BITSS of New Year Resolutions: Imaginif there was a World Without Child Sexual Abuse!

Imaginif there was a world without child sexual abuse.

Imaginif 2007 was the year where you decided to provide your child with awareness and skills around what to do if someone tries to sexually abuse your child.

Imaginif “Happy New Year” meant just that for all of our children.

The BITSS model of Protective Behaviours provides you with a structure to protectively play around the important safety BITSS of:

Body Ownership
Intuition
Touch
Say no, and
Support Networks

Matching games and activities around each of these five important protective behaviour BITSS is easy, educational and can help to keep kids safe. Just click on the links for some jam packed ideas of spreading BITSS of child safety across the globe.

Still deciding on a New Years Resolution? Make it a protective resolution. Do your BITSS to Protect your child, my child, our children.

Support 2007 Children to Have a Happy New Year. It’s easy, if you’re up for a BITT of a challenge.

Recognition of the BITSS model of Protective Behaviours from the Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault:
Good Practice Programs, BITSS of Protective Play - A skill based workshop for family and child workers

Good Touch Bad Touch

Teaching through play works. Work is children’s play: their business. Business needs reinforcing on a daily basis or business begins to fail. So too with the business of protective play, reinforce the protection by playing everyday with the five important elements of the BITSS model of Protective Behaviours – Body Ownership, Intuition, Touch, Say no, and Support network.

Touch is a difficult area to play protectively with if you do not understand the subtle difference between good touch/bad touch. Child sexual predators use normal touch (good touch) to desensitize a child and move them toward accepting bad touch. It happens gradually and sometimes without the child even realizing what has happened. If someone pats your child’s shoulder in friendship, it may be acceptable. If that same someone tomorrow pats your child’s breast and claims it was a mistake, it is a warning sign that they are moving toward bad touch and that your child is allowed to react, to come and tell you.

Our natural environment is useful for teaching about good touch/bad touch. When we look at the early warning signs in nature, we have a better understanding of how early warning signs work inside of our body and how a situation can very quickly move from being good to being awful. Many nature based activities can be designed around the below two discussion starting points.

Flowers: As beautiful as some flowers may be, they have the potential to turn from a good touch to a bad touch. Use them as an example. Running up to smell a beautiful flower may result in being pricked by a thorn, stung by a bee, or getting a rash on your face from poison leaves or petals. Some people too can be tricky. They start off being nice but it's a trick. They end up hurting us with their words or touch. When the good touch turns to bad touch it is okay to come and tell someone.

Animals: Many parents warn children about patting dogs, “Be careful! That dog might bite”. This is a perfect example of good touch/bad touch. Use these teachable moments to explain that sometimes, good things can turn to bad things and that children need to watch for changes and know when to back away. If you are patting a cat and its tail starts flicking it is the cat’s early warning sign to us that it is unhappy. Your child is at risk of being bitten or scratched by the cat. People have signs in their behavior too. When people move to bad touch, back away from them and tell someone what has happened.

Can you share a game idea that you use to teach about good touch/bad touch? The more we share, the quicker all of our children stay safe.

Say No to Hang Man.

Helping children say “no” to predatory adults is important. When a sexual predator attempts to convince your child that the behavior is acceptable, your child needs to know that there are situations where they can say “no” to an adult.

Despite many toddlers starting their vocal repertoire with the word “no”, we soon let them know that it’s not nice to say “no” to grownups. Umm…it is not nice that some grownups sexually abuse our children. Our children need to practice saying “no” so that when they really need to say it, they already know they can do it.

Play the following practice game to help your child understand that it is okay to say “no” in some situations:

Don’t hang the person: This game is a variation of the world favorite “Hang Man”. Pick a longish statement that both fits your child’s situation, and incorporates them being able to say “no”. For example, “When someone wants you to be low, you can turn around and tell them “no”!” It is important to pick a long statement with lots of different letters because you do not want your child to end up hanged. Make this impossible to happen. For the example statement, you would draw the spaces up as:
- - - - / - - - - - - - / - - - - - / - - - / - - / - - / - - -, / - - - / - - - / - - - - / - - - - - - / - - - / - - - - / - - - - / “- -!”.

As your child says a letter from the alphabet, you write it in the appropriate space. If the child picks a letter that is not contained in the statement, one part of the hangman stand with dangling stick body is drawn.

This game can include statements to fit any of the BITSS pieces. I always follow the statement up by asking the child how they will say “no” to someone bigger than them or in a position of power. I do this to help cement the ability to say “no” and to increase the child’s confidence that there are some things that big people just cannot do, no matter how much authority they have.

For further free games, activities and ideas on how to help your child say "no", click here.

What are your thoughts on helping your child practice saying “no”?