Body Ownership is an important Protective Behaviour concept to teach your children. When children are trained to understand that their body is theirs and that nobody can touch it if the child does not want them to, our children have greater protection against sexual predators zeroing in on them.Protective Play makes personal safety training super easy. Here’s two activity ideas to reinforce the protective behaviour element of Body Ownership.
Body outlines: As an activity to display different body size, have your child stand against a big piece of paper with their legs together (Stick the paper to the wall to do this exercise, don’t have it on the ground because a lying down position places a child in a vulnerable position). Draw around the child’s body. Then have the child draw around yours and compare sizes. Stick the body outlines to the wall as a way of visually displaying the difference in size between an adult and a child. Tell the child that it is an adult’s job to look after children because adults are bigger and can do more things. WARNING – never draw around a child’s genital area. Children who have experienced sexual abuse may interpret this as a sexual behaviour and become confused about it. Also, perpetrators may use this exercise as a way to desensitize children against having their private parts touched or looked at.
Photo collages: Using pictures cut from magazines, make a people collage. Talk about the difference in size between adults and children and stress that adults look after children, not hurt them or do adult type things with them (like making them do all the housework or kissing like Mum and Dad).
Related art activity blog on Body Ownership: Protective Behaviour Decorations for Christmas.
Does anybody have any other Body Ownership game ideas that I can pass on to parents who are concerned with keeping their children safe from sexual abuse? Sharing ideas helps others and lessens the isolation experienced by families whose children have been sexually abused.
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