Intuition and Early Warning Sign Activities
May 29, 2007
Article by Megan Bayliss.
Intuition is the funny body feelings (early warning signs) that we all get at different times. Sometimes intuition is nothing more than our fears taking over our body and thoughts but often intuition is our body screaming at us to listen to what is really happening around us.
Intuition needs to be clearly taught to our children. Far too often, I have heard children and women 
say, after the fact, “If only I’d listened to my intuition.”
Here’s two simple art activities I use with children in therapy to help them understand what their early warning signs are. Recognizing and acting on early warning signs is a way to prevent our children from being sexually abused. These therapeutic activities can be easily blended into your every day play with your children. Protective Play is the most unobtrusive way to keep our kids safe.
Drawing/writing exercise using prompt pictures: Show your child a picture from a magazine, photo, or card. Ask them to draw/write the way their body would react to the situation in the picture. When, and if, children respond by saying they would punch/kiss the person, trust them because they look nice or run away, ask them to draw/write what would be happening inside their body where nobody else can see. This process is a bit like peeling an onion. There are layers to get through to help connect with body reactions, emotional layers that are deeper than the behaviours children show us.
Art collage of different faces: Cut faces out of magazines and glue to a sheet of paper. Ask the child to say how they think each person is feeling. Learning emotional language will help your child throughout life. When they can express emotions, children have a better chance of telling you if something happens to them. Because children don’t have an extended emotional vocabulary they act out their emotions as a way of telling us something is wrong. As parents, we often miss these messages, and ask the child to stop being naughty/silly/annoying. If your child cannot find words to express their emotions, they have body stances. Mix the pieces up and have the child match them together. While the child is matching, give hints about what a person’s legs might look like if they’ve got an angry face and have their arms crossed, or what a face might look like when the arms and legs are hanging limp.
Can you imagine yourself doing this with your kids? What other things do you do to teach intuition (early warning signs) to your kids?
My favorite book for teaching about Intuition is: Jelly Legs by Colin Varney.
Other activities to protectively play around intuition and early warning signs:
A Mime of Early Warning Information
Game to Develop Emotional Intelligence.
Teaching about Touch through Protective Play
May 28, 2007
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 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 (more ideas are available in the tutorial received when you register in our Safety Talk Forum).
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.
What clever ideas do you use to teach about good touch/bad touch? The more we share, the quicker all of our children stay safe. Most parents protect their children without even realising what they are doing. This is your chance to really think about the great things you already do and to share the ideas to help other parents.
Related article on Touch: Brush up on Good Touch/Bad Touch
Technology of Protection: Walkie Talkies
May 27, 2007
In protective behaviour tech speak, Walkie Talkies are our feet (no batteries required). Each foot has five toes representing a person we can walk and talk to if something feels yucky inside us. The “yucky” might be a sick feeling because we ate too many lollies or it might be a “yucky” feeling about someone else or maybe even something “yucky” they did to us. Two walkie talkies makes for a solid platform of ten people we can walk and talk to if we have to.
Most people will be aware of the symbol of a hand as a visual reminder of a support network. Each finger represents a safe person that we can talk to about anything. Feet are a variation of the hand and offer some different activities for encouraging children to remember their support people.
In BITSS of Support Networks (join the Safety Talk forum to get your free copy), I have set out two simple art activities that you can use to encourage your child to walk and talk to people who can help them.
Have fun with your walkie talkies and remember: Nothing is so awful we can’t talk to someone about it.
Children’s Story Books Help Solve Problems
May 26, 2007
Books can provide protective ideas and guidance to children. When the reading of a book combines with a follow up activity based in the books message, it becomes bibliotherapy.
Self-help books, with structured steps for life improvement, are a form of adult bibliotherapy. However, quality junior fiction is just as effective for children in offering a range of problem solving options. The advice contained within children’s literature though, is only as good as the parental help in follow up activities toward integration of whatever the child’s need is.
Children learn through play. Reading is play and a preferred indoor play option for many families. The initial play and problem solving value of reading occurs as children engage with the book’s characters. Connected with the story, the child enters an imaginary space of interactive problem solving. Aided by the struggles and achievements of the characters, children learn the social rules of behavior and develop different ways of being able to seek help or reflecting on life issues. If provided with real life opportunities to test literature-induced problem solving, the child is active in their own therapy and the book becomes a good tool for providing advice.
There are three purposes of using children’s books as therapy:
1. Identification of character and social situation: This identification increases the probability of learning different behaviors and receiving advice.
2. Catharsis: Through identification, an emotional connection with the character or social situation allows children to act out and discuss their emotional responses to the situation.
3. Insight: Through beneficial discussion and follow-up play, the child integrates the link between the story and their own life, with opportunities to practice how to address and solve issues of concern.
With these purposes in mind, the following nine steps will turn any children’s book into affordable therapy.
Step 1) Identify the practical advice (the message) you want your child to know.
Step 2) Match the message with an appropriate book. Seek out junior fiction/non-fiction that deals with the particular issue (drugs, death, alcoholism, fear, bullying, protective behaviour, etc). While searching for the advice appropriate book, remember that:
- The book should match your child’s reading ability level,
- The text must be at an interest level appropriate to the maturity of the youngster,
- The theme of the book should match the identified needs,
- The characters should be believable so that the child can identify with with the dilemma,
- The plot of the story should be realistic and involve creativity in problem solving.
Step 3) Decide on the setting and time for the story reading. Will you read it with/to your child, will you leave the book for your child to find, will you suggest the book to your child as a great read and hope they ask you to buy it for them?
Step 4) Knowing that you need to be active for bibliotherapy to be effective, motivate your child to become involved with an associated problem solving follow up activity by making play suggestions prior to story end (e.g. “On the weekend we could have a Yell free day and instead mime out our angry feelings.”)
Step 5) Based on your child’s reaction to your motivating suggestions, design one or more end-of-book-connected activities. This may be as simple as being available for discussion after story end, engaging with your child in drawing a picture from the story, or helping your child journal their thoughts on the book. More exciting: actively encourage dramatic play or drama around the learning issue, or visit a place connected to the story.
Step 6) Pre engage in the follow up activities by asking questions or having short discussions throughout the reading. At the end of a chapter or every few pages, sum up so that “the message” does not get lost in the fantasy.
Step 7) Straight after story end, take a break and allow your child to do their own reflection on the material.
Step 8) Introduce the follow-up activities by briefly retelling the story, focusing on how the characters solved their issue, and let the child know what you could both do to honor the advice/message in the book.
Step 9) Assist your child to integrate the advice gained by honestly answering any questions they may have.
Children’s story books, followed by a well thought out activity makes for cheap therapy: BIBLIOTHERAPY.
What books do you favour as problem solving or inspirational learning for your children? Two of our favorites have been: The Man who Loved Boxes and Guess How Much I love You. Another article that made me laugh and my heart melt is Impromptu Sex Education - Is It Always When You Least Expect It?, posted over at Hamelife: For Parents who want to be Different.
Baby Catherine and the issue of child abandonment
May 26, 2007
Article by: Sunshine Girl On A Rainy Day
“Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.”
Where did this expression come from? According to the New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, the phrase means, “In getting rid of waste, do not also discard what is worth keeping.”
Events in a Brazilian park in January 2006 brought a painfully ironic twist to this familiar proverb. A couple heard noises coming from the Pampulha Lagoon. Something was floating in the water - and it was whimpering…
The first thing rescuers noticed when they opened the black plastic bag was a pink dress. It was a moment reminiscent of the ‘girl in the red dress’ in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. A two-month-old baby was inside. She was still alive. A wooden board inside the bag, perhaps intended to weigh it down, had kept the bag from submerging.
What circumstances might tempt a parent to throw away a child?
Baby Catherine
In Australia, a 10-day-old baby girl was found wrapped in towels in a cardboard fruit box, in front of the psychiatric ward of the Dandenong Hospital on Mother’s Day. An anonymous phone call tipped authorities off to the child’s whereabouts. Baby Catherine was suffering from mild hypothermia at the time when she was taken into protective custody.
The Victorian Department of Human Services admitted Catherine into foster care.
Former property developer Maurice Jacobsen has offered to buy her mother a $339,000 flat if she returns to raise her daughter. He claims that, “Babies should be with their mothers.”
Is that statement true always, and all the time?
I would argue that it isn’t. As a former foster child, I appreciate Mr. Jacobsen’s initiative and generosity. Perhaps he has had a happy, healthy family of his own.
However, we know nothing about Catherine’s mother and how equipped she is to parent her child. She could struggle with a psychiatric problem or addiction. She could have other children from the past whom she has abused.
For whatever reason, Catherine’s biological mother felt that she was not up for the task of parenting. Providing for the needs of a child requires more than a house; it requires a commitment.
Despite numerous appeals, Catherine’s mother has not come forth to reclaim her child. She sent a message through a friend that she feared police retaliation and media attention.
United States Safe-Haven Laws
Child abandonment is against the law. However, in at least 45 states in the U.S.A., if a woman leaves her newborn at a hospital, police station, fire station or social worker’s office within three days of the birth, she will not prosecuted for abandonment. The mother has 30 days in which to reclaim her child.
Safe-Haven laws were created in response to a surge of “dumpster babies” in the 90’s. Newborns were being left to die in dumpsters, trashcans and cardboard boxes. According to the Child Welfare League of America, 108 newborns were abandoned in 1998. Of those children, 33 were found dead.
Safe-Haven laws have raised some concerns. Some politicians worry that providing immunity to prosecution encourages parental lack of responsibility.
Advocates have told detractors not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Better to have a parent willingly relinquish her child to a caring adult, than for authorities to find that child freezing in a cardboard box or drowning in a lake.
The bottom line, for me, is a safe outcome for the child.
Copyright © 2007 