Discernment
Once upon a time, I was a math teacher. I taught algebra at an all girls’ middle school, right in the crucible of their coming of age. A great many people find algebra scary, for it isn’t intuitive to everyone at first blush. I’m a somatic coach now, officially trained as a sex coach, and I will tell you that as ridiculous as that title is,
“What do you do for work?”
“I’m a sex coach.”
Does not elicit nearly the negative, visceral reaction that
“I’m a middle school math teacher”
used to do.
And it’s all the same stuff. It’s all the stuff we feel we should have mastered, but haven’t. All the same stuff we look over at our friends to see if we’re doing right. All the same sense of inadequacy when we get it “wrong.”
Back when I was a math teacher, people would often ask what algebra was good for now that we DO, in fact, carry calculators in our pocket everywhere we go.
A lot, it turns out, for logic, reasoning, and approaching the world rationally is one kind of discernment. A kind that will serve you very well indeed if you know how to use it.
A great many people suggested to me that we ought to replace algebra, or at least calculus, with economics, for we do live in a capitalist system, so knowing about compound interest (AKA, algebra: exponential functions) is important while word problems about trains and planes are apparently not.
And yes, yes, of course it’s good to be financially literate so that you can play the unhinged game that is unfettered capitalism and try to win it and prosper.
But I would argue that an EVEN MORE important thing to teach, which we do not teach explicitly but is woven symbolically throughout the humanities, is that OTHER kind of discernment, the gut-sense of what we can trust and what we ought not to trust.
We need BOTH. We need both. We need to be able to evaluate evidence and discern what is real and true and tangible, and we need to have the gut-check for that which is intangible lest we pretend it doesn’t matter.
The problem is, if you are raised in an environment of unhealthy relationships, what FEELS LIKE HOME is unhealthy relationships. And so it goes, generation after generation, right on down the line.
If you are raised on danger and harm, you have to work extra hard to develop felt-sense discernment.
If you needed to override your body’s warnings and objections to survive to adulthood, your warning system is going to go ignored or get all crosswired and give the wrong signals.
We need to teach discernment.
I am thinking about this today because I keep seeing situations in the broader world where children are placed in dangerous situations — situations that ought to be obviously no-go-zones.
And because I work a lot with the adult repercussions of childhood sexual abuse, I just have to say this:
Nobody wants to babysit your child for free, and ESPECIALLY NOT your challenging child.
Neurodivergent kids are more likely to be abused, probably because abusers exploit the exhaustion of the caregiver and ignorance of item #1
Unfortunately, it’s usually someone you know.
That weird gut feeling that you get — or your friends get — that’s enough of a reason not to leave a kid alone with a person.
If you have a history of dating bad dudes, trust your friends’ guts, because yours might need some rehab.
It’s not always a dude, but it is often enough a dude that my friends who work in law and child protection won’t ever get a male babysitter. I’m not saying you shouldn’t, but I do think it’s important to understand that this is nearly a universal line in those who work around sex crimes.
Gossip is not always right, but it is, overall, EXTREMELY PROTECTIVE of those without power in the system (like children). I’m from Boston, and I know families who were affected by priest abuse, and it was ALWAYS the branch of the family where the mom wouldn’t listen to the gossip. These were open secrets.
You’re not going to save your child from harm by keeping them at home on their devices. Even Minecraft is heavily used by groomers. Exposing kids to pornography can land in their system like physical abuse. The internet is NOT safe for children, or even for teens. I’m not telling you what to do with your tech, I’m just seeing SO MANY parents who think a phone is a safer alternative to playing outside that it is rather concerning.
You can and should check references and even ask your babysitters to get Coried the way all parent volnuteers have to at a school or a camp.
If you have a challenging child or a neurodivergent child, unfortunately, you should probably be paying double the going rate for babysitting. It isn’t fair, but it is safer to have one trusted, qualified nanny than a string of young, inexperienced teens or haphazard babysitters who burn out.
So, putting a few of these together, if a man offers to babysit your child for free, and you know that his own child has a restraining order out against him, that is a hard no, and you should probably stop hanging out with him.
If the teenager who has babysat your kid once is suddenly always busy, that probably means you need to hire someone at a higher price point who has some professional training in child development and classroom management.
If you have a history of dating bad dudes and are now back in the dating market, and also you have a kid at home, RUN do not walk to get trauma support because this is a very vulnerable time for your kid, and your next mistake might be their life’s biggest problem. I would really recommend having a diverse team for this that includes a licensed trauma therapist and also a dating or relationship coach to help you imagine something healthy and build your internal confidence as you integrate the trauma.
It’s a mess, isn’t it? Because what I’m recommending (qualified childcare, paid fairly, plus extra support for you to retune your intuition) is expensive. And in this economy, we’re all feeling our belts tighten.
Financial vulnerability and parental exhaustion are exactly the kind of vulnerabilities predators exploit.
The cheaper option is to take a big break from dating, to get involved in your local school community, and to spend a lot of time in nature. Nature has built-in trauma integration mechanisms. Cultivate connection to your body. Learn together with your kids how to regulate, feet on the earth, eyes to the treetops. Do not believe every impulse or story it tells you immediately, but spend time with it, feeling into it, making space for what it has to say.
None of this is perfectly protective, but it eliminates some of the biggest risk factors.
The greatest lesson of all is this one:
If your child ever discloses abuse, it is your job to BELIEVE YOUR CHILD. That’s the whole job. Not to find out all the details. Not to decide what’s true or false. To be 100% on your child’s side and get help.
Help can come from pediatrician, from school, from therapist.
But your first job as parent is simply to believe.
Feet on the earth and eyes in the treetops.
Believe your child.
