giving it like a pro … It just didn't happen once but three times that's when a teacher reported to the state. A little girl was moslesting a little boy. The reason behind this is hold on to your seats. the pre school is shutting its doors on Friday, Feb 1st. So the families have all teamed up against the school, which-according to an email from the deacon of the church affiliated with the school to other church members-tried in vain to cover up the rampant horseplay to avoid being shut down: The County of Los Angeles Department of Child and Family Services interviewed each of the families involved and found no evidence of abuse. The young girl who started it was probably copying what she saw or what was done to her, which is an entirely different issue.”īut that issue has already been pursued and dropped. “That kind of behavior just compounds the emotion that the child may be having, leading them to think they might have done something wrong. How else do you explain it?”Īn overly emotional reaction from figures of authority can exacerbate negative feelings in children, says Kathy Seifert, a forensic psychologist who specializes in family trauma but who has not been involved in the California case. He added: “There’s no way I can just take him to another school and be that parent that just lets a predator loose. “I just had to keep yelling in his ear, ‘You’re not in trouble, you’re not in trouble!’ And I just told him, ‘You’re never coming back here again for these people to do this to you.’” “He told me about all the bad things that girl had been doing to him,” the dad said. The father of one of the children who allegedly received oral sex from a girl in the bathroom, voiced his anger over the incident when he broke the story to ABC News. Parents’ strong reactions may lead to “overdramatizing everything in the child’s mind,” according to Elkind. Problems can arise, though, when adults sexualize the activity, thrusting their own preconceived notions or anxieties on the children.
“As long as they don’t see it as traumatic, it’s unlikely that they would have lifelong side effects.” “Children at this age don’t comprehend what they’re doing, except that they’re playing with private parts that they’ve been told to keep private,” says Elkind. Did the kids at the Carson School know that? Probably not. Mouth-to-genital contact, however, is not normal among preschoolers. Admit it, you’ve either witnessed a child doing these things or you were in fact that girl who hogged the seesaw and dry humped your teddy bear. But most of us know that kids will be kids and a “that isn’t appropriate in public” talk will nip problematic behaviors in the bud.
Some adults chastise young children for playing doctor, masturbating, or occasionally exposing themselves to their peers. David Elkind, a renowned child psychologist not involved with the case. “You don’t want to put the idea in the child’s mind that this is something terrible,” says Dr.
But when it comes to the kids’ well-being, the collective parent-teacher freakout certainly won’t help, experts in child development say. To be sure, it’s difficult to predict how any one child will process such an event, and experts caution against blanket proscriptions. It’s understandable for adults to be distraught over the thought of preschool-age kids engaging in fellatio, especially in a society that projects adult sexuality onto children. Where were the teachers when the kids were fumbling around during naptime, behind the slide on the playground, and in the bathroom? How did the girl who introduced the idea to her peers become so sexualized in the first place? It wasn’t until October, when another girl of the same age was caught by a teacher with her mouth on a 4-year-old boy’s genitals that the Carson School “dealt with the incident internally,” according to a school spokesperson.Īdministrators initially denied the incident had anything to do with closing, but the state’s social-services department cited supervision “deficiencies” in an evaluation of the preschool on Thursday.Ĭarson will effectively close its doors on Friday, leaving a community outraged and cuing a media firestorm over a preschool “oral-sex scandal.” Parents, teachers, and anyone following the story are all looking for someone to blame. On Tuesday, attorney Greg Owen filed a legal complaint against the First Lutheran Church of Carson School on behalf of one of six children involved in the disturbing alleged incidents, claiming negligence and “intentional infliction of emotional stress.” According to Owen, “sexual encounters” between the 4- and 5-year-old tots were initiated by a 5-year-old girl in June and again in September.