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Dear Pastor,

I am the mother of two girls, and I try to teach my children that no one should touch their private parts.

My children stay with their grandmother. In the evenings, she picks them up from school and they stay with her until their father or I go for them.

One of my daughters told me that she had to go to the bathroom, and her teacher went with her and stood at the door. My daughter could not pass her urine or her stool because the teacher was there. She asked the teacher to close the door, but the teacher refused and asked her what she had to hide.

My daughter told her teacher that she wanted privacy, but the teacher responded by saying she was a big woman and that my daughter shouldn't be talking to her about privacy. After returning to class, my daughter ended up wetting herself, and the teacher threatened to beat her.

Now, Pastor, if that teacher had put her hands on my daughter, she and I would have had a big fuss.

Do you think the teacher had a right to stand at the door while my daughter was using the toilet? My daughter is seven years old. I wanted to talk to the teacher about it, but my children's father told me to leave it alone. My little girls are conscious of themselves, and I want them to be that way. Only their grandmother should see them naked, and this is when she is bathing them. Nobody else should!

My husband doesn't bathe them at all. He respects his daughter, and when they are in their room and he wants to go in there, he knocks on the door. They know that they should not come into our room without knocking. We have taught them not only to knock but to wait until a response is given.

N.L.

Dear N.L.,

I don't understand why the teacher of your seven-year-old was standing at the door while she was trying to use the toilet. She is not a child who needed help, and she was right to ask why the teacher was standing there, and she needed her privacy.

A seven-year-old does not need help to use the toilet, so the teacher was wrong. I can't say much more on this matter, but it is evident that because the teacher was standing at the door, it affected your daughter, and she was unable to do what she went into the toilet to do.

The father of your children told you to leave the matter alone, but if anything like that happens again, then you should speak to the teacher about her behaviour.

Pastor