we inherit ideas about protection, disclosure, and trust that feel comforting to adults, but often fail children. I write about what those assumptions obscure.
Passed down, repeated, rarely questioned. They shape how adults see children long before anyone stops to check whether they're true.
These beliefs don't feel like beliefs. They feel like common sense, which is exactly why nobody examines them.
A belief that makes a parent feel safe is not the same thing as a belief that keeps a child safe.
A teenager faking a monitoring app and a parent who's convinced a hug fixes everything are making the same mistake. On parenting folklore: the inherited beliefs we pass down and never check against the child in front of us.
Read the essaywe keep meeting child abuse with more awareness and more education, as if the gap were information. Most parents already know the numbers. They just place their own child outside them.
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