Top Ten Tips: Number 1
You are battling evil; you will need courage and vigilance, and to be "that parent." But be prepared to pay a price for your stance.
TIP 1
âTickling Gameâ
I went to a mother and toddler group a few years ago. I let my kid have quite a lot of freedom, playing about the floor with the other kids and the toys, whilst I kept half and eye on him, and chatted to the other mums.
I noticed an older man was at the group when he approached my kid and tried to engage him, right off the bat, in a tickling game.
For the avoidance of doubt, there are no circumstances under which I would allow an adult male stranger to initiate a tickling game with my child, especially without engaging with me first. None.
I got up like lightening. I marched straight over to him and said, as calmly as I could manage, âwhat, exactly, do you think you are doing?â
He replied, âPeople like you are completely obsessed with sex.â
I didnât say anything. I just stood there, between him and my child, glaring at him. He muttered something about me making accusations against him. I glared at him some more. He did a weird little bow at me, then slunk away to the tea counter, and shortly after, away out of the room.
He never came back.
Paying the Price
I didnât raise my voice once, I didnât cause a scene, there was no fuss about it, but I felt over the following weeks, the other mothers âpulling backâ from me and from my kid. Everybody knew what I had done, everybody knew why he wasnât coming back, and it made everybody uncomfortable - with me.
I had been ârude,â I had called him out, got rid of him, but in the process I had called them out - they had tolerated what I would not. He had tickled their children; they had said nothing. They felt named, and judged, I think, or at least I would have done in their shoes.
I made a decision to talk formally to the staff about what happened. The leadâs take on it was, he was âwell knownâ in the community, they were âglad to have him,â âeven though he didnât have an official roleâ and they were âsorry to see him leave.â
When I expressed my concerns about his presence, about the lack of clarity around roles in the group, about the tickling, about his response to my intervention, she said âheâs harmless, really, what harm could he do here.â I got no traction whatsoever with her, and that was the last time I went to that group.
What Harm Could He Do?
What harm could he do? He could groom toddlers into thinking that it was acceptable and normal to engage in tickling games with adult male strangers. He could groom women into thinking that they had to turn a blind eye to men who did that. He could groom group leaders into accepting him where he did not belong. He could push boundaries. He could use the fact that he was accepted at the group to get access to women he identified as vulnerable/open to that kind of thing, and abuse their children. Boundaries and clarity about roles are there for a reason.
So, if you want to protect your children, to signal to predators that they had better go elsewhere, then you have to be willing to be rude, to cause a scene, to be unpopular, and to hold a space for your children to be safe in. That is the essence of tip one. Be prepared to be rude, call out the unacceptable, say the unsayable, and be ostracised for it.
Thatâs the downside. The upside is that predators, and those who enable predators, will not want to be anywhere near you or your children.
What if you have difficulty recognising red flags?
I take a hard line on this. I talk occasionally to mothers who want to know, âis this a red flag,â âhe did this, I donât feel right about it, is it actually harmful, or is it just a thing hedoes, it seems borderline to me.â
You shouldnât be spending time wondering âwas that ok, or was that crossing a line?â If you find yourself thinking that about the behaviour of an adult male towards your children, then that is an indication that he is already pushing your boundaries. Donât allow it. The minute you suppress this type of worry in yourself, you allow predators to start pushing the window of whatâs acceptable.
Not everybody who does a thing you find unacceptable around your children is automatically an abuser. Some people I know and love have done things that cross my boundaries. They are still in my life. I have said to them, âi don't want you to do that around my child,â and they have stopped it. Thatâs a normal response to a mother drawing a boundary. Beware of other types of response.
Weaponising Empathy
A powerful tool to recognise unacceptable behaviour is empathy. Compare what somebody is actually doing or saying with what you would do or say in their place. Imagine yourself in their shoes. In the scenario above, imagine youâre engaging a toddler innocently at a mother and toddler group. The mother comes over and says, politely, but firmly âwhat are you doing with my child?â What would your response be?
I mean, you wouldnât do it, first off the bat, would you? You just wouldnât go to a mother and toddler group, as an unconnected male, and start trying to tickle random kids? But leaving that aside, if somebody did confront you about how you were with their kids, what would you do?
Personally, if I were doing nothing wrong, I would feel mortified, but I would just say what I was doing and why, apologise profusely, say I didnât mean to make anybody uncomfortable, but I could see that I had.
Nothing could convince me to say what that absolute creep said to me. Something in his mind produced the word âsexâ and the word âobsessedâ and the word âaccusation.â He is, in my view, likely to be an active danger to any children he comes into contact with.
But hereâs the rub. Nobody has ever, not once in my whole life, confronted me about how I am with kids. Iâm guessing nobodyâs confronted you about how you are with kids either. Normal people donât make other normal people feel they need to confront them about their behaviour towards children. Why?
The Appearance of Propriety
Most people, men in particular, and particularly with other peopleâs children, are very keen not just to avoid impropriety, but the appearance of impropriety. Iâll give you an example. The other day I took my kids to the park. We all went into a little hut with maybe room for five kids, or three adults. We squished up and chatted. There was an open door and an open window.
One of my younger sonâs friends, who I had not met before, and whose parents I did not know, turned up at the door and made to come on into the tiny space. What did I do?
Take a pause before you read the next bit, and ask your self, what would you have done?
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I said, âIâll let you boys play,â went out of the hut, and sat on a bench in the late summer sun. They all came out to talk to me after a bit, which was fine - but I wasnât comfortable being squished up in a confined, partially concealed space with a kid I didnât know.
There are kids in my life, my goddaughter, my niece, my nephew, their cousin, with whom I have a good relationship. I know their parents, and we are close. If it had been those kids, I might not have exited. But a strangerâs kid who I donât know? Iâm not going to put myself in that position.
Thatâs how you judge these things. Not, âum, is this actually crossing the line here at this point?â More, âis this adult about not just propriety but the appearance of propriety.â And more, âwhat would I do?â Trust your gut, if something feels twisty in your guts, donât allow it. Be that parent. And be aware that there may be a personal cost.
Final Word of Warning
One word of warning on this is to distinguish very carefully between people who work to signal âthe appearance of proprietyâ but do so in an over fastidious way. For example, it is very common for a paedophilic man in a new relationship with a single mother to say âI canât possibly babysit, I wouldnât want to give the wrong impression.â The next time, though, the single mother feels safe because of his signalling he has previously done.
And within a month, he is doing bathtime every night and has taken over from her child minder whilst she goes to work.
Thereâs a difference between holding firm boundaries, and being seen to do so, and virtue signalling in order to get further access to children.
Tip 2
Tips two and 3 to follow tomorrow, about knowing the limits of who you are trying to protect, what your actual influence is, and how to use it, including âsignallingâ (to well meaning people as well as nefarious ones), and providing practical help.
There are terms used in the privacy/security research community: "icky" and "hinky". These are deliberately infantile terms because they describe innocent, visceral reactions to situations or events.
"Icky" is (usually) a reaction to something invasive, either physically, emotionally or (which is more my speciality) relating to data, observation, surveillance etc. Something feels icky if - either at the time or afterwards - a person feels something in an interaction or situation was wrong, that something happened without consent. Usually, we say something was icky when we can't quite describe what that something was or exactly how consent was circumvented. It's a visceral reaction to non-consensual circumstance or event which we can't necessarily quite explain.
"Hinky" is the behaviour of someone who does not seem to be up to any good. Your man here with his tickling 'game' was acting hinky. Again, we might not quite be able to put our finger on what constitutes hinkiness or how one person was being hinky and another not, but we tend to know it when we see it. Well-trained security personnel are trained to recognise and control their reaction to hinky behaviour so that they can act appropriately in a given situation. To be clear: this is training to recognise a gut reaction to something not-quite-definable, process it in context and evaluate potential responses.
What I'm saying is that there are some very serious people in academia and the various very serious security industries who take these ideas very seriously indeed. Since we can't brief people on every possible type of hinky behaviour or every kind of ick, we teach people to first recognise that their gut feelings are worth paying attention to and second how to process those feelings appropriately to craft a response. Should a response be confrontational? Should it be protective? Should it be dismissive? Should it be fast or safe? Should it escalate or de-escalate the situation? Should a police officer be strolling over to have a quiet word or should she be pulling a taser?
In your example, there are a number of 'correct' responses depending on whether the goal is the immediate protection of the child or the mid- or long-term safety of <em>all</em> the children. And the reaction of the hinky person, the people feeling the ick and anyone observing will be different accordingly.
For what it's worth, I think your response in this case seems exactly right, as is your analysis about the onlookers feeling uncomfortable because they themselves failed to act. There's a lot of literature about that, too, but I don't have access to most of it now, because I'm not an academic any more.
This sort of practice is used in both security systems design and in operational security.