Child Protection Responsibility: Who Has More Ability To Respond?

There's a petition going round, to educate children about body safety from age 5 in the hope that the knowledge will help kids protect themselves from people intent on doing them harm.

Initially, it sounds like a great plan and anything that helps protect kids is good right? But every time I read petitions like this or hear of government plans to action a new education initiative for kids under the banner of Child Protection. I don't like it and have really mixed thoughts.

I protected myself really well during my nearly 11 years in care because I had to, there was no one else who did. I became expert in evaluating people fast and knew I needed to be fierce and aloof in order to keep myself isolated and safe. But the result of all that early knowledge was that it made me a fearful, aggressive kid and an anxious, aggressive adult and it's from that perspective I feel we are putting ever more responsibility on our children to protect themselves instead of the agencies/parents/guardians who should be stepping up.

I know we teach kids about road safety, hot kettles and cookers, fireworks etc... from the earliest age and Body Safety seems to be no different but it feels completely different. You're teaching kids about bad people and giving them an awareness that they didn't have before, which doesn't have a positive effect on kids. Suddenly they are asking questions about who is a bad person when they should just be asking how caterpillars change into butterflies and how thunder and lightening is so amazing.

I'm not talking about over-protecting kids from the realities of life appropriate to their age like general farm life/death/babies....friendship issues, bullying etc... I don't dash over to the crib every time my baby farts and I don't believe everyone's a winner on Sports Day! I believe in giving children the tools and resources to sort their own issues out for themselves as they go along. For instance I am an advocate for some form of compulsory martial art taught in schools. I think it helps with protection, self-discipline, general fitness and confidence. I learned kick boxing from an early teenager and it helped me immensely.

On Child Protection issues? An adult has more ability to respond.

Imagine how guilty a kid would feel even after having been educated about Body Safety, to a standard us adults would feel confident in, if they were then to be hurt knowing they should have told someone and didn't, knowing that what was happening to them was wrong but they didn't do what they'd been taught? That's why I have mega reservations about where the onus lies because even armed with that knowledge, they do not have the ability to make those kinds of decisions or live with the consequences of them. We do.

As adults, it is far better for the kids if we accept responsibility (as a society) for their protection. Then any rage and pain can be put externally on us rather than internally on themselves.