LANGUAGE AS CHILD ABUSE PREVENTION

If you are a parent, caregiver, or work with children, one thing you can do to help prevent child abuse is reinforce messages that your children are receiving in these in-class lessons. The easiest way to do this is to use the same language utilized in our lessons.

We use the words “safe and unsafe touch” rather than “good and bad touch” because children are often already familiar with the concept of safety (wearing seatbelts in cars; fire drills at school; wearing a helmet on a bike; etc.). Additionally, some children are abused by someone they love (such as a family member) and may struggle to identify the abuse as “bad” the way an adult would.

Here is the terminology we use:

Safe touch is a touch that does not hurt your body and does not touch your private body parts.

Private body parts are the part of your body covered by a swim suit.

Unsafe touch is a touch that hurts your body or touches your private body parts. (The exception is that a caregiver or doctor can touch private body parts if they are helping you stay clean and healthy, and it is never a secret.)

An Unwanted Touch is a touch that is safe but you just don’t want!

Secrets vs. surprises

We stress that adults should never ask children to keep a secret and that touches should never be a secret. This is because abusers will often start with something small (like a gift or favor) that they ask the child to keep a secret. This normalizes secret keeping to the child, laying the groundwork for an abuser to harm the child and ask the child to keep that harm a secret.

Instead, use the language of surprises. A birthday gift or a party may be a secret for a little while, but not forever. Surprises make people happy and will eventually be public knowledge.