My 5-year-old son was smitten. There was a new girl in pre-K, with long curly hair. “She dances when there’s no music,” he said. “It’s weird.” He talked about her constantly. Then one day, on the way to school, he mentioned that another boy had lifted her off the ground.

I stiffened. “Does she want to get picked up?” I said.

“Yes,” he replied.“If she tells you not to pick her up, you stop,” I said. At the next stoplight, I turned in my seat and stared him down. “If a girl ever tells you to stop touching her, what do you do?” I said.

“Stop,” he said dutifully from his car seat, surely wondering why Mommy suddenly sounded so intense.

But I was extrapolating, straight past kindergarten and on to puberty and college, imagining him in the treacherous world of campus life and sexual assault — and realizing that, for girls’ sakes and his own, he would need the message early and often.

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