Let's Stop Faking It

At Priority Kids, we’ve really ramped up our outreach efforts over the past month and I am thrilled to see my calendar filling up with meetings. With a new prevention advocate on staff at Priority Kids, we have drastically improved our ability to reach out and connect with people who work with kids.
 
The more connections we can make, the more kids we can help protect. It’s been amazing to see the progress we’ve accomplished in a short time.
 
While it is incredible to see calendar spots filling up, there is a dark side. Because for every person who responds to our outreach with a, ‘Sure, let’s get together and talk about keeping kids safe’, there are many more who don’t respond at all.
 
Or worse, those who do respond, but only to tell us that they don’t need support. They’ve got child safety figured out, thanks anyway.
 
Ok, sure, all the business people out there will say, this is how it works. Not everyone is ‘the right person’ for your offer.
 
And people will say, ‘don’t take a rejection personally’. 
 
I’m sure they are correct. But there is something underneath the silence and the rejections that is worth noting. 
 
Behind the ‘no replies’ or the ‘no thank you’s’ is a person who is responsible for children.
 
Ok, fine. I accept that not everyone is going to reply to our outreach efforts. 
 
But, as the only child advocate in our region who is fully committed to child sexual abuse prevention, I don’t mind letting you know that there is a lot of ‘faking it’ going on out there.
 
A long time ago, when I was recovering from PTSD, someone offered me a piece of advice that I had never heard before. I’ve heard it a lot since then, but at the time it was new to me.
 
Fake it ‘til you make it.
 
I understand why people say it, and encourage it, but I didn’t like the sounds of it. 
 
My goal wasn’t to make it look like I was doing okay. I actually wanted to feel okay.
 
When wide spread abuse in organizations like the Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church started to make headlines regularly, there was a knee jerk reaction (eventually) for organizations to make it look like they had prevention practices in place.
 
I have worked in several youth-serving organizations that were motivated to fulfill legal or insurance requirements. 
 
I can see and hear what it sounds like and what it looks like when an organization is motivated to make it look like they are doing what they are supposed to be doing.
 
They are faking it.
 
And it’s what I see most of the time in our community.
 
Sure, they might have a policy that they can refer to. Maybe they lean on their strict requirement for police record checks or child abuse registry checks.
 
But at the end of the day, if an organization claims to be doing everything that they ought to be doing to protect kids from sexual abuse, AND they don’t want to connect with us to keep kids safe, then I call bull sh*t.
 
It’s not enough to put a policy in place. We need adults who understand the issue. And people who understand the issue know that we need to work together, and we need to do better.
 
It is exciting that we are now able to weed through the fakers to find the real child advocates who want to keep kids safe. Having a staff person dedicated to outreach is a game changer for children.
 
We are making tremendous gains and we will all enjoy the benefits of a community with reduced rates of child sexual abuse in the coming years.
 
But there are a lot of fakers out there. 
 
I know that even among the fakers, there are good people who are just doing what everyone else is doing. They got some advice, like ‘fake it ‘til you make it’, and they are doing what they think is best. And currently, they are doing what most other organizations are doing.
 
It’s up to us to help encourage them to stop faking, and start truly caring about protecting children from sexual abuse.

When we truly care about protecting children from sexual abuse, we are more likely to be curious about the issue, to look for support, to accept help, and to acknowledge that none of us are doing everything that can be done.
 
There is one simple thing that we can ALL do.

We can ask every adult who cares for children,
 
‘What do you have in place to protect children from sexual abuse?’
 
Asking the question encourages people to know the answer. And the more we talk about what it takes to protect children, the more we will learn. 
 
It’s not good enough to fake confidence on this issue. 
 
How can any adult in our country, where 34% of kids experience sexual abuse by age 18, feel confident with what we are doing?
 
Ask the question, and you can help end a culture of faking it.