so i will never understand tumblrs obsession with reactionary politics and the death of nuance but here we are.
children need healthy platonic friendships with adults. children need all manner of platonic relationships with adults and segregating children from ALL interactions with adults simply because some adults would like to cause them harm not only doesnt stop that from happening but also makes children EVEN MORE susceptible to abuse.
children should have literally no shortage of adults in their lives who they know, feel comfortable with, and are safe around. isolation ALWAYS increases the risk of abuse. children who dont have positive interactions cant identify behavior that isnt okay because they dont know any better! a child that has a healthy network of adults in their life does! they can compare behavior between adults and say “this isnt how everyone else treats me and i feel weird about it. maybe i can ask xyz who doesnt treat me this way if this is weird or not”
this also gives them more places to turn when things go wrong. a child whos in trouble but only has their parents and peers has a very limited number of options. ESPECIALLY if their parents are the adults in their lives who are harming them, which is overwhelmingly the more likely option. children are much more likely to abused by a family member than by a stranger. a child with more adult friendships, like for example, the woman who works at the library and always talks to them about tv shows they love, the guy from the comic book store who they see every week and who always recommends them new titles to try, the college age coach of their after school sport, the nurse from their school who they eat lunch with because the feel more comfortable there, that child has a large number of adults who they can now turn to in a crisis.
yes, there will always be bad people with bad intentions, but the solution isnt to isolate children from all adults therefore making them even more susceptible to harm if and when it happens. the solution is to surround children with as many examples of healthy positive relationships as possible so that they can easily identify when a situation is not right and then have an unlimited number of resources to go to for help.
When I was 16, I was hit on by what I will generously describe as a silver fox. He was charming. He was also a professor at a local art college. He said he was interested in seeing my portfolio and asked for my phone number. Being interested in a career in art at the time, i thought it was sensible.
And then almost immediately i realized i was an idiot. I was so careful with my identity online as a teenager, yet here I was just giving personal information out to random strangers. Random adults. I was going to end up murdered on the news if I wasn’t careful.
But I didn’t want to rope my parents in because that would have meant admitting that I had done a foolish thing and at that age, there was no greater horror or shame. So instead I went to my French teacher, a jovial eccentric that I spent my free period with, by choice, watching claymation movies and talking about comic books.
When I told her about the interaction, she was immediately concerned without being judgmental or disappointed, and that was honestly such a gift. She helped me track him down. Her support empowered me to be able to trust my instincts, the people around me, and to go forth with a solution that I arrived at myself, rather than immediately going to my parents or pretending nothing had happened and hoping it would go away.
So when the dude called later, breathing heavy and asking if i thought he was attractive, i KNEW he was being a creep. And with my sister’s help (because I didn’t know how to phrase things strongly without being terribly rude, and she seriously didn’t give a fuck) we told him off and then called his employer to express our concerns. He never called again.
Just because an adult is friendly with a young person doesn’t automatically make them predatory. Predatory behaviors make them predatory.
I will never be a friend to the children and the teenagers in my life like I would be a friend to someone my own age, but that doesn’t make my friendship with them any less real or genuine. It’s just a different set of parameters.
Seeing adults like me when I was young is the whole reason I realized I had a future.
