Teaching Personal Safety 

Earlier this term all the 4 year old kindergarten groups participated in the KidsRoar Incursion to support teaching young children personal safety skills. Learning these skills at a young age empowers them to protect themselves with the support of a trusted adult they can talk to helping to prevent abuse and violence and promoting positive health and wellbeing. 

The themes of the Kids Roar incursion were 1. We all have the right to feel safe at all times and 2. We can talk about anything with someone we can trust, no matter what it is.

By participating in the Kidsroar session the children learn about the importance to be able to "ROAR"!. ROAR means the following':-

Recognise  - feelings, warning signs, safe /unsafe situations and secrets.

Own - their body and understand it belongs to them. 

Assert – have confidence to implement the ‘No, Go, Tell’ strategy

Report – to their identified trusted adults and persist in telling them how they feel 

                                (taken from https://www.roaraustralia.edu.au/kidsroar/)

During this interactive session the children learnt to identify safe and unsafe situations and how their bodies may feel when they feel unsafe. The children were introduced the word consent and learnt that it is okay to say no if they feel unsafe.  The children  learnt the correct names of their private parts. It is important for parents to do this teaching with their children from a young age as this tells an abuser that the child is educated and makes the child less vulnerable.  The children need to know that their body belongs to them and that they have private parts  and they must tell someone if they feel unsafe or something happens to them or their bodies that they don’t like. You may have heard the words “STOP, I DON’T LIKE IT” – these are the words the children were taught in the session and the children are encouraged to use these to help empower them in keeping safe. The children then developed a safety hand of five adults they feel comfortable talking to if they need to. I would urge you all to revisit or create a safety hand and display this in your home and talk about it with your child.

It is important that these personal safety messages are taught to young children as early as possibly as part of everyone's responsibility towards reducing children's vulnerability to abuse. There are arrange of books appropriate for young children available from bookshops or online  (some titles displayed below)

If you would like more resources to assist in teaching these important messages please see    https://www.childsafe.org.au/help-for-families/body-safety-resources/

 for free resource for families.