Have a Little Faith in Me

I keep thinking about this book, because I can recall feeling powerless as a child when other people didn't respect my boundaries. I appreciated watching the heroine change, and overcome, an event where someone transgressed her boundaries. And I wish that someone explained consent to me like the hero does in this book. I think Hartl does an excellent job explaining consent in an easy-to grasp way.

I discovered this book while searching for books that discussed consent, trying to find something aimed at children. I've had great luck finding books for teens and adults, and I appreciate them, but they're often not what I'm looking for. Did this book meet my needs? No, not as I'd originally hoped. But from reading it and thinking about what Hartl describes, I have some ideas on how to teach consent. And that gives me hope that this isn't so hard.

I mean, we discuss boundaries at home fairly regularly, which is yet another way to frame consent. I get that when we talk about consent, we're typically talking sexual consent, and that is important. As a society, we're moving from "No means No" to "Yes means Yes" to trying to understand what consent is. Fundamentally, when we talk about sexual consent, we're talking about how to express boundaries over a number of things that may occur when people engage in a sexual encounter. And that because someone says yes at the start of an encounter, that doesn't preclude the same person asserting a boundary later.

This isn't much different than being invited to a birthday party. Your idea of a birthday party may involve balloons, party games, cake, and songs. Your friends' may believe the party involves balloons, party games, cake, songs, and beer. If you say yes to the party, you don't necessarily say yes to the beer. But I think we often talk about sexual consent as an all-in agreement to everything that might transpire, instead of one larger event with many smaller parts in it, like a party.

My issue with trying to find a good book to talk to kids about consent is in part expressing how we can say yes to one thing, and then how it is okay to say no to something else that is part of that larger thing. Without sex, because that's not what my kids need today. We teach them they can say no, that they should expect that their no will be respected, and that they should respect other people's no. So we've got boundaries set, right? So how do we deal with saying yes, what that means, and how to retract that yes? I think that's where Hartl's book will fit in for teens.

Hartl balances humor with solemnity to discuss consent in a way that is easily understood. For instance, she uses her heroine's past with the villain to demonstrate what consent doesn't look like, and again with the hero to demonstrate what it does.

I also appreciated her take on authentic versus inauthentic Christianity, how Christians (really, any religion, but she featured Christians) could help others without proselytizing, or how folks from religious backgrounds might help each other learn when their particular part of society suggests otherwise. If felt good, and not because she vilified them, but because she shows her heroine becoming friends and respecting the Christian girls at the camp she attends, and the same for the Christian girls and her. I think that's a fairly powerful message that we can be different, we can disagree about things, but we can also be respectful and friendly in spite of those differences.

I'm glad I read this, even though it wasn't what I'm looking for. I have some ideas on how to approach consent, I have a good book to place on our shelf when our kids are older, and I got to read a story that had me laughing quite a bit.