Sexual Bullying

It’s not often that a Supreme Court decision prompts an after-school discussion between my fourth-grader and me. But last week the court ruled that schools are obligated to protect students from aggressive sexual harassment, and suddenly my daughter and I were talking jurisprudence. Our interest in the case of Davis v. Monroe County School Board was sparked by the story of the plaintiff, LaShonda Davis, a fifth-grader who was repeatedly groped and propositioned by a boy in her class.

My 10-year-old and I don’t talk about sex. I keep thinking we’re supposed to talk about it, the way families on television do, but frankly I’ve been putting it off, the way my mother always put it off. (Mom, I’m still waiting.) But the time has come in our house–and perhaps in yours too–to talk about sex. Our children, starting at around age three, need to learn first about their bodies and then, when they’re older, about other people’s bodies and, finally, about the necessary boundaries between them.

Children need to appreciate the difference between sexual harassment and normal schoolyard taunting, teasing and flirting. “Harassment is not Harry saying to Sally, ‘You look hot today.’ Kids take that as a compliment,” says Nan Stein, a former middle school teacher and currently director of the Project on Bullying and Sexual Harassment in Schools at Wellesley College Center for Research on Women. “Harassment is if he flips up her skirt or tries to pull down her pants. And boys can also be victims of harassment or sexual bullying.” The most serious cases could involve sexual touching, bumping or grabbing, as well as lewd talk and the passing of sexually explicit pictures or notes.

Make sure your daughter knows that if another child does or says something that makes her feel threatened, she should tell a parent or teacher right away. Sometimes kids can’t articulate why they are scared, but fear has a way of settling in a child’s gut, and that is the feeling she should heed and tell someone about.

Teachers will often urge a child to solve a problem herself. But while that is a necessary skill on the playground and in the rest of life, serious sexual harassment usually cannot be handled by a child acting alone. If your daughter tells you she is being sexually bullied, first of all believe her. She has already done the hardest thing by coming to you. Go to the school and discuss the matter with your child’s teachers and administrators, and follow up in writing.

Parents and schools can guard against harassment by not tolerating it. Give your daughter the strength to say no, loudly–as LaShonda Davis did. And if you have a son who is struggling to understand what is acceptable behavior toward girls, Nan Stein says, run the Mom Test on him. “If you overhear your son talking about girls in a trashy way, remind him, ‘That’s me you’re talking about.’ If he thinks it’s hilarious to snap a girl’s bra, ask him if he would have done it with his mother in the room.”

Teach your kids that sex isn’t just about plumbing and procreation, that sex is about relationships and power struggles and the gray area between yes and no. Children need to have a strong internal compass as they mature, because the terrain will keep shifting until they’re old like us. And then it will shift some more.

E-mail Amy at timefamily@aol.com or write her at TIME, Suite 850, 1050 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20036