How can we define the difference between "privacy" and "secrecy" in a way that children understand?
I saw a post go by yesterday that I don't want to dig up because there was a lot there, and I walked away thinking "That's not quite right, but can I articulate why?"
One of the things it said was to define, for children, that an okay secret is limited in time, and makes people happy. A not-okay secret is forever and makes people unhappy. I get that the idea isn't that this is the real line forever, so much as this is the line children need. Okay... now how do we define "privacy" within that scope? Are we promising children that adults never do anything in privacy that's a secret?? Because that's fucked up.
Also, there was a suggested rule about individual adults never being behind closed doors with a child alone, and I'm like "Have you never heard of single parents? Babysitters?" If you think the line is "approved adults" then you're missing that most abuse does come from adults the other adults thought were approved. Maybe it does take a village, but not every household has a village handy, eh?
I don't know. 90% of what was said in that post about how to help kids be prepared to speak up if they're abused was great - I 1000% agree age-appropriate, technically accurate sex ed should be started early and revisited often. If a kid is old enough to ask, they are old enough to receive an accurate answer in terms they can understand without euphemism and hedging.
But some of it seemed really off, and I'm still wrapping my head around how so...
I know some of it is... I was taught from a fairly young age that some kinds of secrets exist to keep others safe. The example - which made sense in context, I swear - was if a Nazi shows up at the door asking if I know where my Jewish friend is, I can and should absolutely lie about that, to keep their secret and keep my friend safe.
Now, that's... probably kind of an odd way of thinking about things for small children, I'll grant you. My parents were clarifying an otherwise hard stance on lying, specifically, and I appreciate that.
If we're talking about very small children, Nazis are perhaps a bit too complicated a concept to explain, but Stranger Danger isn't especially useful as the line when the call is coming from inside the house, so to speak.
Having a hard line on the idea that kids shouldn't have or expect any kind of privacy because secrets are bad is obviously too simplistic, and the post did acknowledge that by addressing the concept of boundaries for the adults having privacy without the kids in the room, which makes sense as far as it goes but doesn't address the children themselves being allowed privacy.
Children aren't stupid, they're just young. Ethics aren't simple, but we do need to keep things usefully clear. So... what do?
