• first the environment: make yourself available
• give your child the confidence to approach you
• consider the atmosphere of the place where you and the child are going to deal with its disclosure; is the height of the chair you will sit on too high, are you going to sit behind your writing table, etc; do the talking at the child’s physical level
• then the attitude: let your child know it is doing the right thing in telling you
• listen actively and avoid thinking about your next question before you have ‘heard’ and ‘understood’ what your child is saying
• accept your child’s information as the truth
• avoid showing your revulsion or displeasure
• do not promise confidentiality when you know you are going to speak to your husband or wife about it later; if the child is insistent on ‘promise promise’, simply smile and take the conversation forward
• support your child by helping it realize that it is not to blame; explain that it happens to other children too
• then your own interaction: do not promise what cannot be delivered by you
• avoid leading questions while the child is disclosing, e.g. ‘did your uncle touch you like that?’
• use the child’s words to confirm that you have understood certain things, ‘so you are telling me you are frightened of him, isn’t it?’
• do not make judgemental statements like ‘why did you not tell me before this?’ or ‘you should have screamed for help’ or ‘he should not have done that to you’
• and now you need to take action as the child’s trusted parent: keep a detailed record after the initial, and following, disclosure like date, time, place, non-verbal behaviour, exact language used by the child; you might need this in the future
• decide how serious it is in an exhaustive conversation with your husband or wife and what steps you both will take, without your child’s knowledge, to correct the situation
• also decide if your child needs to see a counsellor and choose the right one yourself instead of taking your child through a hit-and-miss approach; you need to be limiting the number of people the child has to talk to so that re-victimization is avoided
• inform the child of the steps you have taken which directly concern its disclosure
• keep up the level of continuing support and contact without appearing over-protective
• and this is where you truly score as a parent over any counsellor no matter how qualified; your warm conversations, your cheerful smiles and some happy hugs to the child can go the longest way

A word here about the counsellor, be it a psychiatrist or any other kind of mental health professional. This bears repetition: please do not entrust your child’s emotional future to someone who has not trained in post-Child Sexual Abuse mental health. There are no college or university-level courses in the country specifically on this subject, an addition would greatly assist future mental health workers. Those who work now with children who have been sexually abused in India are self-taught, through books on the subject from abroad as also from workshops to share their experiences, training under child psychiatrists working with children who have been abused and applying this on-the-job experience on the other abused children whom they counsel.