The winner of the $250.00 Cash for Christmas is:
November 30, 2007
CONGRATULATIONS to ANONYMUM
Your name was drawn out as the winner of
Imaginif’s November
$250.00 Cash for Christmas competition.
I will make email contact with you shortly to arrange transferring $250.00 to you.
Thank you for participating in our Safety Talk forum and for being prepared to
make child protection serious business.
Merry Christmas to you ANONYMUM and to you, all our child safety wishes:
Megan, Paul, Jade, Fran and Rebekah (the Imaginif team)
You do not trust yourself NOT to SELF-HARM?
November 30, 2007
You do not trust yourself to NOT self harm The fear rises within you – it looks like this:
- Heart beating fast
- Thumping or skipping beats of the heart
- Churning stomach
- Difficulty breathing
- Trembling
- Sweating
- Tingling
- Suffocating feeling
- Iron band around head
- Dizzy or light headed
- A lump in the throat
You want to FIGHT or RUN or you might feel FROZEN on the spot – the fear feels bigger than you – stronger than you – ready to overtake you and send you crazy. The fear might feel so big that you think you are going to die. Your body and mind feel like they are splitting apart – you stand outside of your body looking on. Your body feels detached like you don’t exist or that you have fallen into a deep hole disconnecting from the reality of the world. Frightening thoughts cling and the more you try to forget them the more the thoughts stick. The fear feels like it has taken hold of you and you have lost the power and control over your own life. You are left standing alone, unsafe and overwhelmed.
And right at this moment when you are left standing alone with your emotions left raw from the intensity of your fear – you feel a sense of sadness and anger engulf you and you begin to wonder - You reflect on the fact that you want to feel real – you want to feel something other than fear – you want to be like everybody else – you just want to be ‘normal’. BUT you can’t be normal you keep telling yourself – how can you be normal when you cut your own skin. How can you trust yourself not to cut your skin?
It doesn’t matter if you don’t trust yourself right now – I am not asking you to but I want you to know that you are not a coward and you do not have to cure yourself. You let your mind and your body do the curing – stand aside from your body and let the healing process take over – your mind and your body have been responding to the wrong messages – these messages are from your past and they come from someone who has told you that you are worthless and undeserving. You need to learn new messages and you can learn these new messages through the support of others including professional support. Once you have learnt new messages - trust your mind and body to respond faithfully to these new messages just as the mind and body has responded so faithfully to the wrong messages.
DO NOT let these wrong messages continue to stop you from living a life that you deserve. DO NOT stop trusting yourself. DO NOT stop believing that one day it will be different. DO NOT give up on life because peace is just around the corner. DO NOT forget that your mind can become tired from fighting the fear. DO NOT let anything stand in the way of reaching your full potential. DO NOT stop surviving. DO NOT despair because I know how easily you do despair.
One day, not today but one day – with support, guidance and empathy you will be able to trust yourself again and once you trust yourself again – your skin will breath a new lease of life and be forever radiant to the outside world.
5 gifts to encourage child safety
November 29, 2007
Body Ownership, Intuition, Touch, Say No and Support Network:
each are important things to teach our kids for maximum child safety.
Make it easy by giving Christmas gifts that
teach personal safety through protective play.
Here’s five play/toy gift ideas - one for each of the BITSS model of protective Behaviour elements:
-
Body Ownership: GLOBES or Maps. Anything that shows countries or States within a country. I like to use Globe pencil sharpeners (pictured) They are great for teaching boundaries and for sharpening those pencils for other BITSS activities. Use the globe to show that every country has a boundary. The boundary shows the body of the country. Most of these countries have armies that help to protect the boundary. Our clothes are like an army. They help to protect our body and give a sign to other people that certain parts of our body are private – the parts we wear underwear or swimming costumes over. And…every time your child sharpens their pencil remind them to sharpen their wits (Intuition) about protecting their body. You can purchase the globe pencil case from most variety stores or from our Protective Play shop for $4.50. 
Intuition: Stuffed animals. Animals are great for showing off their early warning signs. Animals have not had it trained out of them: there warning signs remain an automatic process just like when we are cold we get goose bumps. When dogs are bothered by the presence of another dog the hairs on their backs are automatically raised and they often bare their teeth. This is the dog’s early warning sign telling its opponent to back off! When we scare, annoy or hurt an animal, no matter how cute they are, their body tells us to leave them alone. Because we fear being hurt by them we tend to become sensible and back off. Sometimes thought, the cutest and safest looking things can be the deadliest. I use the little dogs pictured to teach about intuition. This cute little puppy has the sweetest face, but, it might have sharp claws. Ouch! Not so nice now. Purchase any stuffed animal and adapt the dialogue to suit your circumstance. Pictured puppy available in our protective play store for $3.50. 
Touch: Soap. Create your own Natural Soap Kits. Bath time offers a wonderful opportunity to talk about Good Touch/Bad Touch. Sometime Mum or Dad may have to touch your private parts to wash them, but a washing touch is quick. It becomes a bad touch if Mum or Dad, or anyone else, keep doing it over and over again. Having a bath is a good touch when the water smells nice and the soap is smooth and lovely. A bad touch is when the soap stings your eyes or your private parts. This natural soap doesn’t sting and smells fantastic. Simple enough for a child to make, this soap does no harm to either child or environment. Before the soap sets, add a mini toy and watch your child long for bath time so they can use the soap containing their treasure. Don’t forget to talk about how the treasure matches up to either body ownership, intuition, touch, say no or support network. Kit contains: 500gm pure melt & mold soap base, 2 Fragrant Oils, 2 Soap Colors, 1 pure essential oil, 2 soap molds, 1 pkt Herbal Botanicals, & instruction booklet. Retail value of items in this kit is $47. Perfect for home, soap making in the classroom, expressive therapy activities (use a symbol of choice to hide in soap), or have a soap making party to make protective behaviours fun and interesting. $30.00 ea. (kit makes around 6 cakes of safe soap).
Say No: Smencils – Good scents pencils. Say no to harming our environment. Keep kids safe from all harms. Use Smencils during protective play: gourmet-scented pencils made from 100% recycled newspapers. Draw a picture of how your body looks when it is trying to “say no”. Write a list of words/statements that mean “say no”. Saying “no” makes good scents. Made from recycled newspaper instead of wood, Smencils sharpen (consider using the globe pencil sharpener and, while sharpening, talk about body ownership AND saying no) the same as other pencils but create a good touch for the olfactory sense. Keep the shavings too. They smell “scentsible”. Each Smencil comes packaged in its own Freshness Tube. Manufacturers guarantee that when stored in the tube, scent lasts for two years. Our set of 10 Smencils contains one each of the following scents: Bubblegum, Cherry , Cookie Dough, Grape, Sarsparilla, Cinnamon, Watermelon, Pineapple, Orange , Peppermint. Sold as a set of 10 ($12.00), a set of 5 ($6.00) or singularly ($1.20 ea). Available in our online store.
Support Network: Finger Puppets. I like to use Australian animals, particularly a Galah and a Kangaroo. Only a Galah gives in to peer pressure. But, Galah’s are sometimes cool. They tell their friends and family everything – even if the Galah has done something silly and they’re scared they’re going to get into trouble. Pull two tail feathers from the Galah: one to remind you not to give into peer pressure and the other to remind you to talk, talk, talk. Yep, even about silly things you think you may have done. Say no to peer pressure. Say no to keeping secrets (nice surprises are okay though). Make like a Kangaroo and hop away from danger and people who may want to hurt you. Kangaroos are strong. Nobody disses them for jumping out of harms way. When I grow up, I want to be a Kangaroo. I had better start practicing now by listening to my intuition and saying no to danger. Hop away, hop away. $5.00 ea from our store or buy them from any decent variety store.
Do not forget our double Christmas book deal -
two protective behaviour (Body ownership) junior fiction chapter books (pictured left)
for the price of one!
Buy one to help keep your child safe and
get a second one, FREE,
to give to a friend or relative.
Last days to win $250.00 cash
November 29, 2007
WIN $250.00 cash for Christmas
simply by making five content appropriate posts in
Imaginif’s Safety Talk forum.
Drawn tomorrow afternoon (November 30th) at 4pm, Australian time,
the chances of winning are excellent.
Current names in the draw are:
- Rebekah
- Sunshine Girl
- LisaH
- Char
- Kirky (x 2 chances)
- Erik (x 2 chances)
- Bam (x 2 chances)
- Ali (x 2 chances)
- Jakki
- Anonymum
- Tamara (x 2 chances)
- Zentro
- Louise (x 2 chances)
- Homelife (x 2 chances)
There is still time to WIN $250.00 Cash for Christmas.
See you over in the Safety Talk forum.
Whensday update 5: When new members join our community we celebrate them
November 28, 2007
Welcome to the the new members at Imaginif’s
Child Protection community at MyBlogLog this week:
Tamara W at Tamara Wilson Staying On top of what A WAHM is doing.
Jerri at Simply Sweet Home (I’ve got to tell you, YUM, YUM, YUM - I would LOVE her to be my blogging buddy and enact random acts of pie kindness on me.)
creativebutterfly at The Creative Butterfly
Welcome to each of you. Thanks for joining our child protection community; Imaginif, no child abuse. You have all been stumbled and given the green thumbs up. Take some time to get to know each other. Support the other members of our community and watch the benefits of child protection like mindedness grow.
And your fellow members of Child Protection community at MyBlogLog? They are a great and friendly bunch. Drop in and visit them. You can easily see who your community supports are by checking their avatars at:
Child Protection community Blogging Buddy: As a member of our community you are going to be randomly ascribed a blogging buddy. Similar to Secret Santa, you may voluntarily enact random acts of kindness and increase blog Karma to your community blogging buddy by making that person a part of your blogging day - a message on MyBlogLog, a comment, a link, a stumble - you will find a way to let your community blogging buddy know that someone is thinking of them and is helping to ensure that their commitment to child protection has not gone unnoticed. Whereas Secret Santa lasts for the holiday season, Child Protection Community Blogging Buddy will last for the cyber life span of yourself and blogging buddy. If one buddy stops blogging, no worries, we’ll just do buddy adjustment.
To build community, a two way process of interaction is required from participants (all of us). To develop a community means to build active and sustainable communities based on social justice and mutual respect (no cyber bullying, hate, racist, sexual harassment, spam or derogatory comments). It is about changing power structures to remove the barriers that prevent people from participating in the issues that affect their lives. Child protection and child safety is faced with many structural and personal barriers. It is time to remove them by supporting those who publicly stand up for the safety of our kids. It is time to make child protection serious business. It is time to have child protection blogging buddies.
Expect a private message in your MyBlogLog where you will be ascribed another community member to watch out for, to encourage and to support. A data base matches names randomly. Matches for new members will be made monthly (today is the day for all new members) so that brand new members are less likely to guess who they may be matched with.
-
-
Do you know what bibliotherapy is? Click Megan's book to learn how to use a story to solve a problem.
Copyright © 2007 