Protect Your Children

I thought this was a tremendous piece about protecting our children.  I might be past “child rearing” age — but I hope to have great grand kids some day and I want to make sure they are safe too.  I quote the article in it’s entirety:

“Last week I opened my internet browser in hopes to catch up with the chatter I’d been hearing about North Korea. Instead of reading about the potential threat of a terrorist attack from a foreign nation, my eyes met an article about domestic terrorism. Predators – traffickers – who have waged war against our children.

As soon as the link opened, my eyes met a picture of a girI, 13 years old, grinning with just enough smile to notice small gaps from where her teeth had not quite grown in since loosing her baby teeth. She is so young. Police say she likely ran away from her Washington home with an older boy she had met online.

As I stared at her face, I was thankful that this girl had a fighting chance to be found because at least she had parents that were concerned and present enough in her life to report her missing. But, so many girls in her situation aren’t that fortunate. And even more girls believe that this boy (or man) is the ticket out of her chaotic or lonely world. I couldn’t help but wonder, “Would our teams meet her one day on the streets of Seattle while doing outreach to girls being exploited and sold?”

Sex traffickers target children because of their vulnerability and naïvety. The average age of entry into prostitution is 12 to 14 years old and traffickers – terrorists really – are known to recruit at schools, malls and through social media. Recruitment takes many forms: kidnapping; solicitation by other women or girls recruiting on behalf of the sex trafficker; the “boyfriend” approach of appearing romantically interested while slowly coercing them into prostitution; and even the “daddy” form where men promise to care for and be a daddy to girls who long for protection and provision.

As a parent myself, my own heart begs the question, “What can I do?” Here are six things that you can do to help prevent your child from being lured away by a trafficker:

1. Set a high standard of “love” within your home.

The way you define and express love shapes your children’s self-image, confidence and opinions of future relationships. Treat them the way you want their future spouses to treat them. Help them to distinguish between real love and empty promises or cheap gifts.

2. Talk to your children about sexual abuse.

According to the US Department of Justice, every two minutes someone in the US is sexually assaulted, of which 29% are ages 12-17. Let your children know that if anyone has or ever does hurt them, they can talk to you. This is the most important thing you can say. Don’t assume they have not been hurt by sexual violence before. Leave the door open for your child to talk about past circumstances that they haven’t shared with you.

3. Talk to your children about sex trafficking.

Discuss ways children and teens are targeted for sex trafficking. Let them know that traffickers specifically try to woo young girls and boys with promises of a better life – whether it’s promises of love and attention or promises of nice things and trips – these pimps look for ways of exploiting dreams. Traffickers can be male or female, even classmates. Traffickers may even use kids to recruit other kids.

4. Talk to your children about the dangers of social media.

It’s important to provide practical safety tips like: don’t share personal information on the Internet; don’t accept Facebook requests from unknown people; NEVER share naked photos of yourself with anyone; and tell a parent or a trusted adult if you feel threatened or uncomfortable online. Also, children need help in defining friendships. Social media has distorted our childrens’ understanding of what friendship means. Teach them that a friend is not someone you met yesterday and that a “friend” on Facebook is not the same thing as a friendship.

5. Pay attention to your children.

Monitor your children’s social media accounts, look for ways to meet their friends, their friends’ parents and those they hang out with. Be alert to boyfriends who are much older, or friendships that tend to isolate your child from other friends or family. Notice if your child has new clothing items, makeup products, cell phone or other items and inquire about how they aquired them.

6. Invite your kids to pray for those enslaved.

Sexual assault and trafficking can be a fearful or overwhelming subject for children. Invite them to take action by praying for those who are enslaved. This allows for children to acknowledge the suffering of young people who have been trafficked while placing hope in a God who desires freedom for the oppressed.”

reprinted from:
6 Ways Parents can Protect Their Children from Sex Trafficking

For those of you who aren’t Christians or aren’t believers in ANY form of diety, the sixth point is still just as valid.  Becoming aware and acknowledging the plight of others is an important aspect of our humanity.

Some Things Make More Sense Now

Events are taking place which finally help make sense to me of the election of Donald Trump.  For one thing there was an article about the U.S. having some jeopardy with the ICC over war crimes in Afghanistan.  That got me thinking about the way U.S. insistence on playing global policeman has altered our national psyche.  There are a lot of folks that are tired of hearing us spending billions and trillions around the world in our “national interests” and then getting embroiled in wars from which there are no easy extractions, and no easy wins.  Suddenly it’s a lot easier for me to see voters casting their ballot for D. Trump in spite of the fact that he had demonstrated over 70 years that he was not a politician, did not have a political platform other than to be the big bad bully who threatened everyone and anyone in his way.  He lived his life that way; he is attempting to govern that way; and for those who bought into story line he makes perfect sense to be the guy who put the rest of the world in it’s place.

There have been several good articles that have compared the Trump True Believer to religious cultists.  Having had my own experience of religious cults I have to say that there are strong similarities I’d not thought about.  Trump supporters identify with specific traits in the man — traits that don’t have to pass logical or ethical tests because they are traits that they SHARE with the man — and who spends much time doubting their own belief system?  Just as religionists don’t have to rely upon scientific fact to sustain their belief because they have faith in their belief, so Trump supporters aren’t phased by factual demonstrations of why he’s going down a disastrous pathway — because some part of them wants him to act that way — a way they could never get away with following.  His irrationality vindicates hopes and fears they have held for a long, long, long time.

But there is a second part to this story that has similar weight in my mind and that relates to the way the new administration handled it’s transition.  If you will remember during the transition period there were numerous articles and comments about the fact that the new team seemed to not even care that there were transition training teams standing by to help them understand the intricasies of the job they were about to embark on.  It was as if they looked at the situation and decided (en masse) — “Oh, this can’t be all that hard” — and refused the offers of assistance as irrelevant to what they wanted their administration to be.  Of course on Feb. 16 the White House was telling Congress that they would work closely with Congress to iron out procedures for security checks — only after they got caught with their fingers in the proverbial till over several administration personnel.

It is insulting to say the least that they refused assistance in the initial transition because they were too arrogant.  Then they got caught because they weren’t being transparent or keeping pace with existing ethics practices.  And finally they make a show of being willing to “work with congress” to iron these things out — which would never have been a problem in the first place if they hadn’t been arrogant about accepting help to begin with.

All of this doesn’t make me like Donald Trump any more than I did before.  But it does help me understand why 1/2 of the voting public could vote for such a despicable human being.  I don’t expect to be any the less vocal about his actions.  If he lies I’m going to say, wait a minute, that’s not true.  I will not normalize what is reprehensible behavior and I will not pretend that it’s OK for him to disrespect me or the rest of the other half of the nation that did not elect him.  He may have more money than I have.  He may have more power than I have.  But as my employee he has put himself in a position to be criticized for poor job performance and to be applauded for good job performance.  If he does any of the latter I hope to be there to pat him on the back, but to date I haven’t seen any.