They make you feel safe. The most essential part of a “safe” adult is that they make you feel safe. You know that they will not hurt you or ask you to do things that hurt you. They will not put you in situations where you can be harmed, and you know you can trust them.
They follow the family safety rules. Safety rules are going to vary by family based on location, size, culture, and demographics. The family safety rules should be explicitly explained, and the nonnegotiable rules should be so clear that any member of the family can recite them on command. (An example might be “No one picks you up except Mom. If someone else shows up, they have to know the family password.”) These safety rules should always include some variation of “No one may touch you in your swimsuit parts, and if anyone does or asks to, you need to tell Mom.”
They don’t ask you to keep secrets. Safe adults don’t ask you to keep secrets, and never threaten you as a way to force you to keep a secret.
They listen to you. Safe adults listen to what you have to say, and they listen to you without judging you or making you feel bad for sharing with them.
Now, you likely noticed above that I talked about “swimsuit parts.” You’ll find as you go through this book that I almost exclusively utilize biological terminology, and I do not shy away from using the correct anatomical terms for body parts. That holds true when I’m speaking to children, too. That being said, I also use the term “swimsuit parts” when talking to children. People who choose to harm children are savvy, and it is not outside the realm of possibility that someone would use different terminology or slang words to trick a child into complying with predatory demands: “Oh, I know I can’t look at your vulva, but your pussy is okay …” Absolutely not. By stating the health and safety boundary that “No one should look at or touch your swimsuit parts,” a parent provides a concrete, visual representation informing the child that anything covered by a swimsuit is off-limits. It doesn’t matter what slang term might be used or any other way it’s framed. “My mom says no one should touch me on my swimsuit parts, and that’s a swimsuit part.”
You also noticed part of picking a safe adult is establishing a strict rule around secrets. Now, I have my fair share of secrets—there are things that even my closest friends do not know about me. As an adult, I am allowed to have secrets. Teenagers are allowed to have secrets from their parents and from their friends. Young children, however—particularly those still in the preoperational stage of development, or under age seven—should never be asked to keep secrets, because dangerous people might frame abuse as a “secret.”
Let’s say you buy your spouse a really expensive blouse for Christmas and your child sees it. “Hey, that’s a secret. Don’t tell Mommy” may seem like a natural thing to say. Unfortunately, there is hidden subtext in that request. It implies “Your mommy shouldn’t know about this, and if you tell her, I’ll be upset.” A secret implies “If you tell, there might be a bad consequence, and I don’t want you to tell anyone.”
Instead, consider what the subtext might be with this phrasing: “Hey, that shirt is a surprise, and we get to give it to Mommy at Christmas.” Do you see the difference there? The underlying message is “Hey, your mommy will know about this eventually, and it’s going to be a nice thing for her.” There is no threat of consequence, because in all honesty, there shouldn’t be one. If the child accidentally spills the beans and ruins the surprise, it’s disappointing, but generally not life-ruining. If what a child is being asked to keep hidden would ruin someone’s life, it is worth reflecting on why the child needs to know this information.
You can take the idea of “surprises, not secrets” one step further by sharing surprise planning with them … and planning surprises for them. I’m personally a big believer in throwing my children at least one surprise party so they know what it feels like to have a good surprise. I want them to know that surprises are positive, joyous things that are designed to make people feel good—so that if anyone asks them to keep a “secret” that they feel might be unsafe, their alarm bells will go off.
Though we strive to choose the safest people to be near our children, and to teach our children how to identify who is and isn’t safe, we cannot guarantee that we will have 100% success, as much as it pains me to say. As you saw earlier in the chapter, our children can get their boundaries tested directly in front of our faces. And we won’t always be there with our children—people who aim to hurt children are very good at putting themselves in situations where they have the chance to do so. As a result, one of the most important parts of protecting our children’s safety is, again, unconditional positive regard: reminding your child that not only is there nothing they can do that will make you stop loving them, but also that you believe what they tell you, the first time they tell you. Even if you feel you have to investigate, even if your child has a history of spinning yarns or spouting tall tales, even if you think there’s no way what they’re saying is right—your first reaction is “Thank you for telling me.” Because keeping them talking, keeping them telling you, is parenting with an eye to their future.
CHAPTER 3: IN BRIEF
Consent is a concept that can be modeled and taught beginning when children are infants and toddlers. They can be shown that they have a say in how their body is treated, and they can learn the evolving boundaries of their own autonomy at the same time. Conversations about consent, both as it applies to children and to their interactions with others, must be ongoing, because of how children’s cognitive abilities change as they grow.
Key Takeaways
Consent often starts as questions about what a child will or won’t engage with physically. Asking permission for hugs, tickles, cuddles, and other forms of physical engagement allows a child to practice giving and revoking consent.
Consent is important, but it does not supersede a child’s health and safety. Reflecting on what you consider health and safety non-negotiables will be helpful when discussing and practicing consent with your child.
It’s helpful to establish boundary phrases like “I don’t want to play that game” or “I will not let you tickle my feet” with your child so that setting and maintaining boundaries can become comfortable.
The safe adults in your child’s life must understand and respect consent, and choosing safe adults includes having conversations about values, boundaries, and consent.
CHAPTER 4 Consent for Knowledge
My mom did an excellent job of showing me how loved I was growing up. I didn’t fear making mistakes, and when I asked questions, I was confident that the answers she gave me were scientifically accurate. After all, I had unrestricted access to a whole suite encyclopedia (which, as you learned earlier, I took full advantage of) and The Learning Channel was frequently the channel of choice in our house—my favorite was watching total knee replacements. Heck, my mom even took advantage of one of her own injuries to teach us about the anatomy of the inner arm.
My parents had purchased their first-ever home when we moved to the small town where I grew up. It was a story-and-a-half house with bedrooms over the garage and a couple sets of stairs up to the front door. After living in the house for almost a decade, my mom declared that the wrought-iron front railing needed to be painted to deal with the rust after harsh Minnesota winters. She dutifully took the railing down and spread it out in the garage to be sanded and painted. Later that week, after putting on the first coat of paint, she needed to run an errand, so she hustled inside and grabbed her purse. As she walked out the front door and headed down the stairs, she tried leaning on the … nonexistent railing. Naturally, because there was nothing there to support her, she went “ass over teakettle” (her words) and fell to the landing. She gathered her wits, noticed some blood, and came inside to holler for my dad. After grabbing a flour sack towel from the kitchen to stanch the bleeding, she headed back out the front door to go to the car. As she walked past the living room, she was met with the stunned faces of my older sister, myself, and my little brother.
“Oh, hi, kids. I fell down.”
“Clearly,” my sister replied somewhat sarcastically.
“Yes, well, I’m headed to the hospital.”
“WHY?!” I asked, a rather silly question, given that she was leaving drips of blood on the tile.
In an attempt to reassure me, my mom launched into an explanation … and an anatomy lesson.
“Well, you see, when I fell, the corner of the step cut my arm. See the blood? Well, under the blood you can see the muscles that make up my wrist flexor group, and some fat, and if you look closely … here, you can see the bone! So I’m going to head to the doctor so they can sew my arm back up and put a bandage on it. You stay here with your sister.”
The child was too stunned to speak.
My mom headed out the door and got her stitches, and I sat on the couch, processing. I had asked a question and gotten an answer … though not necessarily the one I was expecting. I don’t fault my mom for giving me what some could argue was a little too much information—she was in a bit of a state, so her judgment maybe wasn’t perfect—and the result has made for great family lore.
This was an instance where normally my mother would have asked for consent to give me this knowledge. At any other time, when we asked questions that might be answered with scary or overwhelming or really just a lot of information, my parents would verify that we actually wanted to know. This verification came in several forms, but the simplest and most straightforward was directly asking us “Are you sure you want to know?” As a parent, I have maintained this method, but with a slight change: I include the reason why I’m asking.
“Mom, how do the cells get in a uterus to make a baby?”
“That question has a couple different answers, might make you think of more questions, and will probably make you feel some pretty big and interesting feelings. Are you sure you want to know right now? Or would you like to wait?”
My kids have taken every possible route when asked this question, from asking to wait until later all the way to insisting on knowing and asking several follow-up questions. But in every scenario, they have felt in control and able to steer how much they were learning, all because they have given consent for knowledge. They have felt empowered to direct the conversation and to tell me when they wanted more information and when they were ready to disengage. The idea that your child can basically ask you to shut up might feel off-putting, but think about how many times you have looked away from a news story or opted not to open a comment thread online. When we are a primary source of information for our children, I believe they need to have the option to “close window.”
See, when we talk about consent, it is almost always framed in the physical sense. Chapter 3 stressed how important it is to teach our children that they have the ability to give and withdraw consent over their own bodies, and that they must obtain consent when interacting with other people’s bodies. But very infrequently do we consider teaching children (or anyone, really) about consent in the mental, emotional, or spiritual sense.
At the beginning of this book, I recounted how my dad sat me down to have The Talk and revealed that I remember very little of it. I am fairly certain that part of the reason my brain kicked up the ’90s pop to drown out my dad was that I had not consented to hear the information he was presenting. Not because it was new information, but because I was not in a mental or emotional place to want to hear it from my dad. I had already reached the point in our relationship where we could joke about bodies and sex—he got me good when we were watching Ghost and during the pottery scene simply said, “You know what that is supposed to stand for, right?”—but having a frank and open conversation about things my body might feel and how I might someday date? Absolutely not. I was not in a place to have that conversation … but he didn’t ask. And I think he was so intent on giving the lecture correctly that he couldn’t see that I wasn’t listening.
The most important thing to remember as you embark on having these conversations is just that—they are conversations, not lectures. These are opportunities to sit down and share information, yes, but also to listen to what your child has to say about what they may or may not know. To get a read on their feelings toward relationships, sex, and themselves. On balance, you should be listening at least as much as you are talking, if not more. Because if you’re not listening … then they likely aren’t, either.
That is not to say that we should let the conversation die if they are not talking—this information is too vital for us to simply skip it. We need to become facilitators of conversation, learn to ask questions and ease discomfort so our children feel empowered to discuss with us or to seek information in other safe places. One of the most powerful questions you can ask your child is “What do you want to know?” Even though it is six simple words, it can be used for several different purposes:
“Mom, what is an orgy?” asks Rick, age fourteen.
“What do you want to know?”
“Well, what is it?”
“Okay. It’s when a group of more than three people have sex.”
