that week and every single one of them had suffered multiple layers of trauma and unimaginably tragic loss. One after another, in family groups and as individuals, they sat before me in a small, cramped office. Sometimes there was power for the ceiling fan to move the hot, heavy air; sometimes there was not. Each one of them was a survivor of horror, a testifier to the nightmare of war. (I’ve written about some of them before in Talking To My Kids About Death.)
Even though they had left their homeland of Liberia, what they had experienced was still very much with them. Even if they could push it down deep during the day, the terrors they witnessed would return to haunt their dreams. Many people I interviewed told me of how the nightmares startled them awake at night, sweating and crying. Many more told me of hearing others screaming in the night, neighbors who were trapped in their own PTSD- induced nightmares. There is no privacy in a refugee camp.
There was one woman who has always stayed with me. She was middle-aged, calm and collected. She told me her story in detail, almost scientifically exact. Clearly, she had relived the events many times over. She told me of her life before the war, the fighting and chaos that separated her from her husband and some of her children, the desperate weeks when she, her youngest children, and their neighbors hid in the bush, the treacherous journey to the border. The years – more than a decade- of limbo in this refugee camp.
At the end of any interview, I always ask, “Is there anything else you would like to tell me?”
This woman told me of that the only true regret that she had, the only regret of her life, was about something that she had not been able to do. What she told me went something like this:
We were hiding in the bush and the rebels passed close by. They attacked a village there. They didn’t see us, but we saw them. They killed a lot of people. We were too afraid to move, so afraid they would hear us. There was a baby crying; they must have killed the mother. The baby kept crying and crying and crying. I wanted to go get that baby, but what could I do? I knew the baby’s crying would give us all away to the rebels. The baby kept crying and crying and crying, all night long. And then it stopped. I knew that the baby had died. In the morning, we saw that the rebels had moved on and we left our hiding place. Now I hear that poor baby crying every night in my dreams.
Most people will never be put in a position like this, this untenable Hobson’s Choice. Most of us will never be faced with having to make the choice between our own life -and that of our children and neighbors – and that of an innocent baby. Many of us would like to assume that we would find a way to not make the choice; that we would find a way to save that baby.
I knew I could not save that baby. I wanted to, so much, but I knew I could not. Even so, I have always felt bad about it. I have never told anyone – not one single person – about this before. Just telling you now – it makes me feel better.
I don’t have any answers here, just as I had nothing to say to this woman other than “I am so sorry.” I can’t change the world. I can’t promise my daughter that she won’t experience pain or sorrow or guilt or regret. I don’t even have an image to go along with this post.
But if there is one thing that I took away from that hot, cramped interview room in that refugee camp in Ghana, it is that there is a value in bearing witness. I had worked with refugees and torture survivors for years, but it took this one woman to bring that point home to me. There is a value in simply listening, and in confirming for someone who suffered injustice that, “It is not right and I’m sorry that this happened to you.”
It may seem insignificant, but it is not. And it is a reminder that when you come in contact with someone who is suffering, in either a big or a small way, there is always something that you can do. You can listen.
If you read Part II “Freedom to Game is Important” of this CALL OF (Parental) DUTY series, you know that my 13 year old son wrote a long letter articulating why he should be allowed to play violent video games like CALL OF DUTY: Black Ops II. He made some good points, I thought. But I still didn’t really know anything about violent video game play. So what was my next step? Research!
One of my concerns was the impact that violent video games might have on his brain. Maybe it is irrational, but I worry about things like that. (I can’t help it – I’m a mom! I worry about concussions in hockey and soccer, too.) I felt like I had read somewhere about the negative impacts of gaming, but couldn’t call up any facts.
I knew that there was a longstanding body of research on the negative impact that watching violence has on kids. For example:
Dr. Wayne Warburton said … that years of study across the world showed definite links between time spent watching dramatized violence and the likelihood of aggressive behavior in the young. “There are some key impacts of violent media on children that are very well demonstrated in research,” Warburton said. “They include increases in the likelihood of aggressive behavior, increases in desensitization to violence and an increase in the overall view that the world is more scary and hostile than it really is.” (Read more here.)
So it seemed likely that there would be some evidence that playing violent games would also have a negative impact. Right?
CONS: VIOLENT VIDEO GAME PLAY HAS A LONG-TERM EFFECT ON BRAIN FUNCTIONING
The study took in 22 young men, and used magnetic-resonance scanning, as well as verbal psychological tests and counting tasks. One control group played a violent shoot ’em up for 10 hours during one week, then refrained afterwards. The other group did not play any games in either week. After one week, the ‘gamers’ showed less activity in certain regions of the brain when they were scanned. (Read more here.)
According to Science Daily, the parts of the brain affected were the frontal brain regions important for controlling emotion and aggressive behavior. “These findings indicate that violent video game play has a long-term effect on brain functioning, Dr. Wang said. “These effects may translate into behavioral changes over longer periods of game play.” (Read more here.)
PROS: VIOLENT VIDEO GAME PLAY INCREASES CREATIVITY AND IMPROVES DECISION-MAKING SKILLS
Sevrin read the articles that I sent him. Then he did his own research, looking for data showing that playing violent video games can impact the brain positively. It turns out that some recent studies have actually shown an increase in creativity and in performing multiple tasks simultaneously. He sent me the following articles on the benefits of playing violent video games.
From Science Daily: “After playing the shooter game, the changes in electrical activity were consistent with brain processes that enhance visual attention and suppress distracting information,” said Sijing Wu, a PhD student in Spence’s lab in U of T’s Department of Psychology and lead author of the study.
“Studies in different labs, including here at the University of Toronto, have shown that action videogames can improve selective visual attention, such as the ability to quickly detect and identify a target in a cluttered background,” said Spence. “But nobody has previously demonstrated that there are differences in brain activity which are a direct result of playing the videogame.”
From Bloomberg (covering a report published in Current Biology): “Playing action video games primes the brain to make quick decisions and could be incorporated into training programs for surgeons or soldiers, a study found.”
The researchers tested 18- to 25-year-olds who weren’t regular video-game players. One group spent 50 hours playing the “The Sims 2,” a slow-paced strategy game published by Electronic Arts Inc. The other group took on “Call of Duty 2,” a combat game sold by Activision Blizzard Inc., or “Unreal Tournament,” a shooter game developed by Epic Games. The subjects then performed timed computer tasks, according to the report published today in the journal Current Biology.In the problem-solving exercise, the action-game players made decisions 25 percent faster than the strategy group, while answering the same number of questions correctly.
The findings suggest that games simulating stressful events or battles could be a training tool for speeding reactions in real-world situations, according to researchers at the University of Rochester in New York led by Daphne Bavelier, a cognitive scientist.“It’s not the case that the action game players are trigger-happy and less accurate: They are just as accurate and also faster,” Bavelier said in a statement. “Action game players make more correct decisions per unit time. If you are a surgeon or you are in the middle of a battlefield, that can make all the difference.”
The experiment builds on previous research by Bavelier showing that video-game players surveying a scene gather more- detailed visual information than non-gamers. The brain constantly uses sensory information to calculate probabilities. Action gamers collect visual and auditory data more efficiently than non-gamers, arriving at decisions faster, the authors said. As a result, playing fast-paced video games may improve everyday skills such as driving, tracking friends in a crowd and reading small print, the scientists concluded.
CONCLUSION?
Sevrin and I debated a bit about the relevancy of the studies (the small size of the negative brain function study, the 18+ ages of all of the study participants). But I think we both agreed that these were all interesting theories. Not necessarily inconsistent, either. It does makes sense to me that violent video game play could increase rapid decision-making skills, but still have a negative impact on other brain functions.
Even though we did not go deep into the research, it gave us a lot to think and talk about. In the end, it seems that there is still a lot that we have to learn about the impact – both positive and negative – of violent video games on the brain of young teenagers. In a sense, there is a giant, realtime experiment going on right now with millions of young participants – and no clear answers.
POSTSCRIPT: Since I wrote this, several friends and family members have sent me additional articles and websites about research into the impact of violent video games on young people. If you know of more, let me know and I’ll add them!
This is the second in my series of CALL OF (Parental) DUTY posts about the discussion we are having in our house about violent video games. Today is my 13 year-old son Sevrin’s chance to share his point of view. Below is a letter that he wrote to us (his parents) about his frustrations with not be able to get Call of Duty: Black Ops II.
I’m proud of you, Sev, for expressing your feelings so eloquently and – especially – for putting the time and effort into writing them down for us. When I read this, I remember precisely how frustrating it is to feel that you are no longer a child but yet are not allowed to make many choices for yourself. Thank you for writing this and allowing me to share it with others.
Freedom To Game Is Important
I want you to imagine, for a minute, that you are in a library. Or maybe a book store. There are rows and rows of books. Each book holds a story, unique and special in its own way. In this library filled with books you have the Fantasy row, the Action row, the Poetry row and then you come across the Childrens section. The library lady (or man) says that you are only allowed to check out books from the Childrens row because she (or he) doesn’t think that you are “ready” for the big boy books. Now I ask you, how would you feel? You have rows and rows of books and yet you are restricted to the small corner and you’ve just been told to deal with it. If you were me, you’d probably feel sad, maybe a little frustrated, and a little bit confused on why you have to read Elmo and Barbie when you could be reading Shakespeare and anything you could possibly dream of. Alas, this brings me to my point. Of course I am exaggerating when I say all I can do is read Elmo but I’m trying to make my point clear. Why is gaming any different from reading in terms of age restrictions?
If it’s because M games are too gorey then I wonder why I’m allowed to read A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. The true horrors of war seep from that book. Kids get kidnapped, hopped up on drugs, and told to kill anybody who opposes their “Dad” (The General of the RUF). In the book, the character sees people get stabbed and shot all the time. He sees people with their fingers chopped off and the letters RUF scorched into their backs. He’s seen women running from the fight with babies on their backs, not knowing that their kin had just taken a bullet and saved their parent’s life. So now I’ve seen it too. And I know what war is like in real life. I know what war does to people and I understand how terrible it is. But I don’t see a problem with shooting a blob in the form of a human that is really just something on the screen. I’m not hurting anybody by playing an M game. That’s like saying that I can’t shoot a target at a shooting range because I might hurt the wooden carving of a person. Besides, do you really think that I’ll become some sort of stone cold killer if a kill something in a digital world?!
If you are concerned about exposing me to bad language then you’re going to have to do a lot more than not allowing me to play M games. Say we are to watch a movie like umm… let’s just go with Band of Brothers. Swearing in that series is important in the plot. It gives the viewer a really good sense of WWII and war in general. But it’s not just from movies and books, it’s also from people around me. Take you/Dad for example. If you/Dad get angry, really angry, you tend to have a fairly large potty mouth. But sometimes swearing is required to get it into my head that “Yeah, I do need to stop complaining about bedtime.” Plus, there is no doubt that there is swearing in T games, too. On top of all of that, I don’t think that just because I hear people swearing in a video game means I’m going to repeat the words I hear to other people say or mouth off at you/Dad. Like I said, I hear swearing all around me.Now, if the problem is that I’m just not old enough to be able to have the freedom to choose any game I want well, I disagree. I’m turning 13. That means I’m a teenager. I am both physically mature and mentally mature. I am shaving and my voice is dropping, no, plummeting like a giant rock. I am also taller than Mom (Mocky!) and catching you, Dad. As for mentally, I’ve been trying to keep all A’s in part because of this. I am smart and know I can handle M games but have not been given a chance for three years. I made the mistake of asking for Deus Ex. But once again, I was ten and had a squeaky voice. I need freedom and choice instead of getting advice (although, sometimes the advice is helpful). I’m asking for a chance to try it again.
The bottom line is, I think that I can take it. If I don’t get to play M games now, I will probably have to wait two or three more years! We have no solid date or age in which I can play M games and I think that 13 is the perfect time to start. I want the ability to choose what games I should and shouldn’t play. And believe me, I know what games I want to get and don’t want. I sit here and search and search and search. I research games all the time and the reason I chose Black Ops II is because I honestly think that it would be fun. I didn’t choose this game just to be with the Kewl Kids. I’m not, as you may well know, a “hop on the bandwagon” kind of guy. Maybe one of the reasons the Call of Duty franchise got so big is because people had a really good time playing them. One other thing about Call of Duty is that Treyarch is the company making BLOPS II and they are known for making a much better story than Infinity Ward and with the futuristic setting, they have opened the floodgates to creative ideas and lots of options. I hope you at least consider what I’m asking for and thank you for reading.
Read the introduction to the CALL OF (Parental) DUTY series here.
For more of the Weekly Writing Challenge: Just Do It!, click here.
It’s pretty rare that a national debate mirrors so exactly one that is raging within my own family circle. But in the wake of the recent tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary – and subsequent comments by National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre blaming gun violence on video game makers – a public discussion has been reopened about violent video games and their impact on society. It is the same discussion that has been going on, on a micro level, all fall in our household. Although, frankly, “discussion” is too mild a verb to capture the emotions surrounding the debate between the parents and the teenager about whether he can have CALL OF DUTY: Black Ops II.
My oldest son turned 13 years old in October. He is a great kid, the kind of kid that other parents want their own kids to hang out with. He’s smart and self-confident, has good friends and does well at school. He is, I think, exceptionally mature for his age. And he likes to play video games. He has always liked to play video games, going way back to when he would choose to play Freddi Fish rather than watch a movie for his screentime.
His father and I don’t enjoy playing video games, so we start from a position of divergence.
Allowing for a difference in entertainment preferences (which I do), there is a second preliminary point that we don’t see eye to eye on: I don’t understand why it is fun to shoot at things. We’ve got a couple of BB guns at the cabin, and the kids are allowed to shoot them at targets. I’ve tried target practice and found it completely boring.
When my son was born, I was very clear that we would never have toy guns in the house. Then one day, when he was about 20 months, he saw a kid at the coffee shop make a gun with his thumb and index finger. The kid pointed his finger at Sevrin and said,”Pew! Pew!” And that was all it took. Fingers, sticks, Duplo legos – it seemed like everything was turned into a “shooter”. Before long, I had caved in to the reality of nature over nurture. Over the years, I not only allowed, but I myself purchased, a vast assortment of Nerf gun products for birthday and Christmas gifts. I didn’t understand it, but I saw no harm in it. So again, I have to acknowledge that others, including my son, might find it entertaining to shoot at things.
But all of this seemed was a long way off from first person shooter video games like CALL OF DUTY: Black Ops II. So when he asked for it for his birthday, we immediately said, “NO!”
Then I realized that, my general prejudice against video games and shooting things aside, I didn’t know anything about video games. I didn’t know what standards were used for rating them or whether there were parental controls. I realized that my son is a reasonable, intelligent person, even if he is still only 13 years old. I thought that he did have a point – it wasn’t fair that we were banning the games without knowing anything about them.
So in November, I began to dig deeper. My son and I both did research on violent video games and the impact on the brain. We shared our findings with each other, emailing back and forth. I spent hours not only doing research, but also reading comments by both parents and teenagers on the pros and cons of letting your kids play violent video games.
In the end, I came to the conclusion that CALL OF DUTY: Black Ops II is not appropriate for my 13 year old. My son was bitterly disappointed, and I am truly sorry for that. Sometimes a parent has to play the ultimate trump card, but I think it is important that we went through this process together.
This week, I will be writing about our experience in a series of posts I am titling CALL OF (Parental) DUTY. I think my son deserves the opportunity to voice his opinions to a wider audience, so he will contribute his writing to the series as well. Stay tuned!
(I’ve been thinking about doing this series for some time, but it took a Weekly Writing Challenge: Just Do It – and a weeklong holiday – to get me motivated to actually do it. That, and a promise to my son that I would try to be fair and accurate.)
I picked up my seven-year old daughter early from school one day not too long ago. “How was your day?” I asked, as she buckled herself securely into her booster seat. The key was in the ignition, and my brain had already sent the signal to my hand to turn it, when she replied,
“OK. Except that X touched me inappropriately this morning.”
We were running late for the appointment, but I did not start the car. Instead, I turned around and looked at her. She sat placidly in the backseat, the afternoon sun backlighting her golden curls like an angel’s aura. She gazed at me innocently with her big blue eyes. She didn’t look at all upset.
“Tell me what happened,” I said.
My voice sounded much calmer than I expected. It certainly didn’t convey what I was feeling. When you are a parent, and your most important job in life is to protect your kid, it is terribly disconcerting – not to mention heartrending – to hear her say something like this. I wanted to scream, “Who in the world would have the audacity to touch MY CHILD inappropriately?!?!”
Somehow, I stayed calm and delved for facts. She answered each question fully and calmly. Here is a summary of what she told me and what I wrote in an email to her teacher later that night:
My daughter told me that X has been touching her a lot and making her feel uncomfortable. She said on Friday that he was rubbing her upper thighs and touched her briefly in the bathing suit area. She said that it is usually during circle time that this happens, so she tries not to sit near him. I told her to tell you immediately the next time it happened, but I would appreciate it if you could keep an eye out for this behavior and help her avoid it.
I did not include this in the email, but she also told me that she always asked her friends to sit around her at circle time, a perimeter of girlfriend protection.
Up until last year, I think my reaction might have been different – more anger than the deep sadness that I was feeling. But after I wrote (and Time published) the How to Raise Boys Not To Be Total Jerks piece about my reaction when my son told a sexist joke, I heard from dozens of women about their experiences with inappropriate touching, sexual harassment, and sexual abuse. Women of all ages, ethnicities and occupations, shared their experiences from all over the world. A couple of medical professionals even told me about patients who had touched them inappropriately during medical examinations. The sad truth is that these are experiences that are all too common for girls and women throughout the world. I realized, sitting there in the car with my key in the ignition, that this was only the beginning for my second grade daughter.
In those few seconds before normality returned and we drove on to the orthodontist, I saw an image of myself in the second grade. An image, like I was watching from above, of myself at the age of 7, pinned down in the dust on the playground at Magnolia Woods Elementary School by a boy who easily weighed twice as much as me. I had not thought of it in more than 30 years, but now I had a sudden, strong remembrance of the feeling of being panicked and trapped, as he sat heavily on my chest and held my wrists down on either side of my head.
I had thought that we were playing chase at recess; HE told me that we were playing kissing chase. He demanded that I hold still so he could kiss me – he caught me, so it was his right. A kiss was the price of my freedom. I remember thrashing, kicking, rolling my head and arching my back, all to no avail. A crowd of first and second graders gathered to watch. I think they were cheering him on.
The school may have taken its name from magnolia trees, but I frankly don’t remember any. There were crepe myrtle trees all along the walkway where we second graders lined up to enter our classrooms. Small tree frogs congregated there; they seemed to have no purpose in life other than to sing happily and spit down on us. A certain times in the year, the crepe myrtles’ strange, pink blossoms – which looked like something right out of Dr Seuss – covered the trees. Pink petals blanketed the sidewalk where we second graders lined up.
As I struggled to break free from this boy, oh how I longed for the crepe myrtle trees and the safety of my classroom door! I pictured myself running, as fast as I could, to that safe spot. Instead, I lay on my back, trapped, in the dust on the playground, trying not to see the boy’s face hovering inches above me. Looking instead for the freedom above me, in the bright blue of a Louisiana winter sky and a canopy of towering swamp oaks.
I have no complaints about the way my daughter’s school responded. The teacher replied within a few hours and forwarded the information on to the school principal and social worker. First thing on Monday morning, the social worker interviewed both students. By Monday afternoon, they had put place a six point plan of strategies to ensure the safety of all of the second graders. The school social worker laid it out for me:
1) I will speak to all of the 2nd grade classrooms about appropriate interactions.
2) All students will be reminded to tell an adult as soon as something happens so we will be able to address it.
3) Teachers will be vigilant and observant in the classrooms for appropriate student interactions.
4) The playground staff will closely monitor for concerning behavior.
5) Seating assignments will be made based on student needs.
6) Students who cannot follow the rules will be seated next to the teacher.
The school social worker also said, “Please acknowledge your daughter for telling you, so you could inform us.”
When my daughter got home from school the next day, she reported that all six points of this plan had already been implemented.
“I’m proud of you for telling me. It was the right thing to do,” I said.
“I know,” she sighed. “Everyone keeps telling me that! I’m getting kind of tired of hearing about it.”
But here’s the thing. Statistics on sexual abuse in children are hard to come by because the majority of cases are never reported to authorities (estimates on reporting range from between only 12% (see Hanson, 1999) and 30% of cases (Finkelhor, 2008)). Based on reporting percentages, the real number of cases of sexual abuse could be anywhere from 260,000-650,000 kids a year. To put it another way, as many as one in three girls and one in seven boys in the United States will be sexually abused at some point in their childhood.
I’m not suggesting that what my daughter (or I) experienced was sexual abuse. But it was an assault – and definitely a wake up call to my daughter’s vulnerability to the potential of something much worse. I don’t know the little boy who I call X here. I’ve also been around kids enough to know that second graders get squirrelly. Sometimes, especially in close quarters, they have trouble keeping their hands to themselves. I’m not willing to make any assumptions about this kid or speculate that his behavior is a sign that he will grow up to be a sexual predator. But research shows that 40 percent of child sex abuse is committed by other children or adolescents. In fact, as many as 50 percent of those who sexually abuse other children are under the age of 18. These are facts that I did not know before.
When the recess bell rang and that boy got off of me, I sprinted for my second grade classroom door. I got there before any of the other kids and put my face against the glass window to cool my cheeks, which were burning with shame and embarrassment. For the next week or so, I spent recess in different part of the playground, doing penny flips on the monkey bars. When I finally went back to playing chase, I made sure that I ran as fast as I could so I would never get caught. For the rest of my time at Magnolia Woods, I was careful to keep away from that boy. But I never told a single person – not my friends, not my teacher, not my parents – about him holding me down and trying to kiss me. Not even when I saw him do the same thing to other girls.
So I’m thankful that my daughter told me about what happened to her. And I’m thankful that the school took quick and decisive action, reinforcing the message for all of the kids and staff that school is a place where everyone has a right to feel safe. I’m especially thankful that something worse did not happen to my daughter, but also that this experience has left her better prepared for the future.
Child sexual abuse happens in all racial, religious, ethnic and age groups, and at all socio-economic levels. Talk to your daughters and your sons about appropriate v. inappropriate touching, as well as what to do if it happens to them – or if they see it happening to someone else. If you’ve talked to them about it once, then do it again. Kids need to hear it again as they move through their various developmental stages. If you feel uncomfortable, just remember that what you are doing is preparing your kids to protect themselves, something they will have to do for the rest of their lives.
Resources about identifying signs of and avoiding child sexual abuse can be found at Stop It Now. If you know of other good resources, please feel free to add them in the comments.
1. Make a one minute video showing what “It’s About Ability!” means to you, whether in the world at large or to you personally. The deadline for the It’s About Ability youth video conteston children with disabilities is December 15, 2012. But even if you don’t enter the contest or make a video, you and your kids can learn about and discuss the rights of children with disabilities by reading the “Thoughts for inspiration” in the contest guidelines and this simple explanation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (which also includes more ideas for things you can do to change attitudes and rules so that children who have disabilities can go to school, play and take part in activities that every child wants to do.) The Learning Guide to the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, designed to empower kids ages 12-18 to advocate for the rights of persons with disabilities, can be found here.
2. Make a World Wishes Dove with your family. Cut feathers from white paper or colored construction paper. Have everyone in the family decorate and write their wish for the world on a feather. Cut out the body of a dove or other bird and glue all the feathers on it. Once decorated, your bird will be a beautiful and hopeful expression of your family’s hopes for our world.
(Note: this project was inspired by the Thankful Turkey at my daughter’s school. You can read more about that here.)
3. Learn about the challenges that children living in poverty face have overcome to succeed in school. Play the United Way‘s PASS THE GRADE game. In honor of the first Giving Tuesdayon November 27th, The Greater Twin Cities United Way launched a fun, educational online game called PASS THE GRADE. (My friend ThirdEyeMom wrote about PASS THE GRADE; read her post here.)
4. Watch some UNICEF Cartoons for Child’s Rights together. Cartoons for Children’s Rights is a UNICEF broadcast initiative that aims to inform people around the world about children’s rights. The effort has forged partnerships with many well-known animation studios that have developed more than 80 half-minute public service announcements based on the articles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Each PSA illustrates a right described in the global rights treaty, such as ‘Freedom from Child Labour’ or ‘Protection from Neglect’. All the spots are non-verbal, in order to get the rights message across to everyone, regardless of language. The spots have aired on more than 2,000 television stations globally. Links to the top 10 can be found here.
5. Do an anti-bullying activity together like Sticks and Stones from Teach Peace Now. Ask your child what think about the saying “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can really hurt me.” Have they heard another version of this saying? Which is truer? Have they ever had someone say something to them that hurt their feelings. Has someone ever hurt them physically or tried to scare them or one of their friends? Have they ever hurt someone by something they said or did? You can give a personal example of a time you were a victim or a witness to bullying or hurt someone’s feelings. You can also read a book about bullying like This is Our House, Hey, Little Ant, Mr. Lincoln’s Way, Say Something, or Simon’s Hook.
Give each child some light gray paper “stones.” Have your kids write a behavior that could hurt someone or make them feel bad such as calling someone a name, or tripping someone. Younger children can draw a picture. Have them wrinkle up the “stone” and then try to smooth it out. Explain that once someone has been hurt, it is never forgotten. You cannot remove the hurt. The wrinkles will always be there.
Hang stones on wall to create a wall of intolerance or sit in a circle and pile the rocks up in the middle. Ask the kids to think about ways to prevent these bad things from happening. You can make a list together of ideas.
6. Go on a hunt for the human rights words around you. Human rights is not about complicated concepts; human rights is about the core values that everyone needs to live fully in this world. In talking about human rights with my own kids, I realized that I needed to start with the basic building blocks of language: words. Read more about how, once I realized that, I started to see human rights words all around me in HUMAN RIGHTS: Speaking The Language.
7. Start a tradition of doing a family service project on Human Rights Day. There are many opportunities to volunteer, such as preparing and serving meals at a local homeless shelter. The Lappin family has done this for two years in a row now in their community in Washington state.
Dad Nathan describes it as “Such a humbling and at the same time rewarding experience. Feels really good to concretely help others and appreciate what we have as well. Our kids did a great job helping and participating, and interacting with the kids we were hosting.”
Even if your family isn’t able to volunteer in an established project, you can still do something as a family to address the economic and social rights in your community. For example, put together care packages with warm socks or mittens, a water bottle, individually wrapped snacks (and maybe even decorate a card to stick inside) and offer them to homeless men and women who you may encounter during the day. Or have your kids decorate a few grocery bags and fill them with non-perishable food items, then bring your kids with you when you drop them off at the food shelf.
Most importantly, spend some time talking with your kids about your family’s service experience. Talk about what you did and why you did it. Ask your kids, “How did it feel?” and “What did you learn from doing this project.”
8. Play a game that helps kids understand human rights. Blind Trust (from ABC – Teaching Human Rights): In pairs, have one child blindfold the other and have the sighted member of the pair lead the “blind” one about for a few minutes. Make sure the leading child is not abusing the power to lead, since the idea is to nurture trust, not to destroy it. The “leader” of the pair should try to provide as wide a variety of experiences as possible, such as hav- ing the “blind” partner feel things with his or her feet or fingers, leading with vocal directions or even playing a game. After a few minutes have the children reverse the roles and repeat the process so that the “leader” is now the led, and the “blind” partner is now the sighted one.
Once the activity is over, allow the children to talk about what happened. Discuss how they felt – not just as “blind” partners but their feelings of responsibility as “leaders” too. This can lead not only to a greater awareness of what life is like for people with sight (or hearing) disabilities, but to a discussion of the importance of trust in the whole community. This can lead in turn to a discussion of world society, how it works and how it can fail to work too. (teaches about Universal Declaration of Human Rights article 28; Convention on the Rights of the Child articles 3, 23)
9. Ask the question “What Does a Child Need?”Have your child lie down on a large piece of paper and trace their outline on the paper.Ask your child(ren) to name this paper child. Discuss and decide on the mental, physical, spiritual and character qualities they want this ideal child to have as an adult (e.g. good health, sense of humour, kindness) and write these qualities inside the outline. They might also make symbols on or around the child to represent these ideal qualities (e.g. books to represent education). Talk about what human and material resources the child will need to achieve these qualities (e.g. if the child is to be healthy, it will need food and health care); write them down on the paper outside of the outline. You can also read a simplified version of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. When children hear an article that guarantees a child each of the needs they have listed, they can write the number of the articles next to that item. Circle any needs identified but not covered by the Convention.
10. Check out the Amnesty International You Tube channel. Amnesty has uploaded more than 500 short videos on a wide variety of global human rights issues. Many videos are in multiple languages, including Spanish and Arabic. (Given the subject matter, many are more suitable for older kids and teenagers than younger kids. Be sure to preview for anything that might be upsetting to your own children.)
The Price of Silence – A music video that brings together 16 of the worlds top musicians—some of whom have fled oppressive regimes—in a rousing musical plea to guarantee human rights for all.
Wyclef Jean sings One Love in this slideshow about Children’s Rights
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: You’re on your way to a great Human Rights Day! If you are a classroom teacher or homeschooling your kids (or if you just want to dig deeper), you can find tons more ideas through the following resources:
It is Thanksgiving Day here in the United States. This uniquely American holiday is supposed to remind us of all that we have to be thankful for, both as individuals and as a nation, but I fear that this sometimes gets lost in our collective national appetite for overindulgence (we don’t stop eating until we feel remorse) and entertainment (Macy’s Parade, football, holiday TV specials). That we carry out these traditions in the company of our closest friends and family members is important and perhaps even the saving grace of the day, but have we lost the true spirit of Thanksgiving?
I was at my daughter’s school last week for Turkey Bingo. At this event, 25 lucky families won a turkey. We did not, although we came within a B11 of winning. As we were leaving, she grabbed my hand and said, “I want to show you something.” She led me out into the hall to a giant, colorful turkey on the wall. She explained that each of the students had written what they were thankful for on a feather.
The thoughts expressed on the feathers give a picture of the typical things for which the average American kid is thankful. I saw feathers that said things like:
“I am thankful for friends and family.” “I am thankful for my mom.” “I am thankful for my sisters.”
“I am thankful for my grandma and grandpa.” “I’m thankful for my daddy.”
Other feathers said things like:
“I’m thankful for my cat” and “I am thankful for my xBox.”
I noticed a couple of feathers, though, that said things like:
“I’m thankful to be here” and “I am thankful for America.”
“I am thankful to live in a place with no war.”
My daughter goes to a school that has a large number of English Language Learner students. Many came to this country as refugees from Somalia or other countries in East Africa, but she also has friends who came to this country as refugees from Tibet or were adopted from orphanages in China. There are also kids at her school from Central and South America.
Sometimes we forget that the Pilgrims were refugees. In England, they were persecuted on account of their religious beliefs. They took the tremendous risk of coming to this new land in order to be free to practice their own religion. And giving thanks for their freedom was a big part of the first Thanksgiving.
As I looked at that turkey on the wall of my daughter’s school, I had a moment of inspiration. When all of those individual feathers, childishly and colorfully decorated, are put together, you get a lovely image. But you also get much more. When all of those truthful and thankful thoughts are put together, you feel the true spirit of Thanksgiving.
And that is the inspiration and the spirit in which I hope to celebrate this holiday.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, from me and (one of) mine!
I haven’t written a poem since I was in elementary school.
The Human Rights Warrior 
You must be logged in to post a comment.