Reviewed by Martha Artyomenko
Description
Even good parents often underestimate the dangers their children face. Research indicates that one in four females and one in six males are sexually abused before age 18. In most cases, the enemy is not a faceless stranger; it’s someone you know and trust–a neighbor, a coach, or even a family member.
This book provides practical steps to ensure you’re doing all you can to reduce the risks of abuse. But since you cannot be with your children 24/7, it goes beyond what you can do as a parent to teach you how to increase your child’s own awareness and strategies in the face of potential dangers–without making them fearful.
Dr. Robinson, whose decades-long practice focuses on abused and endangered children, calls on her own case studies to show age-
appropriate conversation starters for parents, teaching them how
to ask the right questions and provide the right boundaries.
This book will help you move from fear to confidence on this heavy topic that is just too important to ignore.
My Review:
The great things about this book:
It was set up well, by age level. It was clear and easy to understand without using a ton of big words or babbling.
The poor side of it was that it was quite fear laden. I would be the first one to tell you that we need more info for parents on how to protect their children from predators. But I felt this book did a poor job of that. It instead let you know that they are everywhere. (Truth), but gave very few stats on how these things they recommended you do to protect your children actually work. Instead, there was a underlying tone of blame that I felt.
One huge issue was an encouragement for isolation, from those that were in foster care, family members, church members, to almost a paranoid level, never hiring teenage babysitters, avoiding sports coaches, making sure you are always in the room with doctors and so on.
It did have some good info on educating your child to be empowered and to be their own warrior. I liked that part. This was really good. But the key element faltered in that parents cannot prevent child abuse. We can educate, protect and seek to put safety guidelines in place, but in the end, it is not us that protect. In fact, isolation has been one of the keys that sex offenders look for and take advantage of.
I wanted to like this book, I really did. It is a great need in our society. I would recommend Jimmy Hinton’s articles over this book though.
I obtained this book from the publisher. The opinions contained herein are my own.
