We were driving to the annual campsite . One vehicle behind the other. My ar was filled with young people and we were following the loaded mini-bus . One of the girls in the mini-bus was kneeling on the backseat and looking out of the back window. Her friend was sitting in the passenger seat of my car. They could each see each other. Unexpectedly, the teenage girl in the bus ahead, raised both her hands and flicked eight fingers at her friend. Then, repeated the gesture. I returned the eight finger flick. Closed hands - eight fingers up, closed hands - eight fingers up. My passenger very quickly said, "Mr B, don't do that. Do you know what it means ?"
Me, "No, please tell me. I thought it was just a 'hello'."
"No Mr B. Don't you know the number code?"
"Nope. Tell me."
Mr B, she said, "One is holding hands. Two is kissing closed mouth. Three is French kissing. Four is fondling the breasts. Five is touching down there. Six is mutual masturbation. Seven is rubbing genitals together. Eight is oral sex. Nine is fingering. Ten is full on sex.
As a child and youth care worker, I had just been given a lesson, not only for life, but as a fill- in to my professional practice knowledge never presented to me as part of my training and education.
In a training programme on "Managing Sexual Abuse in Residential Care", the seed was further planted. We had to know what children and young people were saying when they spoke of body parts, sex and sexual activity. The facilitator started us, as child and youth care workers, on collecting, what she called a 'Sex Dictionary". It was not that we were to use these words, but that had to understand their meaning when, for example, the silence is broken with eg "I have to tell you. He put a penny in my money box." Young male seduced by an older woman, "She made me eat from a big pot".
She was just a few months past her thirteenth birthday. A schoolgirl who lived in a small apartments just across the road from the resort at the Hartbeespoort Dam. I walked in the resort every afternoon. It was my daily exercise. She would almost ever afternoon be found talking to the female security guards at the entrance gate.
She took to walking with me for my 30minute stroll. She held in her hand a small cellphone which she checked regularly. One day - NO Cellphone !!!
"Where's you cellphone?"
"My father took it from me. He says he will keep it for three weeks. He checked my messages and he didn't like some of the messages I was getting from some boys. He works at the police station. He is a detective. He says that he will find out who the boys are".
"But what were they sending? Were you swapping naked pics or something?"
"Mr B. Don't you know? We talk in code and swap pics. I'll show you."
When she got her cell phone back, I was given a lesson. So began my text talk education. Most important - that detective father must have had advanced knowledge of sneaky teen text talk that I, as a child and youth care worker, did not have.
53X = sex, KMS = Kill Myself, LH6 = Let's have sex, KYS = Kill yourself, MOS = Mom over shoulder, POS = Parents over shoulder, GNOC = Get naked on camera, 99 = Parents gone, GYPO = Get your pants off, WTTP = Want to trade pics?
In the homework I did, the surprise was to find that the number of texts teens made daily had been researched. Like - - boys typically send and receive 30 texts a day. Girls - 80!!! The 12 to 13 year olds, around 20 texts a day. Mostly in code. The biggest concern is the load of grooming for attempted seduction and the luring of children into pornography in order to normalise and trivialise sex.
It's scary, but, it's essential for us as child and youth care workers to enter the world of children and young people. For us to grasp 'what is really going on'. It is essential for our professional practice and our being relevant and our 'being present'.
In training programmes and in practice, it was one of my favourites to tell child and youth care workers ...."There is what you see. There is what you are allowed to see. There is what you can deduce from these two levels of seeing so that you can enter the worlds of children and young people in care. There is what is hidden. It's your work to make meaning of all of this"
