Consent is something children should learn early. But with our adult experiences and what we’ve seen in the news, we can sometimes make the topic more loaded than it needs to be. Children are innocent and haven’t read the headlines that have shown that as a society, we don’t generally understand consent.
One mother understands this and was trying to spread the message to her son early. Her husband, however, didn’t appreciate her approach. She reached out to the people of Reddit to determine if she handled it the right way.
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A mom saw her son with his arm around his 'girlfriend.'
A Reddit user wrote about the dilemma on the social media platform, sharing that she has three kids: two teenage daughters and a 10-year-old son. “Last week, I spotted him on the playground putting his arm around a girl form his class and when I asked him about it, he said she was his girlfriend,” she shared.
At the announcement, her husband laughed and told him, “Don’t break too many hearts.” Meanwhile, the mom asked her son if the girl had given him permission to put his arm around her. He said no.
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Her son took her consent conversation well.
This mom took the opportunity to speak to her son about boundaries.
“I gently explained to him that he shouldn’t ever touch girls like that without getting their consent first. He didn’t know what consent meant so I had a mini discussion with him about how it’s not nice to touch people without their permission and asking first means that you know the other person doesn’t mind.”
During the conversation, her husband didn’t say anything, and the boy didn’t seem bothered by the instruction. Afterward, he said “OK” and went back to playing on his Switch.
Her husband? Not so much.
Things got heated once the boy left the room.
“My husband went off on me,” the OP wrote. He claimed that she was making her son sound like a predator in the making. He argued that their son was engaged in innocent, playground fun and she was blowing the whole thing out of proportion.
She explained that she obviously doesn’t think her son is a predator but wants to share the idea of consent early. Still, she wondered if she was the a–hole in this situation.
People weren't willing to call her a jerk even though some felt she could have handled it better.
The opinions were split, but the majority of people didn’t believe she did anything wrong.
Someone argued that her only mistake was speaking about consent only in the context of girls, instead believing it should apply to anyone and everyone.
Ultimately, this person agreed that “learning good habits such as asking 'can i put my arm round you?', 'is it OK if I hug you?' etc lay the foundations for conversations about consent in sexual situations as he gets older.”
Others thought her husband’s the one who overreacted.
“You need to talk to your husband,” another commenter wrote. “If he’s not on board, that’s concerning.”
Others gave examples of how the children in their lives had embraced the lessons of consent, and the results were mixed.
Some commenters thought that these type of conversations “force boys into weirdly procedural, inorganic interactions with girls.” One person argued that “the whole consent thing “is getting kinda out of hand.”
Given all of the sexual assault and harassment stories that make it to the news, we’d argue that a strict approach is needed until these incidents are less prevalent.
Others shared how conversations about consent are already paying dividends, sometimes in unexpected ways.
“My sister had that talk with her kids when they were 6 or 7,” one commenter shared. “She didn’t limit it to just boys and girls. It’s kinda funny, because now her sons will be horsing around and she hears from the other room: ‘I do not consent to wrestling! Stop, [brothers name]. Mooooom! I did not consent to wrestling.’”
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
