My 5-year-old son studies in a co-ed school, and like all kids, they play with boys and girls alike. Most boys are little rough in play, and that’s their nature, but being little boys, they don’t realize that they should not pull a girl, hit and run and know about appropriate touch when they are with girls around. Sometimes I see them tugging at a girl, and sometimes they are pulling her dress innocently to call her, sometimes they pull her hair and run away to tease her just like they would do with their other friends. With the increase in sexual crimes in our country, we as parents continually worry. We also worry about teaching our boys right from wrong, about teaching them how to respect all women alike. We sometimes feel lost on what age to start with and sometimes overlook little things as childish and innocence and think that they are going to learn it anyways when they grow up. But our assumptions don’t always seem to pay off the way we think it should.
What is an appropriate age to educate boys about touching? How does one explain to them the difference between a more respectful way to touch another person and that which is not? What is an appropriate age to talk to them about respecting and playing differently with the girls? What is the right age to teach them to respect women and men alike?
There is no right or wrong age, and we as parents should start talking and teaching them as soon as they begin to reason and understand at about four years of age. When your boys pull a girls’ dress to call her, tell them its not appropriate. Would they like it if someone calls them that way? Call them that way if you need to, to make them understand how it feels. Ask them to use names while calling out to someone. When they want to play with a friend, whether a boy or a girl, teach them to respect their opinion. Tell them not to interfere and give their friends their space and value their voice too. This should hold initially for all their friends, and when they grasp the concept, then siblings and elders too.
How to teach children under 5?
Children are like sponges, and they absorb what they learn. What you do is what they do. If you respect people, they will do the same. If you speak rudely every time to the nanny, they will talk to them the same way too. Set an example for them by being an example. Have a conscious effort to rectify how you behave with others, and that’s what you will teach your children. Use appropriate language with children around. You wouldn’t want to see a 5-year-old to use words like shut up and stupid, would you? Teach kindness by being kind, teach them empathy by being emphatic. To raise boys well in today’s world, we need first to keep improving ourselves as a person, and our boys would follow.
How to teach children over 5?
Social media – I believe it to be the culprit for exposing them to content which they are not required to know at their age. Even if we as parents monitor them, they could still go out and watch what they want to with their friends or cousins. What they see and don’t see matters. Many of the videos that we see today in Bollywood movies are disrespectful to women. Some songs demean women in general, the way they dress up sometimes are unnecessarily skimpy and erotic. Exposing children to such things at a young age is unnecessary. Exposure arouses curiosity, and curiosity is the cause for the effect we sometimes fear. Letting kids watch movies that are not meant for them just because we are watching it should be a cause of concern. Filter screen-time, filter what they see. Be more cautious and keep yourself open to accepting that your child needs to learn. They need to respect, and they need to know what is right and wrong.
Some sources say kids as young as 11 years old, while others say kids as young as eight are encountering porn. (Source – fightthenewdrug.org) We must start talking to our kids from the age of 8 or 9 and tell them that porn exists, but it’s not the real world. Tell them that people might try to show them, but that’s not reflective of how relationships are. Tell them to come and tell you if someone shows it to them, that it is a serious offense.
I am yet to face the teenage boy’s issues and would not like to base my write up only on the readings I do, but find it on facts of dealing with problems with children and child-related things when I have to face them myself. I look forward to writing about this same topic some years down the line, until then, I hope this helps you to raise your boys to respect women, treat them with love, care, empathy and learn to respect consent.
