Gone Protective Playing for a Few Days.

We're away for a few days. We are heading off to Townsville for a bit of Protective Play. We will be back on New Years Eve.

Stay Safe while we are away and you are enjoying your holiday break.

See you soon. Megan and Jade.

Private Parts: What to call them?

Give your children the best protection from sexual predators by talking about bodies: all parts of the body, even the private parts.

If children grow up knowing that private body part talk is not allowed then they may not tell you if someone does touch their private parts. Using made up names for private parts signals that it is rude to call private parts by their correct terminology. This needs to change so that children know that this is not a rude subject but that the person who touched them is rude and a law breaker.

Our children need to know that they are allowed to tell us that someone touched their vagina, penis, anus or breast.

Use the following two game ideas to introduce using private part talk:

Swimming costumes: Use dressing or swimming time to introduce private parts. The parts that our swimmers or undies cover are private parts of our body that we don’t share with other people. They are ours and nobody can touch them. Exceptions are parents washing and health workers checking. When children say, “What will I draw?” respond “How about a picture of you in your swimmers? Remember to cover your private parts, and don’t forget a hat”.

A word a week: Correct names of body parts: Many parents are uncomfortable with using the correct name for body parts. To provide your child with the best protection, they need to know the correct or “language” name for their private areas and require instruction from you that nobody can touch them in those places unless Mum or Dad are washing them or unless they are sick and the doctor or nurse needs to look there. It can be hard to introduce the correct names if you have been using nicknames since the child was born. Overcome this by introducing a game of “A word a week”. By teaching a new word a week, say “partition”, or “adventurous” you are normalising the introduction of words of the week like vagina, penis, anus, and breasts.

Does your family use correct terminology for private parts or do you have made up names?

BITSS of Christmas

MERRY CHRISTMAS

to each and every one of you. Our best wishes for a peaceful and safe Christmas. To read our wish for 2007, have a look at Megan's Christmas message @ imaginifbusiness: click here.

We're away until early January - camping with the family. Thank you to our readers, supporters and family.

Imaginif...there was a Christmas without child sexual abuse.

Megan and Jade

Game to Develop Emotional Intelligence.

In a Mime of Early Warning Information, I looked at developing emotional language and intelligence to help children uncover their feelings. I provided two game activities to use to get kids playing and talking about their early warning signs. Here’s another two ideas.

Scary stories or movies: Scary stories are a great way to introduce physical early warning signs. When reading a story together you can ask your child how their body is feeling. If they respond that they don’t know, reflect to them what their body is doing: curled up in a ball, fists clenched, sweating, chewing fingernails, etc.

Common physical descriptions from children: In my work with children I have heard many early warning signs. These include:

A pack of wolves in my tummy.
A ball of string with lots of knots in it.
Fire or skull and crossbones in my stomach.
A question sign/bell in my head.
Beautiful smelling flowers in my heart.
Ants biting me all over.
Legs like Mummy’s tummy, all wobbly.
An echidna in my chest.

Use some of these or invent your own when you discuss feelings with your child. By modeling a verbal description of how your body is feeling linked to the emotional word you would use, you are assisting your child to gain a greater feeling vocabulary. Use a variety of physical descriptions to match a whole range of emotions, not just scared or angry feelings. Remember the good feelings too. How would you describe the body feelings for happiness, relief and excitement? Describing feelings is not just about the painful feelings. All feelings are natural and are there to tell us something.

Give your Child a Hand this Christmas Holiday

Give your child a hand this Christmas holiday, teach them about support networks.

When adults are stressed they often forget things, like telephone numbers or birth dates and we reach out to our other adult friends/mates to help us remember. When children become stressed they also forget things. Their mind is so busy attempting to work out what is happening there is little memory room left for remembering. Both adults and children need a memory aid to assist remembering things – like a telephone or birthday book. Children can’t carry heavy books all the time so, over this Christmas holiday break, show your children how to use their hand as a memory aid.

Use the symbol of a hand to encourage having five support people that a child can contact at any time. It could be Mum, Dad, Teacher, Grandma, Aunty. The list of possibilities is endless. The idea is to ensure that your child remembers they can talk to these people about anything at all. In situations where you just don’t know enough trusted people, use the names of services like Kids Help Line or Police.

This needs to be continually reinforced so that when your child is feeling stressed about something, particularly if it is sexual abuse, they can look at their hand and remember what to do: to call and tell someone. Tell your child that if the first support person is not available, go to the next, or the next. Encourage children to keep telling until someone does something to help and protect them.

The Support Hand activity: Trace the child’s hand. On each of the fingers have the child write the name and telephone number of their five chosen support people. It’s best to tell the people they’ve been chosen so that if your child rings they will listen and do something. Stick the hand to a wall where the child will continually see it, and practise, practice, practice remembering who to tell if they need to talk about anything.

Another fun activity for reinforcing the BITSS element of Support Networks: Walkie Talkies.

Related article on BITSS of Support Networks: Click here. This article includes some other activities that you can use to reinforce the idea of having a support network to talk to.

FREE Copy of the Junior Fiction Protective Behaviour Book: Bitss of Caramel Marmalade on Toast

Three FREE copies of my Children’s junior fiction chapter book on Protective Behaviours: Bitss of Caramel Marmalade on Toast.

The first three people to leave a comment on this blog over the next 24 hours will receive a copy of the book.

No matter where you live in the world, I will send you a FREE copy with FREE postage included.

Once three comments have been registered I will post my email address and you can email me your address to post you the book. Please don't put your email address in the comment field. Who wants to be spammed up by Christmas Trolls?

Addresses will be used for no other purpose than sending you a complimentary copy of Bitss of Caramel Marmalade on Toast.

What a great Christmas present to help keep kids safe.

The clock is ticking. This free offer lasts for 24 hours from time of posting this blog.

To read a related article on using Bitss of Caramel Marmalade on Toast as Bibliotherapy, Click here.

Protective Behaviour Decorations for Christmas

Christmas is upon us. This joyful and peaceful time can be a horror season for a child who is being accessed by a sexual predator. Close proximity, a string of holidays and higher alcohol intake can lead to many children experiencing more sexual abuse at this time of the year than at any other time.

With this in mind, I take the opportunity to reinforce Body Ownership with every child who comes through my counselling room and with my own four children.

Here are two simple and cost effective ideas you can introduce this Christmas season to reinforce the protective behaviour element of body ownership.

Paper doll chains: Instead of the usual paper strips joined to make delightful circle chains, make a paper doll chain with your child. As part of the protective learning while making the Christmas chain, show how the dolls are holding hands or touching feet but not touching any other body parts. This is because some dolls and people don’t like being touched and we must respect that. Sometimes we don’t like being touched and we can use our words to tell, but dolls don’t have words so they have to tell us by allowing touching hands only.

Gingerbread person: Using a gingerbread person cutter you can show your child the out line of the gingerbread body. Explain that every person has their own body outline and that each of us is different. Our body outline is our boundary and protector. Nobody can touch us if we don’t want them to. We have a set of Gingerbread family: a male, female, girl and boy gingerbread cutters. I talk about the different sizes of people and how it is also an adults responsibility to protect children, not hurt them in any way.

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 realisation of where their body begins and ends, so as loving parents 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 don’t have a good idea of their body size or where their body boundaries begin and end. Too frequently they fail to recognise 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 children body ownership and to assist in ensuring they have a healthy self-esteem.

Can you share any other home-made Christmas decoration ideas that would be helpful in keeping children safe from sexual abuse?