Body Safety Education: Part 1 Boundaries
90% of victims know their perpetrators, with ¼ girls and ⅕ boys being sexually abused before their 18th birthday. We live in a reactive society when it comes to child sexual abuse. We are typically dealing with an outcry of a child and as the chaos ensues parents are left with the question of how this all could have happened. There are various hurdles parents face and the first one is talking about the prevention of child abuse. Body Safety Education is about understanding it as parents first. Then, once we can begin talking about it we can move onto how to discuss it with your child. Body Safety Education is never a guarantee but rather a way to drastically reduce the likelihood that childhood sexual abuse will occur. This blog is to introduce the idea that parents no longer need to be hesitant in opening the conversation of body safety education with their child. This is the first part of a three blog series that starts with defining boundaries adults need with themselves and then being able to teach their child.
What is a Boundary with my child?
Talking about boundaries is something you perhaps didn’t get as a child. Parents oftentimes were told what to wear, what to eat, go to bed, go play, and to simply obey their parents. Parents of gen x and even millennial kids were brought up without seatbelts and staying out until it’s dark out. Parents of the 70s & 80s had one boundary that sounded like “come home once it gets dark out and stay with your siblings.” I grew up in the 80s and 90s and I remember running wildly to the nearby public pool and we had to cross a major intersection. The only thing that was preventing us from getting run over by cars were the sheer fear and obeying the traffic lights. I remember standing at the light and feeling the strong wind from the cars passing my 7 year old body with my sisters only protecting me and a towel hanging around my neck. I remember having so much energy and bursting out of my house at a runner’s pace to get to the swimming pool.
Today, as a parent, you may be navigating how to allow your own children to have their own freedom and how to allow yourself to understand the importance of boundaries. These sensitive subjects are hard to discuss but the purpose is to strengthen the parent-child bond and prevent your child from getting sexually abused by someone they know. Open expressions of discussing boundaries is to empower & protect children from becoming victims of sexual abuse. Not knowing this information places parents and children at higher risk. Please note that each parent has different styles, education and levels of comfort in discussing issues like childhood sexual abuse.
Some parents may feel nervous in talking about sexual abuse. Parents may lead with fear and only have one conversation like “don’t let anyone touch you in your private area!” You may not have even discussed this with your own parents as they may have feared to introduce you to such subjects. Fear that they may unintentionally open the subject to further questions their child may have for their parents. Parents may often fear more questions because they don’t know the answer or are embarrassed to answer the question. First parents must define boundaries for themselves and then be able to teach it to their child. The following are 6 types of boundaries from a book called Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Tawwab.
Emotional Boundary
An emotional boundary is based on feelings of a parent and how you set emotional boundaries with your child. One example a parent frequently encounters is challenging behavior like tantrums or flat out refusing when you ask your child to do something. This is an important and very nuanced role for a parent to navigate with their child. There can be time constraints, there can be valid reasons for the child to refuse, or not and a parent must assess this pretty quickly in a respectful way.
However, I encourage parents to use kindness, respect and curiosity when being challenged. The way a parent interacts with a child is so important because it sets the stage for how a child will likely interact with other authority figures or parents. For example, a child can refuse to look at an inappropriate image from a peer on a device or from an adult that is trying to groom them to look at something. Parents can teach their child to say “no, you can’t do that to me.” However, the child needs a safe parent to practice saying “no.” This is the part where parents get confused and may even get into unnecessary power struggles. Parents have to carefully understand that children need guidance and practice saying “no” to either a peer trying to coerce them or an adult trying to keep secrets. Under no circumstances does a child ever need to keep a secret with anyone. Perpetrators will often use secrets as their currency to keep their behavior from being told and from being recognized it’s a crime. Parents can teach their child that they can practice saying no with you in role plays and understand how to discern these emotional boundary violations. Children also need to know it’s safe to say no to their parents sometimes. That children don’t blindly obey because parents may inadvertently be setting up their child to obey an authority figure or trust someone that threatens them.
Physical Boundary
A Physical boundary is helpful to define behaviors between yourself and your child in various contexts. Boundaries help parents and children anticipate what can be expected of them if we as parents can articulate them and model physical boundaries. For example, a parent can say “while we are at the pool, you have to make sure you go with me or your dad to the bathroom.” Parents that are survivors of childhood sexual abuse may not know how to articulate boundaries because they were once told to be silenced about their own needs. However, here boundaries help parents provide clear rules about safety because children oftentimes don’t know who will be in the bathroom, like if they find themselves in a bathroom alone with another adult and they don’t feel safe. Many children are even afraid to go upstairs and be alone in their home. It is up to us as parents to help a young child understand that at this time, “we use this public bathroom with Mom or Dad until we find it suitable to use the bathroom on your own.”
Another example can be when we go to the neighborhood pool, and emphasize the importance of putting on sunscreen. Many children refuse or dislike sunscreen. It can be difficult and time consuming to just simply get the sunscreen on their skin. You can start modeling by putting some on your own skin. Then, you say, “do you want to use the stick or do you want to use the lotion for your face?” Modeling this ability for a child some type of choice of sunscreen on themselves is important for independence but also for accountability.
A further example of a parent being attuned with their child’s needs is when a child is learning to be potty trained. A parent can knock on the door and say, “Do you need my help?” A child may need extra reassurance when they are learning to use the bathroom on their own or they may want privacy. You can introduce them to the word “privacy” when they just want to do it on their own, allowing them to be alone in the bathroom. Kids may want the door open slightly to get your help but as they get more confident they may not want you in the room. As a parent you want to acknowledge you are there to help them when they cry and are asking for your help. Help your child to ask for help because in higher stakes, you will want them to come to you first. This is a lot for parents that were never taught about boundaries. You may feel overwhelmed as a parent on all these things. The book I often recommend for parents ages 3-8 years old is “I Said No” by Kimberly King.
Sexual boundary
Many parents really only had one conversation with their child and it consisted of a parent warning their child with a tone of fear. A parent may have real fear and concern in regards to talking about sexual boundaries. However, this fear doesn’t have to overtake the conversation and blur the message of body boundaries with your child.
You can review with your child about how they are the boss of their body and no one (peer or adult) is allowed to touch them or talk about inappropriate sexual content. For example, when your tween child comes home from camp and they describe that another peer talked about a coloring with a marker that showed the number 69 on it and another child has a strong reaction saying, “I don’t like 69.” Your tween may keep asking you as the parent “what is 69?” As a parent, one can choose several options. The first one can be to ignore your child’s request and say, “we don’t talk about that.”
However, your tween may persist and keep asking about it simply because they are curious now that you don’t want to talk about it. If your child has access to the internet they may go there and we don’t want them to have unfettered access to the internet. If they go to their peers and get misinformation from a smartphone with the internet or social media, this is potentially dangerous to the child getting oversexualized or seeing inappropriate content too.
Parents can simply acknowledge that it’s a subject matter that involves two consenting adults that care about each other and it involves sexual activity. A child that is not oversexualized will need no further information with this conversation. If you are a parent that has never started a conversation about body boundaries, this may be more difficult. I encourage parents to start when they are ages 3-8 to read books like Let’s Talk about Body Boundaries, Consent and Respect by Jayneen Sanders & Sarah Jennings. Miles is the Boss of his Body by Samantha Kurtzman & Abbie Schiller is also another book for kids to read with their parents to become more comfortable with body boundaries. This will help ease more difficult conversations that tweens will invariably ask a parent over time. If your tween notices your discomfort, they may also develop embarrassment and then parents run the risk that kids will avoid asking you anything.
Perpetrators look for children that have poor boundaries or are in the dark about how to define their own boundaries. Children are at the very beginning stages of understanding their own boundaries and their neocortex is still developing. Children that are confused about how parents are supposed to act around them will likely become targets. Perpetrators look for kids that are shy, not assertive, and confused about boundaries. Children naturally are vulnerable but each day that goes by without teaching them the basics of boundaries is a day of risk for them becoming a statistic.
Intellectual Boundaries:
An intellectual boundary a parent may use is to tell their tween child, “please clean up the kitty litter” Another one might be telling their 4 year old to “please put your clean folded clothes away in your drawer.” Intellectually, the child knows how to do the task and its age appropriate for their developmental stage, after looking at things like temperament, neurodiverse skills, and other family stressors that may be happening. The parent may get resistance from their child on doing the kitty litter and then a younger sibling may echo a parent’s sentiment “yea, go do the kitty litter!” The parent can respond to the echoing child, your tone can be kinder, I will take care of your sister’s need to listen.” These are ways to create clarity around things like whose responsibility it is to tell another child the limits of household chores.
A violation of an intellectual boundary is when a parent tells a dirty joke in front of their young elementary aged daughters that is misogynistic. The parent may laugh and may even try to be subtle about it. Here is the thing, children watch their parents closely as they are their child’s main attachment figure. A child gets confused why their one parent called their aunt a name and it may be a joke between adults. Oversexualizing women, parents, or children in a family context confuses boundaries on an intellectual level. This is considered inappropriately crossing an intellectual boundary.
Material Boundary:
Parents often know that kids have difficulty sharing books, toys, or pokemon cards. We must try to help a child, depending on their age, understand how to develop this social skill. As parents we can allow them to choose to decline in sharing and accept when someone refuses to share with them. It is also important to help your child understand why.
Parents may often need to model how to be assertive and no in various contexts. One can be at the neighborhood pool. You elementary aged child may express that another child is using the unicorn floaty we brought to the pool. The parent can validate the child’s concern and then say, “It’s okay to share for a moment more. I will get it now that we are getting ready to leave.” The parent can gently smile and let the child know we are now leaving. “We are so glad you had fun on the floaty. However, we need it back as we are leaving.”
Material boundaries are tricky with others that may not know how to establish boundaries. For example, if your child sees a camp counselor with a gatorade and the child asks the counselor, “can I have a gatorade?” The counselor may say, “sure, I can get you one.” The camp counselor may have said that but he potentially could be violating a camp rule and a material boundary with your child. If your child comes home and asks, “mom, I asked a camp counselor to give me a gatorade, and he said he would. Is that okay if he gives me that gift?” The parent can take a deep breath and say, “thank you for sharing this part of your day and I am so glad you are asking these questions. You are so intelligent!” Then, the parent can say, “I will gladly buy you a gatorade but we don’t accept gifts from the camp counselors. It’s just the rules and we will make sure to clarify with the camp site director.
Time Boundary:
Many parents struggle with this as it’s a very difficult part of managing time and not knowing how to say, “no thanks.” Parents are stressed these days and it’s even more important to address the needs of the parents, children and overall family. For example, transitions to bed time, leaving the pool, going to the grocery store all require some level of energy to time to transition. Parents can be at various stages of exhaustion and sometimes it can be addressed by looking at how they spend their free time. Parents sometimes don’t have social support or extended family to celebrate birthdays or major holidays.
Typically, it’s important for parents to really develop a sense of what they need. A parent may need to identify more sleep time and this is a great example of a boundary for a parent to identify. Parents help their child transition into a bedtime routine. Leaving the pool is a whole other story for parents. Children often struggle to listen and it can be a process for parents to become more attuned that their child’s behavior is a way the child communicates their needs. A child won’t say, “mom, I am hungry and tired so before I meltdown can we get home?” Parents must read their child’s behavior, be attuned to their child’s needs and anticipate the time to leave before total hangry and over tired starts.
Vulnerable families over time can become burnt out and need another friend or help especially if you are a single parent. Perpetrators can take advantage of these scenarios where parents need help with childcare. Remember, perpetrators can be pastors, neighbors, and we must remain vigilant. So, start the conversation with friends and family on identifying safe people you consider in your family. Why are they safe and what constitutes “safe” for someone versus for yourself.
Therapy for Mothers with Childhood Trauma
Parenting is difficult even if you don’t have a significant history of childhood trauma. Many mothers are doing it all and never considering their own boundaries first. It is when a mother says, “no, we are going to bed now, not later.” That is the first step of various moments that a mom can begin modeling taking care of herself and helping their child figure out ways to continue healthy sleep habits. If you are a mother that has figured out how to do it all but you want more than just survival tactics, I am the mom therapist that does this deep work. EMDR therapy, narrative therapy, and trauma sensitive therapy are just a few ways to get started. You can book a free 15 min call here, email here, or call at 803-573-0279.
References
Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself by Nedra Glover Tawwab
