“Hello Harpreet, hope you are doing well. We needed your advice regarding our 3-year-old son who expressed some bad touch happened to him by the preschool van driver. We are not too sure if it’s something wrong that happened with him. Or, it could be someone just asking him to pee. At the same time, we do not want to ignore what he has expressed.”

A parent wrote in with the above message. I rarely do calls with parents but in this case, I shared my number and we got on a call.

The mother mentioned that while playing in the evening her son said to her that the van driver did bad touch to me. The child showed the mother where and said: “Bus uncle said susu also. But then I shouted bad touch and ran away.”

The mother told the father, and the father asked the child in the evening. By then the story had shortened and changed a bit. But ‘bad touch’ remained.

Both the parents were worried.

We continued talking.

The mother mentioned that in the morning her son drinks juice before going to school and the van has 3-4 stops before reaching school so they have informed the Didi in the bus to check with the child if he might want to go to pee.

I asked if it is possible the van driver knew this too.

The mother said: It is possible the van driver knows too.

So I asked what have you done for now?

And she mentioned that for now they didn’t send the child by van and dropped the child to school themselves. And they were wondering what to do next.

They were not sure if there was a bad touch or if it is was just their child overreacting. They were wondering if they should go to school, and talk to the van didi, owner or the driver directly.

You know this is not a new question. How much to believe what a child says has been subject to research. This is particularly important in court cases.

More than 100,000 children testify in the US in legal cases each year and 40% of the kids who testify in sexual abuse trials are below the age of 5. Imagine this – if a jury and judges believe children who testify falsely then an innocent person might spend their life in jail and if they don’t believe it, the culprit might go free and abuse other children. So how can we know when to believe children?

How much preschooler’s testimony in court cases should be trusted is a question that has been discussed and debated. Experiments have been designed to figure this out.

In one such experiment designed to test this, a social worker is told a story about what has happened with a child and then asked to interview them. Unknown to the social worker, they were told incorrect stories with fiction added. As a result at the end of the session 34% of the 3 and 4 year old’s and 18% of 5 and 6 year old’s agreed with the false story. For example, children “recalled” a marble being inserted in their ears when nothing of this sort had happened. This showed that an interrogator's belief can influence how young children remember events.

The most important findings from such studies have been that ‘when shielded from leading questions, children can be reliable witnesses.’

So the key points to ensure that children are saying the truth are

• To state questions in a neutral manner which means rather than asking – ‘what did the van driver do to you?’ one should ask ‘can you tell me what happened in the bus?’
• Question should not be repeated if the child has already answered it – because children then tend to believe that something they have said is wrong and they need to change it

Now let’s come back to the situation we were analysing. If you remember the child had already changed the story by evening because the parent asked it again.  And the parent is still wondering what to do next.

And they had two main worries going on in their mind

1. First one was that the van driver should not be accused of something that didn’t happen.
2. The second one was that in case they complain the van driver might do something else to hurt the child.

Here is how I think about it the second point

• The parent could choose to do nothing and just start dropping the child on their own. So while we have saved our child, we might have put someone else’s child in danger, isn’t it? So, I believe at the very least the parent should talk to the principal of the school. The school had recommended the vendor so meeting and informing them makes sense. And then take what happens from there.
• Also in such cases, the school principal might want to talk to the child. I would rather avoid it or do it in as natural an environment as possible.

So, if I was the parent I would take some action to make the environment around aware of a possible danger.

But how do we take care of the first point?

I wasn’t there, and I have no way to know whether this happened or not. But ensuring that the child is asked questions in a neutral manner + ensuring questions asked aren’t repeated can get to the truth. This is what I told the mother.

But then just as we were keeping the phone down, the mother shared that she reminds her son every day about bad touch. And I asked her why. She said this is because she had an incident when she was young and didn’t want it to be repeated with her child.

This was interesting and useful information.

And I said to her, our daughter is 8 years old. We have spoken to her maybe a total of 5 times about private parts and that if there is any touch that does not feel ok, say NO.

(I personally feel that private parts and ‘feeling’ is a more useful framework than good touch bad touch)

Our goal is to protect our child, not to make the child afraid of the world. Or start to look at the world through the lens of good touch, and bad touch. So occasional reminders are ok but everyday reminders to the child felt excessive.

So if I was a parent, in this case I would just approach the principal with complete information and without involving the child.

If I was the principal, I would.

• Do a background check on the bus driver. Many times, people are repeat offenders and a lot of small firms don’t do background checks before hiring
• If the background check came out clean, I would call a meeting of the bus owner + the didi in the bus + the van driver (without naming the child and parent) and say such a case has come, please be careful. And then get the didi to stay back and request her to be extra careful.

Finally, as a principal, I would convey to the parents all that the school has done.

Now to close the loop as a parent I would tell my child, that we have informed the school and if you ever feel like that again, say no and tell us. And stop reminding him about good touch, and bad touch daily and maybe replace it with ‘we love you and we will take care of you.’

Ref: How Children Develop by Robert Seigler, Judy Deloache, Nancy Eisenberg

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