Explaining adult stuff to 4-1/2 year old

Rather than teach him fear, teach him pride. He doesn't need to understand sexual abuse to be taught to have a proprietary attitude about his body.

Demonstrate to him by being a rolemodel of good health and pride of ownership of your own body.

Teaching kids to fear certain stereotypes and situations from the 50's and 60's is what made them so susceptible to abuse nowadays. Rather then having to hope you thought of all the various possibilities that your child should fear, come at it from the opposite point of view and just teach your kid one possibility...proprietary ownership of their own body and the power that gives them and how they can exercise that power through good health and trusting their instincts to yell "no!" when they are uncomfortable. He's not too young to start learning self defense methods, verbal and physical ones.

Re: Explaining adult stuff to 4-1/2 year old


There's a bit of an industry built up around this stuff......which means there are books available to help you.


Most of them are built around trying to help kids learn which parts of their body most people ought not to be touching, and to be able to identify good touch from bad touch.


Lots of people like this one:

It's My Body (Children's Safety & Abuse Prevention) (Paperback)
by Lory Freeman



Another popular one:

My Body Is Private (Albert Whitman Prairie Books) (Paperback)
by Linda Walvoord Girard, Rodney Pate



I don't know anything about this one:

Who Will Teach Johnny the Difference Between Good Touches and Bad Touches? (Paperback)
by Sandy West-Smith




Or this one:

My Personal Touch: A Child's Story about Good and Bad Touch (Paperback)
by Kathleen Shelly-Amoriello, Nancy L. Shelly (Illustrator)

There's lots of stuff around....you might want to check in a really good bookstore, or on the web. I think it is a matter of finding material you like and feel comfortable with.




I think, too, that a key thing is encouraging your son to feel entitled to speak out if he feels uncomfortable ....so this means being ok with it if he says he doesn't want to kiss Aunt Bertha etc, even if it is socially embarrassing...as well as demonstrating respect for his, and everyone else's, personal boundaries.

butrflynet and dlowan,

Thank you for the sound advice. I have started to say little things to my soon to be three year old about how to say no and I like the positive approach and information you offered.

Another note: it is never too young to start saying little things here and there about this. The more they hear it the more they will retain (think about tv shows they know so well). This is the age they repeat and remember so much. Not being afraid to speak up, shout and be confident is a good start in not being a victim.

One thing I just recently heard that I thought was helpful: if your child is on their bicycle and someone in a car approaches them (and they can't get away), have them wrap themselves in their bike (put a leg through). This makes it really hard for the pursuer to grab you kid and go.

When we were kids my mom would roleplay with us constantly, especially while in the car. Unexpectedly, she'd yell "crash!" and we'd do as she taught us and duck down on the floor of the car and cover our eyes, heads and back of the neck with our arms.

Or, we'd be walking along and she'd say "what would you do if someone you didn't know offered you candy to get into a car with them?" Then she'd ask us why we'd do that and what other things we could think of to do.

Or, if we answered the telephone and a stranger asked if our parents were home, what would we say and ask us why?

"Why" and "What else" were very important questions in our house. It made us think about all the variations of possibility both in events and response to those events. It wasn't just us kids always asking "why?"

Sorry to respond so late to this thread. Thank you for your inputs. dlowan I will check out the materials you suggested.

I got a piece of advice once, I forget where, but I thought it was great - instead of teaching them who to fear teach them to identify the people they could most likely trust if they were in trouble or scared or lost.

You can't really identify dangerous people by the way they look but you can learn to identify a policeman or a security guard or an employee or a mommy and those people will probably help you -- even though they are strangers.

We used to sit at the mall and try to pick out the "nice" people.

I was completely flipped out by those kidnappings that were in the news and increased the "stranger danger" talks a bit (Mo is now six) and the "your body belongs to you" talks.