Honesty

I wanted to be more honest in my blog but getting started (because I’m not anonymous) is tough…if people I know stumble across my blog there could be repercussions. It could upset quite a bit of my family. *sigh* here I go.

There is a boy (teenage; he is quiet, and moved recently into the area, leaving all his friends’ hours away. We’ll call him G. In the past when we would visit their home this boy would “hang out with” the little boys (who were at the time three 7 year olds and one 9 year old but now they are three 8 year olds and one 10 year old). Then things took a turn.

My Mom was taking the boys to school when she overheard them telling my neice (who is a year older than they are) about “making out” So when I got home she relayed the story to me and I asked them what “making out” is. Ethan immediately clammed up. He knew right away that these questions were bad news (he has a lot of “street” smarts). Lane Michael however was a fountain of information. But the answers were NOT what I was expecting or wanting to hear.
*I figured some 1st grader with an older sibling had taken the 20 minute bus ride to educate them.*

The conversation went something like this:
Me: who told you about making out?
LM: G (previously mentioned 16 year old boy)
Me: what did he tell you?
LM: making out is kissing and touching and then the girl is your girlfriend and then you get her flowers and rings and then you give her something she likes more than flowers and rings
Me: and what’s that? *voice shaking*
LM: G wouldn’t say
Me: *big sigh of relief* Do you have any questions about the stuff he told you?
LM & E: no

Before I did anything I decided to discuss this with Todd.

*backing up for just a minute, the relationship with the parents of G is rocky, they have said that their children are perfect and never do anything wrong making this touchy and difficult situation even more touchy and difficult*

After discussing (at length) how to proceed we decided it may have been a lapse in judgment (on G’s part) so we re-visited the subject. Ethan again wouldn’t say anything. So we pulled Lane Michael aside and (as casually as possible) asked him if there was anything else we should know or anything that made him uncomfortable. He paused, he hemmed and hawed and finally he told us that G had offered to show him pictures of girls without shirts or clothes (Lane Michael did not take him up on the offer). I thought I’d throw up. And after reassuring him he’d done nothing wrong and was right to tell us we sent him upstairs to play. This changed everything.

In every foster class we’d ever taken we were taught that this was a predator’s way of opening up the opportunity to victimize. Play to the child’s curiosity. And an age gap 3 years (or more) isn’t “locker room” talk, it is predatory behavior.

These are people we see regularly. People we spent the night with, shared birthdays with and would be expected to associate with in the future.

There was an outside source (who has always been the common ground between my family and this other family), I went to this person and discussed everything that had happened. I explained that we wouldn’t able to expose our children to this young man any more. This person, while upset with the situation and G, understood where we were coming from.

We have since seen this family once at a shared Christmas party. I was a nervous wreck and yelled pretty consistently throughout the night. I was miserable and made everyone around me miserable. Nice. At one point G picked up Ethan, I immediately told G to put him down, after that G sat across the room, probably afraid I would yell again. I’m sad for this lost relationship, sad for the other kids in the home, sad for the “middle man” and sad that G tried to take the innocence from my boys. I’d like to go to the parents of G and talk about this, I just think nothing would be solved and if anything make things worse in an already bad situation.

*I should say that there are more situations adding to my “accusations” but they aren’t my story to share*