“Another girl of 5 years was sexually abused in a leading school by his cab driver.” It was just another news sitting in the left corner of a national daily. One more baby robbed of a childhood, one more small girl who now will have to fight with herself all her life and one more child who’d have serious trust issues with all men, and we are not even talking about the physical trauma and the pain she had to go through. Shame on humanity and shame on mankind!
There has been a steep rise in such cases where the sports teacher, skating instructors, teachers and mostly the van drivers have been accused of molesting 5, 6 and sometimes 4 year olds and scarring them for life.
I can only imagine a mother’s trauma, pain and anger on hearing something like this and I can only imagine how complicated would it be for that little soul to heal!
Being a special needs mother, I keep thinking that if such a thing could happen to a child who could talk, communicate, and speak, then how bad this situation is for a child with special needs? My daughter still struggles with speech. She can communicate in limited vocabulary that she has, but she can no way talk like a typical 5 year old, and she is 7. And it’s not just her, her special need peers, mostly have speech issues and such news can send any mother in great distress, whose child is non verbal.
And today I would not like to know what we mothers or our children can do differently? No, today I want to be angry and not look at how? But why! First we prepare them to go to school because we want them to learn, gain confidence, understand few worldly ways and to become more like others but one such incident is enough for us to start questioning if we should send them far from our eyes at all.
Yesterday when I got a call from my daughter’s teacher telling me that she was crying with a stomach-ache, you know the first thing that crossed my mind? It was that she was the first one to be picked up for school today and how could I be such a jerk for doing that? Why couldn’t I just follow the van till they had picked up another child? Once she got back home, I got to know that her shorts were a little too tight for her but that feeling of horror didn’t leave me all day, my heart kept sinking by just the thought of all that I had envisioned in those few hours! What if, something was to happen? She would not be able to tell me. Though I have taught her about good touch, bad touch but would she have the presence of mind? I was feeling a pit in my body, every time I was thinking of all this.
I also know that this could be an overreaction but what choice do we have? We mothers are so hard wired to think like that. Let a child point to her ‘private’ region and let me assure you that every mother would have a silent heart attack at the sight of that pointing finger. We are scared; at least I am scared to death. Every time she complains of a pain anywhere below the tummy, my mama monster wakes up and eat me to death.
I secretly wish for a shirt button camera so that I can see all that is happening even when she is playing in the ground, going to the wash room or climbing the stairs. And then I feel I am over reacting but in this age of low or no morals, can any measure be safe?
How can somebody do this to a child? I know, the entire world wants to know this but the problem is that such cases are happening so frequently that every time there is such an incident, I want to take my daughter out of the school and keep her with me, hell with the school and studies!
I might sound like really worked up for this, but I couldn’t sleep all night thinking about that little girl. I know such a news does this to all the parents and more so for the parents of children with special needs. We have taught them all that we could about complaining to teachers, telling the mother and taking care of themselves but what to do with their trusting nature? My daughter would trust anybody who’d smile and wave at her. She thinks all men are like her Father and brother, filled with love and affection! But how do I tell her this world is no more a place to trust and your first instinct should always be of distrust and doubt. How do I teach her to always be on guard! How do I teach those innocent eyes to always be suspicious? Why did it have to be like this?
Will there be a day when people would be petrified to attempt any such thing? Will there be a day when schools would be as safe as homes and would there be a day when all men would behave like dads and brothers for small little girls and would there be a day when mothers would not have their heart out of their bodies till the time the child comes back safe from the school? Can we dream for such a day? Can we?
