April is Child Abuse Prevention Month. In hopes of spreading awareness and to help educate our audience on ways to keep our children safe, we’ve teamed up with Kids House of Seminole for this month long series.
Kids House is Seminole County’s Children’s Advocacy Center. Its mission is to aid children who are victims of abuse by providing all necessary services for child abuse cases from report and investigation through treatment and prosecution in a child-friendly, non-threatening environment. Kids House is a nonprofit organization that exists because of the generosity of our community. If you would like to support them, please donate.
Click here to find a CAC near you. If you suspect a child you know is a victim of abuse, please call 1-800-96ABUSE.
Understanding Human Trafficking
In 2017, there were over 1,700 reported cases of human trafficking (HT) in the state of Florida, 43 just in Seminole County, some victims as young as 11 or 12. Every year the numbers go up, along with rising awareness, meaning many more cases are expected in 2018. To believe “that could never happen to my child” would be ill-advised, because contrary to what some believe, these are not all runaway/throwaway youths. Many verified cases of HT involve kids who go home to a loving family every night. So if the home isn’t the problem, what is?
Part of the problem is that we live in a world where bad people take advantage of good people. Add to that the fact that kids can be naive, are eager to please those they love, and have a tendency to believe bad things could never happen to them. So when your teenage daughter has a boy take an interest in her, naturally she may develop positive feelings for him. When he shows her affection, then gently starts asking her to push her boundaries a little bit, her assumption may be that his intentions are good and not bad…but this can be where the downward spiral towards HT begins.
Education is the key to prevention, so educate your kids about human trafficking, but also know that this is not the sole solution. Many parents are great at having those “stranger danger” and “make smart choices” conversations with their kids, but the fact of the matter is adolescents are notorious for making unwise choices. Developmentally, that’s actually where they’re supposed to be. The part of their brain responsible for decision making, emotional regulation, impulse control, and generally higher level cognition isn’t fully developed yet. To expect them to behave as an adult would in a potentially unsafe situation is simply unrealistic.
So what else can you do? First and foremost, maintain a strong parent-child bond with your teen. You don’t need to be their friend, but you do need to be a safe adult who they feel they can come to about anything. Adolescence is a challenging time and in the age of technology, it’s difficult in a way not many of us fully understand. Rather than focusing too heavily on behavior and what your kids do wrong, empower them to spot risks early. Take a genuine interest in them as people, learn about their friends, their hobbies, their insecurities, their struggles. Give advice, give praise, and give affection. The more positive attention they receive from you (and other healthy people in their lives), the less they will seek elsewhere.
The other part is supervision. Parents often assume their kids are smart and trustworthy, and maybe they are, but we forget they’re also kids. Being blessed with a responsible child is wonderful, but remember that you can’t always trust the world around them. They need a safety net, a way to grow and mature, to learn to make responsible decisions for themselves in a way that won’t put them in danger if they fail, because they will make mistakes. The answer is supervision, so go through their phones, get to know their friends and their friends’ parents, have them check in with you regularly with updates as to where they are/who they’re with/etc. The more you know about what they’re doing when you’re not around, the easier it will be to see red flags they may not yet see.
To learn more about human trafficking visit, The Polaris Project.
Maegan Heller-Salickram works as a Child Advocate at Kids House. She is a member of the Seminole County Human Trafficking Task Force as well as the Domestic Violence Task Force.
