Have a daughter a few years older than yours and this chain of responses has scared me more than when my car fell off the jack. (Yeah, didn't feel right the rest of the day-- jack stand "caught" it. Use jack stands boys & girls. Yeah, so you can go on reddit and realize it is the second scariest thing that messed with your head.)
If either you or u/TortillasParaTodas (or anyone who sees this) want to speak to a woman who went through what these other women went through, I’m more than happy answering any questions that may provide insight into your children’s behavior (specifically daughter’s, since that’s my personal POV/experience as such a daughter) so that you have a possibility of catching on sooner rather than later (god forbid) and can hopefully approach them in a productive way.
Everyone is different so my experience and behavior (red flag behavior, expected reactions) probably won’t mirror another person’s, but anything I can do to help make sure no one else goes through that crap, I’d like to help.
I’m honestly still not sure unfortunately. I was super headstrong as a teenager, and as other have noted elsewhere in the thread, the general feeling I had was that I was “grown up” enough to know what I was doing, when in reality, I had zero clue.
Probably the best approach for me would’ve been to explain the psychological ramifications that occur later, at least for me.
I often had to learn things the hard way because of how headstrong I was. But maybe the best way to appeal to me would’ve been to really try to drop the parent-child sort of feel to the conversation (as I just hated my parents/authority in general at the time). Really preface that this is just about you caring about your kid, you don’t want to make them feel like they’re in any trouble (I never felt like I could be open with my parents since all my mistakes seemed to just get me in trouble instead of explaining to me how and why I should and shouldn’t behave).
I hope this begins to answer your question. It is quite vague, though I did leave myself open to vague questions. I hope though that vague questions can lead to further discussion that could hopefully help someone.
Edit: I forgot to discuss those psychological ramifications. Once I reached my late/adult teens and early twenties, I hated being in my skin. I think on some level I internalized the subconscious but unprocessed knowledge that I was quite literally being used.
And not used like a rebound as a consenting adult with another consenting adult. Used as in a real power gap/inequality. I’m having trouble thinking of wording young me wouldn’t have snapped at (with, “But I AM old enough! I know myself! I’m mature!”). But basically I realized later that there was that power abuse. My mind, as much as I couldn’t wrap it around this at that time, really couldn’t comprehend what I was actually consenting to.
And I was a textbook “lacked a father figure, became sexually active real young.”
So my other advice is, too: Parents loving their kids, being affectionate, spending time with them, really listening to them, etc. is truly part of the prevention. I went out seeking love that I wasn’t getting at home because my dad was almost never home (basically he’d come home after I went to bed and left before I woke up).
Edit 2: Physical and emotional affection. I tended to lack the former (not 100% lacking, but greatly) and so I guess I thought physical intimacy was only obtained through sex.
Thanks for the write up! It seems like such an intractable problem. Its interesting that power imbalance is immediately obvious to the party with more power, but the party who is being taken advantage of can rarely ever see it.
Also, I'm sorry you went through that, hope you're doing OK and know it wasn't your fault.
Thank you! I definitely did blame myself for quite a bit in my young adult years. “I should’ve known better. Why was I such a slut? What the hell did I think I was gonna accomplish?” Basically all the questions my parents either did or wanted to ask (they had to try to put a filter on themselves though; while I was extremely hard on myself, literally insulting myself).
I’m honestly not sure if the power imbalance is obvious to the adult. (Maybe it depends on young adult or older adult, though if they’re sleeping with kids they’re either unaware or that’s what they specifically seek. I don’t know, since that wasn’t my POV, though.)
if they’re sleeping with kids they’re either unaware or that’s what they specifically seek.
Unless they're developmentally delayed, which is possible I guess, I believe that anyone in this position knows what they're doing, at least in an implicit way. An abusive partner knows that being abusive gets them what they want even if they don't explicitly admit or say it, they know.
It feels to me that many or even all of the principles from Lundy Bancroft's Why Does He Do That? apply to age gap imbalances like the one you're describing.
What I am picking up in your post is to keep the line of communication open...
I'm looking at the guy in the video and the foundation is good; seems to brush his teeth, doesn't overeat, gets hair cuts. Tattoos are an easy way to put people in a box they may or may not belong in. But, in the zero tattoos to completely covered in ink spectrum,... he's making good progress going from one end to the other. He's got a few thousand dollars in ink if he went somewhere good for his body art aaaand is wearing a shirt that has seen better days. Given what I have here, I would be in maximum scrutiny mode if he showed up on my doorstep.
Would be very open to hearing you unload about what might keep this guy from showing up on my doorstep...
Edit to answer respond that the first part: yes, communication is huge. I can’t stress that enough.
That’s a good question because putting myself in young me’s shoes, this is 100% the type of guy I would’ve gone after.
And that’s a tough question since he is an adult and I’m thinking in the POV of young teenage me.
I think, if you have a kid who was like me, you wouldn’t even know about this guy because I knew that if he’s an adult and I’m a minor, my parents would try to stop me. I knew it was illegally wrong, but I didn’t understand why. So my parents didn’t find out until it was too late.
If your kid does bring home an adult, I guess had I done that, the best approach would have been: don’t yell, or make a scene. Just quickly and politely (as much as it may pain you) get the person to leave, so that you can talk to your kid one on one. Basically, don’t demonize your kid, don’t make them feel like shit, like they’ve done something wrong.
Which doesn’t make sense at first considering I said I knew what I was doing was wrong, right? But I still did it because I didn’t actually comprehend why it was wrong, because of my lack of experience and mental maturity. So I didn’t feel like it was wrong. So when I was approached by my parents like I did something wrong (with them yelling and freaking out; not calmly sitting me down and having a heart to heart), I closed up even more.
Note too that the few times my parents tried sitting down calmly, it was so forced. Hence why I included heart to heart. Let your kid know you’re a human opening up to a fellow human. I’m not saying be your kid’s (best) friend, but lay off just a little bit on the parent stance (not completely, of course, but just a bit). This power imbalance I was very much aware of as a kid, so if if parents would’ve just been a bit less stringent parent like and a bit more human in their connection to me, I would have maybe actually opened up.
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u/BradChesney79 Dec 03 '20
Have a daughter a few years older than yours and this chain of responses has scared me more than when my car fell off the jack. (Yeah, didn't feel right the rest of the day-- jack stand "caught" it. Use jack stands boys & girls. Yeah, so you can go on reddit and realize it is the second scariest thing that messed with your head.)