Q: I am just wondering if you have any advice for my family's current situation. I have a 7-year-old nephew who seems to have molested my 3-year-old niece. Both my sisters are terrified about looking for help in fear that this would be reported as an abuse situation and social services would end up taking all their kids away from them. When we asked the 3-year-old, she said her cousin put his "peepee" in her "peepee." Can you please give us some ideas on how to approach this situation?

A: If your nephew was an adolescent, we'd be much more concerned about his behavior, but at age 7, it's more likely that he's "too curious" or is copying some television program or movie he should not have been watching. You can't describe what's happened to your 3-year-old niece as molestation, but it could have been frightening to her. It is important to find out exactly what has happened and what motivated your 7-year-old nephew to explore sex with his little cousin. Both children need some clarification about inappropriate touching and the incident should definitely not be allowed to happen again.

I would suggest your sisters contact a child psychologist to plan a session with each child to try to determine the extent of the touching and the reason the 7-year-old was playing inappropriately. The psychologist will likely use sexually explicit dolls to help the 3-year-old describe what her cousin did to her. After some discussion with each child individually, the psychologist will have a good sense of what has happened and can guide the parents on both the supervision of the children and being sure that they understand boundaries about touching the bodies of other children as well as when they should tell their parents if someone inappropriately touches them. It would be important to know where the 7-year-old learned that boys' "pee pees" are inserted into those of girls. Apparently your 3-year-old niece has already had some education on reporting to her parents, and that is good. Hopefully, she was not too upset or frightened by the entire process.

From your brief description, I'm not seeing that there is anything here that would be reported as abuse, and there's surely no basis for taking children away from their parents. There may be more to the story that I don't know. There is good reason for these families to get some guidance, but I doubt that they should be terrified. Hopefully, you can reassure your sisters and encourage them to get the assistance that they need as soon as possible.

For more information in guiding young children, please read my books "How to Parent So Children Will Learn" (Great Potential Press, 2008), and/or "Raising Preschoolers" (Three Rivers Press, 1997). Dr. Sylvia B. Rimm is the director of the Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, a clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and the author of many books on parenting. More information on raising kids is available at www.sylviarimm.com. Please send questions to: Sylvia B. Rimm on Raising Kids, P.O. Box 32, Watertown, WI 53094 or srimm@sylviarimm.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.