Parenting

When I was helping different residential camp boards in my province meet accreditation standards, I was met with resistance from a tired group of people who saw all this as just a way to make it much more work to run the camps.   To this resistance I shared this experience: As a male kindergarten teacher (and later grades 1 -3), I was often told that I should never touch the children.  I would be setting myself up for allegations of child abuse.  I worked in an area where for many of my students I was the only stable male figure in their lives.  When these children were hurt, they needed to be held.  Some children that had difficulty focussing on a task – just needed their backs rubbed.  They needed to know what positive touch was. I was lucky in my first year of teaching as my classes were large [...]