Teaching a child about body boundaries empowers them to communicate their feelings clearly, and starting young gives them the confidence to assert themselves as adults too.
Swati Jagdish/Instagram
A few days ago, a video posted on Instagram by sexuality educator Swati Jagdish sharply divided the internet and led to debates on parenting, elitism, caste, and class. Swati’s handle, mayas_amma, regularly posts content on talking to children about several taboo topics. The subject of this one was body boundaries, and Swati and her daughter Maya, spoke about a female flower-seller pinching Maya’s cheeks and causing her discomfort. Swati said that though she was unable to intervene when the incident happened, she spoke to Maya later about how older people may not understand body boundaries, and that they may make such gestures without intending to hurt the child. She further added that our body is ours and that we all have the right to say no and move away in such situations. While several parents welcomed Swati’s views, many others disagreed with the content of the video. Wasn’t Swati making a mountain out of a molehill when the flower-seller was merely being affectionate? Wasn’t this also about the flower-seller’s sociocultural location? Would the child and mother have responded the same way had it been someone from their circle who did this? Aren’t we making our kids overly sensitive by constantly drilling such ideas into their heads that make them question spontaneous gestures? As a parent and children’s author who has written extensively on similar topics and worked with young people on making them understand concepts such as consent and sexuality, I’d like to state in no unequivocal terms that conversations on body boundaries are absolutely essential. But why and how do we do it? Why speak about body boundaries? A 2017 survey conducted by World Vision India that had over 45,000 children – boys and girls – in the age group of 12 to 18 years participating, revealed that one in every two children in the country had encountered some form of sexual abuse. Moreover, data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) consistently states that an overwhelming majority (95%) of offenders know the victim closely. While children are warned from a young age about “stranger danger”, it’s less common for grown-ups to talk to them about people in the family, neighbourhood, school or social circle potentially harming them. But if the numbers tell us anything, it is that most times, it is the adults we trust who are likely to abuse our children. This isn’t an easy conversation to have and many parents (who may have experienced child sexual abuse (CSA) too) struggle with discussing it with their children. It’s also important to acknowledge that adults themselves take time to process an unwelcome touch, questioning their own perception of what happened, and wondering if they should speak up about it. When we speak of CSA, it is the horrifying stories that make the headlines – of gangrape and violent sexual assault – that come to mind. But, CSA can happen in many ways, with the perpetrator slowly gaining the trust of the child by bestowing them with “special” attention and then increasing the degree by which they violate this trust. This process, known as grooming, takes place over a period of time and can be quite confusing for the child, particularly since they may have enjoyed the attention at the start of it. When the perpetrator is someone who receives love and respect from their parents, it can be all the more difficult for a young child to understand that this isn’t okay. Children often struggle to find the vocabulary to articulate what’s happening to them, and may also worry that they won’t be taken seriously. And indeed, the first instinct of many adults is to brush off such complaints as the child imagining it or misinterpreting an innocent gesture. The binary of “good touch” and “bad touch” is difficult to apply in many instances. Is a kiss on the cheek a “bad” touch? Is tickling an “unsafe” touch? Is a tight hug a form of abuse? If it didn’t hurt but you disliked it, is it still a “bad” touch? Trying to make sense of what a child is communicating can be quite daunting, and as a result, many adults fall back on “distracting” the child from thinking or talking about it, effectively putting a lid on the can of worms that they don’t want to open. This is why learning about body boundaries as an adult, and transferring that knowledge to a child is so important. Setting a body boundary means that it is the person who owns the body who makes the rules. It is how they feel about a touch that matters, not the intention of the person who is touching them. They are also encouraged to communicate their discomfort with the promise that their feelings will be acknowledged and addressed. Understanding body boundaries is not only useful in preventing abuse or identifying it when it happens, but even in consensual interactions that the child may have in the future. For instance, a person may want to have sexual intercourse with someone but may not be fond of oral sex. They may enjoy cuddling with someone but may not want to have sexual intercourse. They may want to have sexual intercourse but not without contraception. Teaching a child about body boundaries empowers them to communicate their feelings clearly, and starting young gives them the confidence to assert themselves as adults too. If you choose to have this conversation with your child, you have to begin with this fundamental premise – you are on their side, no matter what. It doesn’t matter who touched them, where they touched them, and what the intention of the other person was. They have told you that they didn’t like it and it’s your job to address it. Understanding socialising codes As important as it is to understand body boundaries and talk to your child about it, it’s also relevant to examine the source of their discomfort when they feel someone has transgressed these boundaries. This is not to cast any doubts on the fact that they felt uncomfortable in the first place or to coax them to tolerate it, but to help them figure out why they had such a response. Understanding this can help the child in their personal growth too. All of us absorb socialising codes when growing up through observation and experience. How to greet someone, how to show that we are friendly and open to conversation, how to end a social interaction, how to express affection and so on. A toddler, for instance, knows that smiling and saying ‘hi’ is a friendly gesture and that they have to say ‘bye’ when they or the other person is leaving. It is what everyone in their immediate environment is doing to get a desired result and it is considered normal to behave this way. As we grow up and our exposure to the world increases, we learn about other socialising codes too and are willing to accept it even if we may not practise it ourselves. The kunik, for instance, is a form of expressing affection between family members and other loved ones among the Inuit. It involves pressing the nose and upper lip against the skin of the other person and drawing a breath. This is not a romantic or erotic form of affection, though someone unfamiliar with the culture may misread it. We also adopt and invent different socialising codes according to our changing needs. A person may use the traditional Indian ‘namaste’ to welcome someone to their home but use the handshake when meeting someone else at work. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, world leaders in global forums took to giving each other elbow bumps as a form of safe greeting. In general, all of us tend to be more comfortable with familiar gestures and socialising codes than new ones that can be surprising/shocking and take some getting used to. In a country with so much cultural and economic disparity that we might as well belong to different planets, it can be confusing for a child to gauge what is normal and in which circumstance when these planets collide. An urban child growing up in a privileged home with exposure to vacations abroad and international TV shows, for instance, might know that a ‘faire la bise’ is a casual greeting while a child from a less privileged home might find it odd to see adults kissing each other so openly outside of a romantic relationship. Similarly, pinching cheeks might be viewed as a normal gesture of affection by many children but not others, depending on how often they’ve seen it being done around them. The disconnect between these worlds is real, and it takes a fair amount of work to make children understand this. Being sensitive to and respectful of differences is an important part of growing up, and adults must have conversations with children on navigating these too. This is to ensure that they don’t reject or fear something automatically only because it’s new and unfamiliar to them. Again, this doesn’t mean we browbeat children into ‘adjusting’ with something they’re not okay with – regardless of the intention of the adult – but gently educate and encourage them to explore different ways of living and expression instead of labelling it immediately as undesirable. This certainly involves working on our own subconscious biases and conditioning too. What’s most important to reiterate here is that the child must continue to feel safe and secure when communicating their discomfort and fears with the adult. Don’t shut them down or be dismissive of their words. As long as they come to you when they have a problem, you’re doing all right as a parent. Sowmya Rajendran writes on gender, culture, and cinema. She has written over 25 books, including a nonfiction book on gender for adolescents. She was awarded the Sahitya Akademi’s Bal Sahitya Puraskar for her novel Mayil Will Not Be Quiet in 2015. Views expressed are the author’s own. Also read: What dismissal of child sexual abuse by parents, caregivers does to survivors | The News Minute Two-third of child sexual abuse survivors bear no physical injuries: Experts | The News Minute Chennai child sexual abuse: Can parents and community do more to tackle such crimes? | The News Minute 'Me Too': How adult survivors of child sexual abuse are vulnerable to re-victimisation | The News Minute #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; } /* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. 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