You'd be wide open for one. Trauma. Misrepresentation. How deep are your pockets?

Of the kids I know and deal with, the ones who believe it could happen to them are the ones who already understand why meeting a stranger is a bad thing. The ones who are naive and uninstructed need to have things explained to them.

And then there are the ones who go looking for trouble:

Item: I have soft feet, and when they start looking furtively over their shoulders from the internet stations, I walk over. Standing right behind a 16-year-old boy, I watched him laboriously type into a chat window, "do you want to have cybersex". I said, "Not in the library you don't. You're busted." He jumped about a foot in the air from a sitting position.

Item: A 14-year-old boy tried to convince me that a Yahoo "adult chat" just opened up on his screen. I pointed out to him that he had to register, say he was 18, say he was 18 again, and then log in.

Item: A 15-year-old boy tried just yesterday to convince me that he was blameless after having been apprehended by me in an adult chat, because nothing "warned" him. (This was the third in a series of three stories, told in the space of 5 minutes, trying to get his suspension lifted.) I pointed out that he had already lied about his age to get access whenever he registered, and that had been his warning.

I swear I'm bringing binoculars to work.

These kids not only don't believe what can happen to them, they solicit situations that can seriously harm them. We can't protect them from that. We can only try to nail the people who would go after them. And sometimes, they themselves are the people.

Regards--
Mary Anne