I had actually never given this any thought until I read something in another thread just now.
The possibility that this could happen has kind of stunned me.
Thanks Mordeth for giving me something else to torment my already fragile mind.
Do you worry about this?
Is it more a concern to you here than back home?
What do you do to prevent this from ever happening?
This is a great question, as you just can’t always be there.
When our son was 5 he was in a public school kindergarten program. There was always this old grandpa there who would come up to him and hug him. I had no idea and finally my son told me about it and I was really freaked out. Why the hell is some old man hugging my kid. It was the “foreign kid syndrom” the teachers told me, but I made it very clear to them that under no uncertain terms was this guy to touch my kid again.
After this, we gave the boy the “Good touch, bad touch” speech, and made sure he knew who was allowed to touch him below the belt, that being Mom and Dad when bathing him, and the Doctor.
There’s not much more you can I think. Use common sense, don’t let them go into public restrooms alone, etc…
It’s a scary thing for sure, but with a bit a good precaution, it shouldn’t be a problem.
jds
I am not worried about it in the least.
I have educated by son about the issue, and possible tactics he may use.
My 1.8 year old daughter, may be another issue. I personally believe she is already capable of handling most low level tension situations, to her own ultimate advantage. Wait till she’s 14. Centre on That Tenacious D.!
I’m more worried {call me a pussy!}, about her beating up on the other girls…
One would do well to steer clear of fear-mongers, as they tend to have some related ax to grind. They try and pass it off as concern for the children, but how would they know? They don’t usually have any themselves, and their self-professed knowledge of the issue diminshes forthwith, like hot air outta an over-ripe babboon…
If I were in the states, with kids, I would be loco :loco: . As there, thanks to Oprah, has been a resurgance of becoming aware and hunting down molesters.
Here, I wouldn’t worry, but it’s still necessary to have that conversation with one’s kids, because it’s just not about fending off a predator, but teaching IMO your kids about maintaining respect for one’s own body and personal space.
It’s hard to tell if it’s worse here because things are more hush and one never knows where the fingers of guanxi and bribery stop or because the US media tends to hyperbolize everything that makes people afraid of their neighbors and their kids’ teachers. I’m sure all you parents know how important it is to have the talk with your kids, though.
Now entering 
mode…
It thoroughly upsets me that in the US, teachers are not allowed to give their students a hug or rub their shoulder if they are sad because some sicko out there might think the teacher had ulterior motives for touching a child. Nevermind that those things are almost always done with most platonic senses of affection. That the law is so twisted a child who is being neglected at home must also receive the same cold treatment from his teachers for fear that a much-needed cuddle might be construed as a sexual advance. Don’t get me started on the North American school system and how the culture has been fed a fear of teachers, not helped by the perverse men and women who make up the tiny minority of child predators. Unfortunately, these are the only teachers who ever seem to be featured in the news.
How many teachers make national headlines for helping a child feel good about himself or for helping to keep a student from dropping out of school? How many AP reporters are chasing down the cars of an educator who has improved the math scores of her students or helped a group of kindergarteners discover the magic of literacy? How many articles will you find on google about a teacher who stays after school everyday to grade the essays of her budding young authors? How many newpapers will carry the story of a teacher who helps bring history to life for his high school students by dressing up as a character from each time period they study to introduce each theme? How many people read about a teacher who helped one of her learning disabled students maintain control over his behavior when someone accidently ruined his painting?
No one cares about that. All the general public wants is to be reassured that the world is a bad place after all and at the heart of evil are teachers.
Now exiting mode…
Sorry. I tried not to rant and get off topic, but I am severely pissed off of how teachers get perceived and treated in general. Sure there are some out there who deserve it, but the vast majority are not deserving of the villification.
[quote=“ImaniOU”]It thoroughly upsets me that in the US, teachers are not allowed to give their students a hug or rub their shoulder if they are sad because some sicko out there might think the teacher had ulterior motives for touching a child. Nevermind that those things are almost always done with most platonic senses of affection. That the law is so twisted a child who is being neglected at home must also receive the same cold treatment from his teachers for fear that a much-needed cuddle might be construed as a sexual advance. Don’t get me started on the North American school system and how the culture has been fed a fear of teachers, not helped by the perverse men and women who make up the tiny minority of child predators. Unfortunately, these are the only teachers who ever seem to be featured in the news.
How many teachers make national headlines for helping a child feel good about himself or for helping to keep a student from dropping out of school? How many AP reporters are chasing down the cars of an educator who has improved the math scores of her students or helped a group of kindergarteners discover the magic of literacy? How many articles will you find on google about a teacher who stays after school everyday to grade the essays of her budding young authors? How many newpapers will carry the story of a teacher who helps bring history to life for his high school students by dressing up as a character from each time period they study to introduce each theme? How many people read about a teacher who helped one of her learning disabled students maintain control over his behavior when someone accidently ruined his painting?
No one cares about that. All the general public wants is to be reassured that the world is a bad place after all and at the heart of evil are teachers.[/quote]
Bravo, someone said it at last. :bravo:
Yes, bravo Imaniou. :bravo: Like so many other fears, fear of children being sexually molested has been blown way out of proportion.
Perhaps the high (low?) point of such hysteria in the US was the McMartin pre-school case, in the early 1980s. In that case, the mother of a preschool student complained to the police that her son was being sodomized by teachers at teh McMartin school, in SoCal (although the son denied it). She also made other claims including that the school was taking the kids to the zoo to have sex with giraffes. Police investigated hundreds of the students and a sexual abuse clinic eventually identified 360 students as having been abused (despite a complete lack of supporting evidence). The original accuser was later diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, but the hysteria had gotten rolling. In addition to sexual abuse, children alleged having seen witches flying, having traveled in a hot-air balloon and in secret underground tunnel (that were never found), and having witnessed one teacher beating a giraffe to death with a baseball bat. The “actor” Chuck Norris was identified as one of the abusers, there were claims of orgies at car washes and airports and of children being flushed down toilets to be cleaned up before being presented to their parents. And they claimed they were photographed naked in games at the school (though no photos were ever uncovered).
Sound crazy? Well it was. Particularly for the McMartin family that had to endure 6 years of criminal trials, several years in jail between trials and appeals, endless media attention, permanent defamation, and financial ruin, before the cases all ended in 1990 with no convictions and all charges were dropped.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool
The McMartin case helped start the worldwide preschool molestation hysteria, but it was only one of many high-profile cases such as these: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_care_s … e_hysteria and in the end all that hysteria led to major changes in the legal system based on a greater understanding that children often fantasize and make up crazy stories and adults should be careful about how they question children and rely on the responses as true.
Yes, molestation and abuse happen, but absent compelling evidence in a particular case (eg. if I found giraffe hairs on my daughter’s clothing) I don’t believe they’re worth losing sleep over in the abstract.
Fucking A! Brilliant. That is hilarious, erh, except for those involved, of course. For them, what a nightmare! Surely you’d have to think the world had dropped off a cliff lining up in a court to hear this crap paraded as truth.
“So Jimmy, please address the court, before you were rogered by that giraffe, what position did you adopt? Did the giraffe ever offer you sweeties to lose your shorts?”
I never worried about it with my son, but now with a six year old girl it is more of a concern. However, I seem to recall that statistically the boy is more likely to endure molestation.
HG
This is slightly off-topic but might be of interest:
I know that this topic is most troublesome to parents who try to protect their younguns, of any nationality. I don’t profess to know the answer, but I can state that one needs to look at the culture in which you are living (and teaching) Touching in Taiwan is not a good ideas. Even a pat on the back, as “good on ya” may be taken the wrong way.
My ponder is,why do foreign teachers who have been here and know these idiosyncrosies continue to do the the illegitamte? Is it for a perverse thrill or or an expectation (from a 12 year old) life here is easy and and the sexualaity of pubs easy. Dont choose students as an object of desire. They have soooo much to learn and they don’t need you to teach them this area of their life… Just my opinion.
Your name is well chosen, Enigma: I have no idea what you are talking about.
Is touching kids taboo in Taiwan? I had no idea. It is in the US because of fear of lawsuits by crazy parents, but I wasn’t aware people had a hang-up with touching school kids in Taiwan. Beating them with a stick is ok, but a pat on the back is forbidden? :s
What the hell is that all about? Has a foreigner been accused of molesting 12 year-old students? Has anyone even mentioned such a thing? What do you mean by “foreign teachers . . . continu[ing] to to the illegitamte [sic]”? Why are you telling us we should go to the pubs instead of seeking a perverse thrill from a 12 year-old? Why are you telling us not to choose 12 year-old students as the object of desire?
Did you even read the above posts? I doubt it. Please go back and re-read this thread. No one was recommending hitting on 12-year olds. No one said it’s a thrill. On the contrary, the subject concerns whether children are safe from molestation and the comments were mostly from concerned parents. I believe your post confirms my point that the fear has been blown way out of proportion; even a simple discussion of the subject leads to crazy, unfounded accusations.
I’m not sure either, but I’ve worked at several schools who told the male teachers to be careful how they touch girls. I suppose this is because they don’t want any bad publicity if a psyco parent freaks out because a ‘sex-crazed white man’ laid his hand on their nine year old daughters shoulder. I’ve mostly worked with 6-12 year olds and at that age their is hardly a difference physically. As one post mentioned it is probably more likely for boys of that age to be a victim but they were ok with the boys hugging the male teachers but not the girls. I am at the stage now where I just avoid any contact with female students at all and won’t stay in a classroom if there is just one female student there.
My experience is that local teachers touch students a lot more than in Australia. A lot, lot, more. Mind you, those who do are usually women. But even in Australia women can’t touch children the way they do here in Taiwan.
I also find that men touch each other more here than they do in Australia.
I once had a twelve year old student who brought me flowers. He brought them and gave them to me at drop off and his mom was still around. I thought the gesture was so sweet, and bent and gave him a kiss on the cheek. His mom was very flusterd. She wasn’t upset, but a little overly concerned for her son, as she told me that that was his first kiss. I thought it was a little crazy to consider a peck on the cheek from a teacher a “first kiss.” But he just blushed a little and went on about his evening. It ment a lot more to his mom than to anyone else involved. There was nothing more to it, but after that I was much more careful of how I touched all my students, male or female.
That sounds really strange. “first kiss”? So, in a way the mom told on herself, how her parenting skills are, that one could conclude that she doesn’t show physical affection to her son. Nor does anyone else in the family. I don’t think what she said is true.
I experience my friends’ kids wanting to hug and kiss me all the time (three to five year olds).
I was listening to talk back radio in Sydney on the ABC (Australian National Radio). It was your usual nonsense until they got to talking about the age when a boy should be able to go into the male toilets on his own.
I was guessing about three or maybe four, anyway as young as possible, mostly because of the indignity of going to the women’s toilets playing havoc with my manhood. And as the debate raged on radio the line began to be drawn in the sand and it was old.
Mothers were concerned about sending their 7 and 8 year olds into the public loo. That seems to me to be at a high level of hysteria. I think the male host (Richard Glover) was thinking pretty much the same thing. He had to start interjecting and said, “Well it’s not as bad in there as you think. In my 48 years of attending male toilets, I’m yet to experience or witness one act of sexual abuse.”
Was he right? I tend to think so and I am a father. It is something I care about but I’m not overly concerned about it.
One person commented saying the day their son said, “I don’t want to go in there. I want to go to the men’s toilet.” They said, “Oh! Fine.”
That seemed like a pretty reasonable cut off point to me.
I see boys in change rooms here who should not be (and less often back home). They look about 10 or 12. I’m sorry, but if they’re old enough to be facinated in boobs etc, they should not be in the change room. This sort of overprotectiveness by mothers is just antisocial.
Like the person you were just canning MT, I too hadn’t read back through the thread, but you make some good points. And anyway where is the connection between the 12 year olds and going to the pubs?
I’ve heard some arrant nonsense in my time, but crikey.
Back when I was 4 or 5 that wasn’t a prospect I’d envisaged, but had I had my wits about me. I’d have held out.