Talking with a Youth Coach about Your Child's Body Safety

Check out the latest screening video from Parenting Safe Children

Just introduced, this video features a grandmother talking with a soccer coach about body safety in the soccer league and on the team. While watching it, you'll see how this grandmother brings up the topic in a pro-active manner, asking multiple questions until she is satisfied she has gotten the information she needs to make an informed decision.

Let us know what you think about the new video and please share it widely with your friends and family members.

Watch it now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IySc_6YZC-E

Here's to keeping kids safe!

Check out the latest screening video from Parenting Safe Children! - See more at: http://blog.parentingsafechildren.com/2013/09/talking-with-prospective-nanny-about.html#sthash.0wlJ30km.dpuf

Check out the latest screening video from Parenting Safe Children!

Just introduced, this video features a couple interviewing a nanny. While watching it, you'll see how to bring up the topic of child sexual abuse prevention in a completely non-threatening way by asking several important questions about secrets and boundaries, and by focusing on your child's body-safety rules.

Please let us know what you think of the new video and be sure to share with all the parents in your life!

Watch it now:  Talking with a Prospective Nanny about Your Child's Body Safety

Here's to keeping kids safe! - See more at: http://blog.parentingsafechildren.com/2013/09/talking-with-prospective-nanny-about.html#sthash.0wlJ30km.dpuf

Talking with a Prospective Nanny about Your Child's Body Safety

Check out the latest screening video from Parenting Safe Children!

Just introduced, this video features a couple interviewing a nanny. While watching it, you'll see how to bring up the topic of child sexual abuse prevention in a completely non-threatening way by asking several important questions about secrets and boundaries, and by focusing on your child's body-safety rules.

Please let us know what you think of the new video and be sure to share with all the parents in your life!

Watch it now:  Talking with a Prospective Nanny about Your Child's Body Safety

Here's to keeping kids safe!

- See more at: http://blog.parentingsafechildren.com/2013/09/talking-with-prospective-nanny-about.html#sthash.0wlJ30km.dpuf

Talking with a Prospective Nanny about Your Child's Body Safety

Check out the latest screening video from Parenting Safe Children!

Just introduced, this video features a couple interviewing a nanny. While watching it, you'll see how to bring up the topic of child sexual abuse prevention in a completely non-threatening way by asking several important questions about secrets and boundaries, and by focusing on your child's body-safety rules.

Please let us know what you think of the new video and be sure to share with all the parents in your life!

Watch it now:  Talking with a Prospective Nanny about Your Child's Body Safety

Here's to keeping kids safe!

How is Your Child's School Reducing the Risk of Child Sexual Abuse?

Talking with the Director

Just as you would talk with the director about curriculum, teachers, meals, and play safety, it's also important to ask about policies and practices that will help to keep your kids safe from sexual abuse. There have been far too many cases of sexual abuse in schools, to let this topic, however uncomfortable, be overlooked.

Ask the director about background checks for teachers, staff and even volunteers. Most sex offenders, however, are never actually caught so they don’t end up on the National Sex Offender Registry. This means it’s also important to ask about reference checking and interviewing. Ideally, the director includes interview questions about the appropriate and inappropriate touch of children.

Also ask about a range of policies:
1)    Adults spending alone time with children
2)    Appropriate and inappropriate touch of children by adults
3)    Appropriate and inappropriate touch of children by other children
4)    Diapering, toileting, and changing clothes

Policies, however, aren’t enough, so you might ask how practices are monitored. As you are talking with the director, look for open and forthcoming communication.

 

Touring the School

As you walk through the school, look at the physical layout and make sure there are no spaces where an adult could be alone with a child. All of the spaces where children study, play, and interact should be open and easily visible. Doors should have windows and bathrooms should not contain areas where children can be isolated. In preschool environments, pay close attention to diaper changing areas.

Meeting the Teacher

If you don’t have a chance to meet your child’s teacher before the first day of school, it's never too late to have a conversation with him or her about your child’s body-safety rules. For example:

“I wanted to tell you that we have been teaching our son, Jamie, some body-safety rules. Perhaps you have heard him exclaim that he is the boss of his body! I also wanted to let you know that our son does not keep secrets. While we will encourage him to follow your safety rules, we have also told him that that if anyone asks him to do something that breaks one of his body-safety rules, he has permission to say ‘No’ and tell us right away.”

 

Training for Teachers, Staff, Parents & Children

The strongest child abuse prevention programs include regular education. At a minimum, look for annual staff training that covers myths and facts about sexual abuse, school policies, appropriate and inappropriate touch of children, and the warning signs that someone is abusing or being abused.

(This article by Feather Berkower originally appeared in Dr. Greene. Dr. Greene uses information technology to make pediatric wisdom more accessible.)

Summer Fun, Summer Safety

Pools

My 7-year-old daughter, Erin, will be taking swimming lessons. How do I talk to the swim instructor about her body safety?

First off, the goal of any screening is to invite caregivers onto your prevention team. It’s not an interrogation; it’s a conversation. Many parents ask me how to begin the conversation, so in the response below I offer some specific language. Of course, choose words that feel authentic to you. Initiate the conversation in a friendly manner:

“My daughter is so excited to be taking swim lessons. Do you have a couple minutes so we can talk a bit about safety? Can you tell me about your safety rules for the swim lessons?”
 
After the coach responds, let him or her know that you have additional rules you want to share. This is where you get to talk about body safety and secrets:
 
“I will ask Erin to follow the safety rules you just mentioned. I also want to let you know about our safety rules, which we share with all of our daughter’s caregivers and teachers. Erin does not keep secrets from her parents, she has permission to talk to trusted adults if she feels scared or worried, she is allowed to refuse unsafe requests, and lastly, she has body-safety rules for keeping her physical body safe.”
 
If it’s your first time screening, you might be more comfortable including your spouse or another parent. Either way, through this brief exchange, you are saying, “Let’s be partners in prevention” and you are sending a clear message, “My kid is off limits.”

Public Restrooms

So you’re off to a baseball game, state fair, or amusement park. Should you let your child go into the bathroom alone?

I get this question in nearly every Parenting Safe Children workshop and the answer is (drum roll, please), “It depends!” Some children are ready to go into a bathroom alone at six, while others aren’t ready until nine, ten, or even later. You know your child best. A more mature child is focused and isn’t likely to dawdle. Here are four prevention tips:
 

1. If a bathroom stall is available near the door or your child is using a porta pottie, stand outside the door and talk with your child. This takes away access by demonstrating that your child is well connected to an adult.
2. With children who are four or five or so, start teaching that you don’t go places or talk with people you don’t know, unless you’re with a trusted adult.
3. Teach refusal skills:  “No, thank you. My Mom/Dad is waiting for me.”
4. Reinforce refusal skills with “What If” games. For instance, “If someone talks to you in the bathroom, or you feel uncomfortable in any way, what can you say or do?”

While it’s important to teach kids to be safe around people they don’t know, remember:  85% of child sexual abuse is committed by someone known to the child, not by a stranger, which is why it’s so important to have conversations with all of the caregivers in your child’s life.

 

Day Camp

If your child is enrolled in camp and you have not had the time to screen, this is the perfect opportunity to talk with the administration about child sexual abuse prevention. Make sure prevention is not only on their radar, but that there are policies and practices to back it up. If you ask nothing else, ask these questions:

Administration:

1. Beyond background checks, what is the screening process for new hires?
2. What kind of child sexual abuse prevention training do you offer staff and volunteers?
3. What policies are in place to minimize the risk of child sexual abuse at your camp?

Counselor:

1. How do you monitor older kids mentoring/spending time with younger kids?
2. What are the situations where a counselor might be alone with a child? (The answer should be “Never.”)
3. How would you handle a situation if you saw a child exploring sexually with another child? What if one of the children was coercing the other child vs. exploring?

Also let both administrators and counselors know that your child has body-safety rules—doesn’t keep secretes from you and has permission to tell you about anything that makes him/her worried or uncomfortable. In addition, tell camp caregivers that your child knows he/she is the boss of his/her body and has permission to say, “No,” runaway and tell an adult if someone makes an unsafe request.
 
Have a fun and safe summer!

How to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse - Infographic

April is Child Abuse Prevention month, and this How to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse infographic from Parenting Safe Children shows you how to keep your children safe from sexual abuse. It debunks common myths, offers “must teach” body-safety rules, and gives you specific questions for screening caregivers. Do your child a favor and check it out!





 

How to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse by www.parentingsafechildren.com

Body Safety & Summer Camp

Is it already time to start thinking about summer camp? Kudos to this Colorado mom for including body safety in her email exchange with a potential summer camp program. The mom wove it in with her other questions, but here’s just the portion of the exchange on child sexual abuse prevention.

Mom:
“Please tell me about the special training that camp staff, guides, and leaders receive in body-safety rules to maintain sexual safety at the camp.”

Camp Director:
“The camp staff gets fingerprinted and goes through a background check before employment. Staff also go through an extensive ten-day staff training that is focused on topics such as behavior management, engagement with children, bullying and child abuse prevention training. During the child abuse prevention training, we discuss child safety, appropriate interactions, red flags for abusers, and the importance of staff accountability.”

Mom:
“We teach and practice safety rules at home so that our kids are empowered to protect themselves as well. In particular, they know that they are the boss of their own bodies:  No one gets to touch or see any part of them if they don't want; secrets are not safe; privacy is always allowed; and if they know that a safety rule is being broken they have to tell. I also want any caregiver to understand that we will believe our children if they tell us that a body-safety rule has been broken. Is your Child Abuse Prevention training consistent with ours?”

Camp Director:
“It seems that our child abuse prevention training is consistent with your safety rules. We train our staff on understanding privacy requests and encouraging kids to be the boss of their own bodies and be honest about what is going on at camp. We also train our staff about believing a child when he or she says that a body-safety rule has been broken.”

Seizing Teachable Moments

We’ve started a new weekly series on Facebook about Teachable Moments, those precious opportunities when a child says something that opens the door to inquiry and education. Check out www.facebook.com/parentingsafechildren

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

 -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Making Noise for Kids in 2013

In the child sexual abuse prevention community, the story that rocked 2012 came out of Penn State. On this university campus, home to the legendary Nittany Lions, we witnessed the profound failure of an institution and its highest and most visible leaders to protect children. And while this story broke in the press and played out in the courtroom, another 2012 story unfolded, but this one didn’t make the news:  The sexual abuse, one by one, of more than one million children, usually by known and trusted adults, in all corners of the U.S.—and beyond. How could this story have been ignored and who will speak up for children?

We will. You and me—and everyone we can educate and influence.

I know it’s uncomfortable for people to talk about child sexual abuse and body safety because parents tell me that all the time. Child sexual abusers, however, count on this discomfort and silence.

Child sexual abusers seek children who have not been taught body-safety rules. They also look for adults who are unlikely to speak up about behaviors of concern. In the words of an abuser, “I would test the boy to see if he had the ability to keep a secret. . . . If he didn’t [keep the secret] I would them immediately end all attempts at victimizing him. On the other hand, if after a week it was clear that this secret had been kept, I escalated the process.”
If that’s not testimony to the power of prevention, what is?

As we head into the New Year, full of hope and opportunity, will you join me in preventing child sexual abuse by speaking up louder than ever before on behalf of children?

Here are three specific things you can do in 2013 to keep children safe from sexual abuse in your community.

1. Invite five more people (e.g., teacher, pediatrician, coach, aunt, etc.) onto your prevention team by sharing your child’s body-safety rules.
2. The next time you see a behavior of concern or have a gut feeling that something isn’t right, speak up. Talk to the principal or director, a therapist, your local child advocacy center, or call me for a consult. In doing so, you may be saving a child from the pain of sexual abuse and that possibility alone must propel us all to action.
3. Ask five people in your life to attend a Parenting Safe Children workshop or to read Off Limits, so they, too, can learn the body-safety rules and screening techniques required to make families and communities off limits to child sexual abuse.  

I have committed my life to keeping kids safe from sexual abuse. There is nothing I care more deeply about then protecting children, and in 2013 I will continue doing everything I can through Parenting Safe Children and Off Limits to be a voice for children. Please join me in speaking up in 2013 like never before! Let’s make some noise.

Happy New Year!

With gratitude, Feather