I’m 18F. This summer, I worked as a camp counselor. I already had a bucketload of childhood trauma from sexual abuse and emotional abuse at home, and I thought that working with children would be a good way to deal with it. It was the worst decision I ever made in my life. I ended up abusing children myself. 

In large part this was due to blindly believing in my boss. One day when I was having a difficult child I asked her what to do, and I watched her poke him in the ribs and tickle him briefly. I would have questioned this looking back had it been a coworker, but I figured it must be okay since it was a boss doing it, especially since she did it a few more times in front of me. This led to two situations: one in which a boy tried to tickle me so I tickled him back. A few days later he tapped my shoulder and I flinched, and felt like I had to explain to him that I did that because I thought he was gonna tickle me again. Of course he tried to, I did it back, then made him stop. The second one, a boy asked me not to poke him, so I stopped, but a few hours later he was refusing to get in line again and I poked him again without thinking. He didn’t have a bad reaction, just asked me not to poke him again, but I realized this may not have been good to begin with so I checked on Reddit and I was correct. 

This made me think back on other interactions I’d had that I hadn’t given another thought. I wiped sand off a boy’s bare back when he asked me to, I let a kid hold onto my shoulders in the pool because he needed help getting to the shallow end, I had to push another boy away with my foot because he was splashing me so much I couldn’t breathe or see, I accidentally touched a boy’s rear when helping him get his trunks on, I had to ask a girl to lift her shirt after she got punched in the stomach to make sure there was no bruise… then I realized the stuff I did without even thinking because it was just natural for me, like placing my hand on kids shoulders when talking to them or on their upper backs to guide them in a certain direction. 

The thing is, none of this was done with malice. All of this was done because I didn’t think they were bad things to do. But I guess they were and… wow. It’s just a weird feeling to know that I am now an abuser.