Body Safety for Children – Parent workshop

Overview

Designed to empower parents whos children are learning the 5 Body Safety Rules to help protect them from harm and abuse.

We believe in a ‘whole of community approach’ which means we also run Parenting Workshops to inform parents of what children will be learning, the need for Body Safety Education in the organisation and how they can support their children at home, so the learning continues. The Parent Workshop is usually run in conjunction with the booking of an Educators Training.

Key learning

Many people are uninformed as to what constitutes a body safety education program and fear that such a program would discuss sex and sexual abuse with their children. This is not the case. Where young children are concerned, body safety programs should be age-appropriate, non-threatening, and aim to teach children these basic points:

During this 90 min session, parents will discover:

The need for Body safety training.
The reality of current abuse statistics.
How they can partner with the educators to provide consistent empowerment for their children around Body Safety.
Lessons that their children will be learning at school;

- Your body is YOUR body and no-one else has the right to touch it, especially your private areas (those covered by a bathing suit).
- If someone does touch you inappropriately, you must tell a trusted adult and keep telling until you are believed.
- Be able to identify the difference between safe and unsafe touch.
- Understand what the words ‘respect’ and ‘consent’ mean.
- Know what actions you can take if you feel worried or unsafe.

Common language that is being used by the child’s educators.
Resources that parents can access to strengthen their child’s learning, including free resources.

Reviews

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When parents were asked:
“Would you recommend this session to other parents?”
100% responded YES and 92% rated the parent sessions VERY USEFUL.

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It is never too early to teach body safety to children and to educate parents about it too.

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Statistically, this is a much bigger problem than previously thought. But good to know that there are lots of support/materials available.

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Important to spread the need to develop families/children's awareness on this topic much earlier than after primary school age. Use correct, clear and repetitive words to describe body parts, feelings/emotions and what is/is not ok.

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It was a great session - really informative, eye-opening, and the speaker provided some great tools to help parents and educators.

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Really informative PD with lots of good resource examples provided.

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I would attend this great training every year.

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Great, good balance of information and resources.

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I thought the session was great, will continue with our focus on body safety within the service and wider community.

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How important it is to start the conversations about body safety with very young children - as young as 2-5 yr olds.

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May be we could do this in our network meetings...so everyone can attend.

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It was really informative, the statistics helpful to frame the importance of all of it, and I really appreciated how achievable the activities and programs for the children are. They’re so well tailored to kids, not intimidating, able to be incorporated into day-to-day conversation and learnings. Thanks for demystifying the consent conversation and giving us some practical steps to take to empower our kids.

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I thought it was extremely engaging. Thank you. We learnt a lot and feel like we have a few tools to help our daughters.

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Important to spread the need to develop families/children's awareness on this topic much earlier then after primary school age. Use correct, clear and repetitive words to describe body parts, feelings/emotions and what is/is not ok