Programs for young students are age-appropriate, non-threatening and highly interactive. They build on the idea that just as we have safety rules for crossing the street, riding in a car, or reacting to a fire, there are similar strategies for keeping our feelings and bodies safe. While risk-reduction and prevention are addressed, there is a strong emphasis on developing protective strengths and skills in the child.
Feedback from participants:
Thank you for teaching us about touches.
Thank you for teaching us how to say, “No! Go! and Tell!”
Thank you for teaching us how to keep the bully away from us.
Kindergarten class thank you letter to Maggie the puppet
Concurrent parent and teacher training: The major benefit of programs for young children is empowering the child to disclose abuse or threatening behavior to an adult who can help. The power to end abuse at these ages really lies in the hands of adults recognizing perpetrators of abuse and then holding them accountable. We strongly encourage concurrent parent and teacher training in these issues in order to:
reinforce safety concepts
provide environments that build protective and resiliency factors in the child
handle disclosures with sensitivity, and
confront abusive behaviors effectively
Bullying Prevention (3 year olds): Identifying Feelings: Feelings identification, empathy, healthy communication and social skills, strong self-esteem and the ability to influence your environment are all developmental assets critical for the prevention of bullying behavior. Through puppetry, art, music, story-telling and a small-muscle activity, children learn to: identify their feelings, recognize the feelings of others, and communicate feelings and respond to others’ feelings in healthy ways. This lesson includes an exercise on anger-management.
Boundaries, Bullying and Touches: Designed to be a non-threatening, interactive learning experience, this multi-session program builds on the idea that just as we have safety rules for crossing the street, riding in a car, or reacting to a fire, there are similar strategies for keeping our feelings and bodies safe. All students receive activity packets and paper bag puppets for home reinforcement of safety concepts. This program consists of two presentations, Safe Touch, Unsafe Touch and Bullying, described below, which can also be offered individually.
Safe Touch, Unsafe Touch: In puppet show format, children discover the difference between safe touches (like hugs and kisses), unsafe touches (like kicks and hits, or someone touching their private parts or asking them to touch their private parts – private parts being “the parts of your body covered by a bathing suit”) and confusing touches (like being hugged when they don’t want to be hugged, being tickled for too long, etc.) The puppet introduces the concept of personal boundaries (within the context of privacy, safe space and individual rights) which everyone needs to respect and teaches children how to trust their own feelings and gut instincts and find age-appropriate ways, both physical and verbal, to assert their right to feel safe. Children also identify helping sources in their environment (like teachers, parents, neighbors, etc.) and how to access them.
Bullying: Puppet Zach or Maggie is having a problem with bullying behavior at school and asks the children to help solve it. Through group conversation, the children help define the problem as bullying and come up with assertive options to handle it. The puppet/child who is bullying is also introduced and explains her or his motives and, when realizing how the impact on the victim, identifies ways to stop this behavior. This program explores children’s options as targets, bystanders (upstanders), and persons practicing bullying behavior, and how we can all work to stay safe.
Alternative presentation format for all programs: Interactive Book Reading: Having a trained actor/facilitator read to students is an exciting and memorable way to empower and educate children. We utilize acting and voice techniques to bring books and characters to life in a lively, animated reading style that fully engages children while teaching about issues of bullying and safe/unsafe touch. Following the reading is a discussion of the characters and the issues the book presents along with activities, such as role-playing. Through these stories, students learn empathy, healthy and effective communication, boundary setting, the definition of bullying and safe vs. unsafe touching as well as to whom to go for help.
Bullies,Targets and Upstanders (bystanders): In small group discussion and through role playing, children analyze relational aggression scenarios, including bullying, cliques, etc. from the perspective of the target, bystander and those practicing bullying behavior. Greater emphasis is placed on upstander intervention and leadership for social change than is done in K-2 presentations. This program includes age-appropriate analysis of:
• assertiveness versus aggressive behaviors
• effective management of anger and disappointment
• the rudiments of problem solving
• perspective taking and critical thinking
Feeling Safe: This program builds on the foundation of Safe Touch, Unsafe Touch with a higher level of challenge and understanding for older children. The presentation includes “What would you do if…” scenarios that promote brainstorming of possible responses to uncomfortable situations, including typical lures used to manipulate a potential victim. There is also greater discussion of our internal alarm system that lets us know when something doesn’t feel quite right (heart pounding, stomach churning, etc.)
Internet Safety: Being Safe in an Electronic World (5thgrade): This highly interactive, constantly evolving curriculum can be customized for the teacher to address age-appropriate electronic media dangers unique to her/his class. The basic computer-focused curriculum explores dangers such as bullying, harassment, exposure to inappropriate material and sexual predators – all of which students can encounter whether they use the computer for research, social networking or entertainment. Safety planning around e-mails and instant messaging, chat and game rooms, pop-ups, and lurking are all addressed in this program. Strategies taught to reduce on-line vulnerability include safe-guarding of personal information in profiles and screen names, comprehension of on-line vocabulary, surfing safely, recognition of the lures that can move on-line danger to real life contact, identifying morphing on-line personae and reporting dangerous behaviors.
This curriculum can be customized to address safe use of cell phones, use of technology for stalking, sexting, and dangers in video games with online play capacity.
Something’s Happening At Home (a curriculum dealing with domestic violence): This program is geared toward the child who witnesses domestic violence at home. Either through puppetry or group exploration of hypothetical situations, this program provides a safe environment that will encourage disclosure to an adult support person(s.) The central character is a child upset about unhappy things happening at home, like anger and yelling. S/he’s not sure what to do about it and even thinks s/he may be at fault. Children in the audience help the character to define feelings of anger and stress, handle those feelings constructively, identify boundaries of responsibility, and find healthy conflict resolution skills and strategies for staying safe and happy. In this process, all children build empathy. This curriculum is based on a curriculum created by Prudence Crandall House.
Alternative presentation format: Interactive Book Reading: Reading is fundamental and having a trained actor/facilitator read to students is an exciting and memorable way to empower and educate children. We utilize acting and voice techniques to bring books and characters to life in a lively, animated reading style that fully engages children while teaching about issues of bullying and safe/unsafe touch. Following the reading is a discussion of the characters and the issues the book presents along with activities, such as role-playing. Through these stories, students learn empathy, healthy and effective communication, boundary setting, the definition of bullying and safe vs. unsafe touching as well as who to go to for help.
