Choti Si Duniya - ArShi FF

96. Danger touch

One of the hardest but much needed chapters. Rated PG13, however I recommend my young readers to especially pay attention!

SnowSpringBud I had promised you this chapter over a year ago, and I hope you're around to read it. ❤

--*--

These days, Kavish and Piya were a little bit lost. They started to react differently if a stranger came at the door or if some of their friends' parents tried to affectionately pat their cheek or head.

And Khushi as well as Payal knew exactly why. The school had notified the parents about an awareness session they had conducted for all 2nd and 3rd graders on good and bad touch.

In any case, Piya and Kavish were already made aware of it by their parents a few months ago.

When chiku turned 7 and piya was about 8, which meant they both were big enough to be taught about how to 'safeguard' themselves and when to raise an alarm, their parents had an important talk with them! Even though they had already taught all the kids to protest if anyone misbehaves with them, but they hadn't been so explicit about "danger parts" i.e., someone touching them inappropriately at their intimate parts.

The said talk was done along with Akash and Arnav, so the kids heard it from both the parents as well as to let Aakash-Arnav share their own points in this matter from a father's perspective.

But it broke Payal-Aakash and Arnav-Khushi's hearts to see their kids' clueless faces as they were being instructed about how to protect themselves in the event someone touched them other than their mamma-papa or maybe doctors touched their 'danger parts'! Thankfully, the Raizada kids naturally had protective instincts but to be made aware of this bit was equally important and both sets of parents had done exactly that.

They talked to the kids about raising a voice if someone is touching their certain body parts like their upper chest or lips or susu ki jagah(pee-pee/kids friendly term for s*x organs) and threatening them to keep mum. They taught them how to differentiate between a parent's touch vs someone who is making them feel uncomfortable. They taught them to say NO if someone is making them do some act they don't want. And always, always come to their parents to talk about it. Since the kids until now had only known how to trust people, it was tough to make them understand that these 'devils' can be anyone around them while also ensuring they don't start mistrusting everyone in the process!

Two of the most important things Khushi taught them was using ability to shout and never hiding anything from parents (something she had always done except when shyam incident occurred). She regretted not using her voice to raise alarm when that vile man had misbehaved with her even though she was supposed adult by then! She now wanted to ensure her kids never miss that. In fact, she prayed they would never even meet someone as sick as Shyam!

With the lessons from their side and school's side were taught to the kids, now it was time to see if the kids can apply that. And soon, the opportunity presented itself.

--*--

The school had planned to test the students in innovative way such as to use few dummy incidents to check if the kids were able to display what they were taught of. The school had taken help from some of the NGO volunteers who worked specially on the domain of child safety. Kids had not met these people so they were strangers to them.

Soon, the experiments began.

One act was, one of the volunteers met the kids as their new physical education teacher. He then picked a few kids randomly and started giving them chocolate and ice cream treats and asking them to come and meet him alone in his cabin without telling anyone where he could give them more chocolates or sweets in return for a few "hugs". He had given strict instruction that this was a secret between him and the kids he befriended!