21 5 / 2013
“Today in library we learnt that it’s wrong to touch other people’s bottom. If someone who isn’t mummy or daddy or a doctor touches your bottom then you have to tell a grown up and the person who touched your bottom goes to jail for a long time.”
I am a nanny to the world’s most beautifully innocent seven year old girl. M believes in santa and the tooth fairy, she thinks thunderstorms are God bowling and that lightening happens when he gets a strike. More times then not I burst at laughing at something slightly off center but entirely cute that she says.
Today she lost some of her innocence. Yes, she knows the world isn’t a perfect place - she knows that people die sometimes because other people kill them, - but that isn’t her reality. But today, when she was sat down for a talk about people touching her bottom, that became her reality.
M is scared that someone will touch her bottom, because she knows it is wrong and is scared of getting in trouble. She’s too young to understand why it’s wrong - sex means nothing to her - she just knows that she is now vulnerable.
I don’t know how to put into words my hurt and disgust that we live in a world where it was necessary for her to hear such the things. Or that today she had to grow up just a little, into a world she isn’t ready for. It breaks my heart and it’s not ok.
17 5 / 2013
To My Future Wife:
I’ll give you all the forehead kisses you can handle.
(and regular kisses too.)
