Failure to act...
I wish I had made my shrink appointments to be weekly instead of bi-weekly. This morning I woke from a dream that I just can't shake off.
I take pride in being a good mom to my kids. We have open conversations and yet I keep good boundaries so that they know I'm Mom and not their BFF.
But I failed my youngest when she was very young. I should have done something differently. She was spending the night at a friend's house and when I went to pick her up the other mom said "I found them playing naked in the bathroom but I tried not to overreact." I know that kids have normal sex play so I didn't make a big deal of it. I assumed it was normal kid sex play, nothing to be worried about.
I was wrong. My youngest hadn't wanted to participate. It was not consensual sex play. She felt violated. She was violated and I did nothing.
She now has PTSD and is struggling with sexual feelings. She spent most of last year in mental hospitals with a large part due to this non-consensual sex play. (I don't call it rape, even though that is the experience my daughter had, I don't refer to it as rape because the other party was just a child as well. I think this child was a bully but I'm not sure I can refer to her as a rapist at the age of 7. Who knows what had happened to her.)
The theme I'm noticing here is a lack of action. For me, guilt and failure result not from the things I've done but the times in which I did not act.
So how do I begin to make that right?
I take pride in being a good mom to my kids. We have open conversations and yet I keep good boundaries so that they know I'm Mom and not their BFF.
But I failed my youngest when she was very young. I should have done something differently. She was spending the night at a friend's house and when I went to pick her up the other mom said "I found them playing naked in the bathroom but I tried not to overreact." I know that kids have normal sex play so I didn't make a big deal of it. I assumed it was normal kid sex play, nothing to be worried about.
I was wrong. My youngest hadn't wanted to participate. It was not consensual sex play. She felt violated. She was violated and I did nothing.
She now has PTSD and is struggling with sexual feelings. She spent most of last year in mental hospitals with a large part due to this non-consensual sex play. (I don't call it rape, even though that is the experience my daughter had, I don't refer to it as rape because the other party was just a child as well. I think this child was a bully but I'm not sure I can refer to her as a rapist at the age of 7. Who knows what had happened to her.)
The theme I'm noticing here is a lack of action. For me, guilt and failure result not from the things I've done but the times in which I did not act.
So how do I begin to make that right?
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