Meghan Carroll – Deputy Head of Primary

Year 6 End of Year Celebration

On Wednesday 4 December 2019, the Year 6 students and staff travelled to Homebush Aquatic Centre as part of their end of the year celebration. Thank you to the Year 6 team for organising this special event.

Deborah Blackman – Parent Information Session

On Wednesday 27 November 2019, we welcomed Deborah Blackman to our School to speak about ‘Talking To Children About Difficult Topics’. Thank you to those parents/guardians who were able to attend.

Deborah uses the EduCARE Model which includes students, parents and staff in the training and conversation. The program, with children, focuses on positive messages such as ‘safety rules’ and ‘personal safety skills’.

In summary, the parent presentation explored a variety of topics including how to talk to your children about feelings, secrets, good touch and bad touch, and how to teach them some useful skills for child protection. I have included a few notes below from the presentation:

Preventing Child Sexual Assault

• Children need to hear from their parents that nothing is too difficult to tell as they often feel too embarrassed to tell their parents of abuse.
• Discuss comfortable (yes) feelings or uncomfortable (no) feelings.
• Can equate these to warning signals like traffic lights – trying to give messages. Bodies also give warning signals when there are ‘no’ or ‘uncomfortable’ (feeling scared, unsafe or confused) feelings e.g. trembling, sweating, freezing, running, feeling sick, feeling confused, having butterflies in tummy. If you feel these feelings, tell an adult.
• Who can you tell? As a parent, tell your child to tell you. Also give them other options – teacher or family members.
• Good secrets and bad secrets – tell children to consider whether they get ‘yes’ or ‘no’ feelings from the secret e.g. buying mum a present and keeping it a secret for a week until her birthday. Bad secrets make ‘no’ feelings and you have to tell an adult bad secrets – even if someone tells you to keep it a secret.

Strategies for Children

• Say no, go away, tell an adult
• Bad secrets must be told
• Private parts are private
• Don’t do anything or go anywhere without your parent’s/teacher’s permission
• If you need help, ask a parent e.g. if you are lost in a shop – choose an adult who is there with a child
• Make sure your child knows your mobile phone number if possible

Strategies for Parents

• Believe your children if they report to you
• Validate your child’s feelings
• Keep communication open so they can talk about anything
• Your child can trust you
• Tell your child who else they can trust
• Create a list of safe people e.g. who to go into the car with after school
• Minimise opportunity – reduce times your child is with an adult 1:1 who you don’t know.
• Discuss and role play situations

Responding to Disclosures

• Be open and available
• Stay calm – don’t overreact, don’t under react
• “I am so sorry that his happened to you but it is good that you told me.”
• Remind children that children are not at fault and that nothing is too terrible to tell
• Don’t make negative comments about the alleged perpetrator. Focus on the child.
• If a child wants to talk about abuse, listen carefully and, as soon as you can, write everything down