Reply to Are you suspicious of people who chose to work with kids?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I just watched a documentary about rampant sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts so this is freshly on my mind but I don’t think I trust people who want to work around kids.

I just guess I can’t understand their reasoning unless it’s nefarious?

The pay in these jobs is always very low and very rarely have good benefits.  I just don’t believe people do it because they “love” other peoples kids.  I love my kid, but not really anyone else’s.  I don’t want them harmed of course but never would I willingly spend any amount of time with someone else’s kids.  Kids are gross and obnoxious.  The only reason I can see people putting up with it would be if they’re their kids or they’re paid incredibly well to put up with it.

And I don’t want to seem like I’m demonizing educators.  I can somewhat understand the draw for teachers.  I’m sure helping young people learn can give some people an internal, moral drive.

But I just can’t shake this suspicion of yeah, obviously volunteer based work like Cub Scout leaders or children’s swim coaches or any job where an adult chooses to spend a lot of time with children often without parents.

My baby is an infant and only is cared for by myself, my DH and my mother but at some point I’ll have to let her be under the care of someone else and it just really scares me.

We toured a daycare when DD was about 4 months old and I just thought… why would anyone work here?  It seemed like hell and the pay was abysmal.  My mind couldn’t shake the idea that these people just wanted access to my kid and it freaked me out.

Call me crazy, but think about it.  What benefits are there?  Why would some 40-year-old choose to spend all day with other peoples kids making $15 an hour when they could have an easier job with adult interaction and make $18 an hour?  I just can’t believe it’s a “goodness of their heart” thing.  People don’t work like that. [/quote]

Like a lot of situations, some people do things for the right reasons and others do not. In this day and age, I think the most effective answer is more surveillance, increased accountability, and records of email/text etc. Safesport requires common sense safeguards like no private texts/emails between kids and coaches, but they also hold bystanders accountable. If you are a coach or official and witness potential abuse and don’t report it, you can be held liable.

I also think there should be regular reviews of personnel by a neutral party. The md who was abusing USA women’s gymnasts is an extreme example. As an md mom who only watches gymnastics once every four years, if someone had shown me Larry Nassar’s cv and long history with USA gymnastics, I would have been suspicious. He was a do, not an md, had originally trained in family medicine and really did not seem qualified. He started off as a volunteer and sounds like he attached himself to a well known coach and rode his coattails to get appointed to the national team.

My former boarding school had a come to Jesus moment when they discovered past sexual abuse by former teachers. One of their takeaways was that coaches and teachers who travel with students require greater scrutiny and safeguards because they have so much opportunity and leverage to abuse. [/quote]

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