Working with Children and Young People Who Have Displayed Harmful Sexual Behaviour by Allardyce Stuart;Yates Peter;

Author:Allardyce, Stuart;Yates, Peter;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dunedin Academic Press
Published: 2018-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Prepubescent children who have displayed harmful sexual behaviour

Prevalence data concerning harmful sexual behaviour exhibited by prepubescent boys and girls is elusive. Finkelhor et al. (2009) found that 16% of their sample of 13,471 children and young people who had displayed harmful sexual behaviour were under the age of twelve, but as the study included only children reported to the police, it is likely to underestimate the proportion of younger prepubescent children engaging in this behaviour. There is some evidence of a rise in referrals to specialist services for children under twelve, although this may indicate growing recognition rather than increased prevalence (Smith et al., 2013).

Another key challenge relates to aetiology. There is some empirical support for the view that problematic and abusive sexual behaviour in early childhood is linked to sexual abuse experienced by the child in many cases. A general population survey of the sexual behaviour of more than 2,000 children under the age of twelve found that contact sexual abuse was the factor most frequently associated with elevated levels of inappropriate, problematic or abusive sexual behaviour. Exposure to adult nudity, sexual materials and sexual activities, often in home situations, were also strongly associated (Friedrich et al., 1997; Friedrich et al., 1998; Friedrich et al., 2005). However, experiencing sexual abuse or a sexualised environment is not always present in the histories of prepubescent children who have displayed problematic or harmful sexual behaviour. Friedrich et al. (1998) identified a small group of children who exhibited precocious sexual knowledge and/or behaviour beyond developmental norms but who had no known histories of sexual abuse or sexual exposure. Sexual abuse may have gone undetected, but family stress, domestic violence and physical abuse were common in this group. It may also be that excessive parental responses to normative sexual behaviour, such as disgust, anger or distress, sometimes reinforce this behaviour and lead to an escalation in frequency and seriousness. Practitioners need to be open to the possibility that, in some cases involving pre-adolescent harmful sexual behaviour, sexual abuse or exposure to family sexuality may not feature and that other dynamics may be at play.

Providing a proportionate response that avoids underreacting or overreacting is one of the key challenges in working with prepubescent children. When behaviour is self-directed or involves mutual sexual behaviour without coercion, clear boundaries, redirection and input about healthy relationships will often be sufficient to ensure that the child is nudged on to a more positive developmental pathway (Friedrich, 2007). Guidance for nursery and primary schools suggests that low-level problematic sexual behaviour should be responded to in line with other challenging behaviour, requiring adults to be specific about naming and describing the behaviour, pointing out to the child the impact on others, setting clear boundaries and developing individualised strategies to reduce the likelihood of repetition (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 1999). In home settings, explaining why the behaviour is inappropriate in a way that does not increase shame, setting boundaries, encouraging strategies around self-control and positive emotional expression, and establishing a plan to increase safety, are often measures sufficient to modify behaviour (Bateman and Milner, 2014).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.