A Protective Play Tutorial for Grandparents.

Grandparent Sense, a Protective Play Tutorial, (funded by protective partner Cairns City Council) helps grandparents protect children in their care. Full of game and activity ideas, the tutorial booklets were free to Grandparents in the Cairns area. Filling a need, they went like hot cakes.


Protective Play is a term coined by Megan Bayliss (my mother) to describe everyday game ideas and activities to help keep kids safe. No requirement to buy expensive resources or spend scarce funds on protective behaviour trainings, the tutorials offer practical play advise and information about child sexual abuse.

An extract from Body Ownership in Grandparent Sense, a Protective Play Tutorial:

From the moment we are born, our bodies belong to us. They are our human signature. Babies may need to rely on adults to care for them but each baby’s body is still unique: unique skin, tone, imprints, hair, voice, size and shape.

A newborn baby has little realization of where their body begins and ends. As loving carers, we engage in touch, good touch, to teach our babies what is theirs and what is ours. We stroke them, massage them and put clothes on them to give a message of body ownership.

Children who are at risk of sexual abuse, or who have already been sexually assaulted often do not have a good idea of their body size or where their body boundaries begin and end. Too frequently, they fail to recognize their real size in relation to a potential perpetrator. Sometimes they think they are as big as the perpetrator and sometimes they see themselves as much smaller and helpless than everybody else in their family. This size confusion is a result of lowered self-esteem and something that perpetrators may focus on in their grooming process. For this reason, it is important to teach our grand children body ownership and to assist in ensuring they have a healthy self-esteem.

On the following page, there are some ideas you can play with to introduce and teach body ownership. It is not an exhaustive list, or in any order of importance, and you can redesign and change any of these to suit your grandchild’s personality and needs. Blend these suggestions into normal household activities and play. Make it natural and frequent: daily is best to help children remember that their body is their body.