Incredible India Monthly Contest of May#2:The Importance of Child Protection!

No parent will intentionally wants their children to get hurt. But the fact is, so many children are still unsafe, not just because of bad people around but often because of poor parenting.

Below I'll share:

1. Key points on how parents can protect their children

2. Practical lessons on sex education and other protective measures, and

3. Significant reasons why children are unprotected that parents should avoid

Let's dive in👇🏾

Please share several key points on how to ensure the protection of our children

In the following 3 points, I'll elaborate intensively on how to protect our children.

• Build early communication: from a very young age, make your child your best friend. Make your children your gist partner; make them feel they can talk to you anytime. If you are real and transparent to your children, they'll learn that being honest is safe at home instead of hiding it.
  If they get into trouble, they won't waste time to tell you because they trust you as a result of the good communication history you've had with them.

• Show Love and empathy: children make mistakes. Discipline them with love, show empathy too. Remember not all discipline should come with punishment. If the same mistake is repeated, look for the root cause and correct them. Keep rules and explain why there're there and punishment applied if broken.

• Know their friends and environment: Through communication, you will know how their day was, who their friends are, and where they spend time with their friend. Also, be careful not to be overprotective.

Should we consider this, in addition to institutional education, it is essential to provide our children with practical lessons?

In most schools, they don't really go deep into practical lessons especially sex education. So it's in the hands of parents to teach their children how to protect themselves. In most cases of child abuse, a child is being abused for months or even years while the child was still in the care of their parents. So sad!😢

Sex education shouldn't be a taboo. Parents should teach their children about sex depending on their age, give them practical lessons on what to do to stay safe and be protected. When they understand this early, they're better safe from inappropriate or unsafe behavior from their mates and adults.

Please outline some significant reasons why children continue to be unprotected in both indoor and outdoor environments

• Negligence and being overprotective:
  Some parents work for hours, neglecting their children's essential needs. This makes children seek attention elsewhere. When they're home, the little time they're with the children, parents may be overprotective by setting strict rules out of guilt, or not understanding their children because they've not been present. Quality time spent can go a long way to help parent understand their children, but it's often missing.

• Poverty:
  Due to poverty, some parents expose their children to being unprotected. For example, sending a child to hawk on the streets without clear rule about where to go and where to avoid leaves them vulnerable to abuse or bad influence.

• Gender differences:
  Some parents are less concerned about their male children, assuming boys don't face abuse or bad influences. In reality male children can also be abused or end up in bad company.

• Ignorance: many parents are not aware of the risks that their children could get into if they're alone and they fail to give them advice or set preventive rules.

• Poor enforcement of law:
  Laws on child abuse, labour, parental guidance for media like movies or Internet are there, but are rarely enforced properly.

My Conclusion

When parents know of these things that leave children unprotected and works towards avoiding them, their children will grow up in safety and confident. That's the joy of parenthood.

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I place my invite to: @emishael60 @ukpono and @bossj23

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Photos on this post are taken by me

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