Episode Details

Parents are rightfully concerned about their children’s safety. If you’re searching for tips on teaching children how to set boundaries, here’s what you need to know.

Children Need To Set Boundaries to Keep Themselves Safe

Here are four practical and empowering boundaries strategies when teaching children how to set boundaries:

1. Body awareness with basic hygiene, health, and safety concepts
2. The dangers of inappropriate media on the Internet and apps
3. Personal Safety – prevention awareness of safe boundaries for private parts
4. Educate children about emotional and psychological abuse. To learn about the 19 different types of emotional abuse, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

transcript: Teaching Children How To Set Boundaries

Anne: Today I have Kimberly Perry, author of Say No and Tell, a creative view of personal safety for Maisie. That’s the girl’s version, and Daxton for boys. After teaching personal safety to over 1,000 elementary school students, she was inspired to write the Say No and Tell book series. We’re talking about teaching children how to set boundaries. Welcome, Kimberly.

Kimberly: Thank you, Anne, for having me.

Anne: So, I have these two books, Say No and Tell Daxton and Say No and Tell Maisie, in my home, and I’ve used it with my sons and my daughter. These books are incredible for helping children. Kimberly, why did you decide to write a book about personal safety for young kids?

Kimberly: The statistics were shocking to me. How can it be that at least 2 out of every 10 girls and 1 out of every 10 boys are estimated to be sexually abused before their 14th birthday? According to Child Protective Services, every 8 minutes they respond to an abuse report. According to the CDC, about 1 in 6 boys and 1 in 4 girls are abused before the age of 18.

While serving as a health and physical education teacher in the Michigan public school system, I taught a unit called personal safety to over a thousand elementary students. I wondered why I had not been taught these prevention strategies when I was a child.

Sexual abuse can be physical abuse. Which most of us think of when we hear that term. It can also be non physical abuse, which is what a child might see, such as pornography. Or what a child might hear, which would be inappropriate language about private parts from a grown up to a child.

Empowering Families with Personal Safety

Kimberly: So with my experience of teaching these children and seeing the statistics, I want to share the message of personal safety for grownups, kids, and families, so they can be empowered. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s not just the physical body abuse. It’s the non physical, which includes pornography, and can be a grooming technique that a predator may use to groom a child into child abuse.

Anne: That’s fantastic. I can use it to meet my kids where they are when teaching children how to set boundaries and concepts that I think apply to various personal safety issues. Sexual abuse, of course, included in that, but in my case, emotional abuse. I’m grateful that this gives such great examples, and then the concepts are applicable to many situations for kids’ safety. Things we don’t learn in affordable relationship counseling.

Kimberly: Anne, I am so delighted to hear you say that, because I want you to tailor it to what you need, your family values, your family terminology, and your story. So for instance, you were talking about abuse in general.