Transcript of BONUS | Safety Rules Every Kid Needs to Know with Christy Keating

And it drove home for me that there were a lot of these cases that could have been prevented had the parents been aware of what grooming is, what it looks like, how it's used to get access to children. There were just a number of circumstances where I thought, "Parents aren't getting the information that they need to be getting." Why this isn't part of, like, Parenting 101, I don't know.

You know, the state of Washington, where I live, where we live, sends out—when you become a parent, you get these flyers in the mail. Well, when they're little, you get them every few months or every month, I can't even remember because my kids are older. But I still get them annually from my children. I'd have to go back and look at them all. But there certainly wasn't anything comprehensive in those flyers about grooming or child sexual abuse prevention that would even come close to providing parents with the information that they need to be aware of this.

And why it's not there, why it doesn't warrant its own 5-page packet, I don't know. But that's where we are.

It's usually rushed. It's said pretty quickly, like, you know, "This is only safe for me to do because your parents are in the room and I'm, you know, da-da-da-da." But there's no conversation—I have never had a conversation—with a pediatrician where I was being educated or informed about what to look out for. And I know pediatricians are not social workers, but that's a touch point where I feel like some sort of safety net could be set up where maybe there is a social worker in every pediatric office that, when you bring in a baby, God, even if you are provided with a series of quick videos about it, you know, "Here's critical information," and then the pediatrician confirmed that you had watched it and, you know, expressed the importance of it.

There's so many little ways. When our children start school, right, there could be information provided to parents then by the school counselor or by the PTA or—I mean, there's so many moving parts and so many groups that could be providing this information, and they're not doing it. And that's not to say that providing that information would save every child, but I firmly believe that it would save some of them.

And one child saved is worth it.

That being said, as a prosecutor, I certainly saw it in action or, I guess, after the fact when we were reviewing cases where kids had been victimized.

In very basic, kid-friendly terms, there's very accessible books that make these conversations very easy for parents, feel like they're not on the spot because reading a book is always much easier than trying to explain something yourself. I do encourage parents to start talking about, well, bodies from the time they're born, all the amazing things bodies can do, and sex and sexuality around age 4 to 5, depending on the child. And coinciding with all of that should be these safety rules, the most important of which is the clear understanding by every child that they are special, wonderful, awesome, and absolutely have the right to be safe in their brains, in their bodies, in their friendships, in their family relationships, right?

Safety should be the number one assumption for all children. The second thing that they need to know that we should start teaching them at a very early age is their name, their full name, their address, their phone number, or a parent's or safe adult's phone number. And this has gotten trickier because many of us do not have, like, a landline or one number, but they need to know their name, their address, their phone number. Those things can be tricky, especially here in the Pacific Northwest.

Street names are often like, you know, 189th Place, Southwest, or whatever. That's a hard thing for a kid to learn. Put it to a song. Putting things to a song always helps. My husband still remembers his address from when he was a child because his mom made up a song for it, so he made up a song for our children. But they need to know those things in case they get separated from you or in the case of an emergency or, for whatever reason, need to know how to get a hold of you. Third safety rule: never go anywhere or take anything from anyone that you don't know.

And for that matter, do not go anywhere with anyone or take anything from anyone, even if you do know them, unless you've gotten the permission of your safe adult first. So the story that I always tell around this one is that my daughter, when she was younger, it was one of those classic Seattle, like, torrential downpour days. I was home with a new baby. My husband was working from home, and he thought, "I'm going to go do our kid a solid and pick them up from school."

Goes over to school. She's not there anywhere. He's walking all around. He's going into the school. "Has anybody seen this kid?" "Nobody's seen this kid." And he calls me and he's like, "Honey, I can't find her." Well, while we're on the phone, she walks in the front door, and a well-meaning neighbor had offered her a ride. My well-meaning child didn't want to get wet and took the ride. Nobody called us to check in. She didn't say, "Can you call my mom or my dad?"

The neighbor didn't say, "I'm going to call your parents and make sure this is okay." And for a moment, we had that sort of moment of panic going, "Where is she?" So our kids need to know that they do not take a ride, whether they know the person or not. The next big one is that they need to know that their bathing suit areas and their mouths are private. We think of bathing suit areas as private. Mouths are also private. Mouths can be sexual.

It's just a general blanket rule: private parts include your mouth and any part covered by a bathing suit. We also need to give our children permission to be rude, disruptive, loud. So yelling, no. Telling a grown-up, no. That's something we also teach our children they can't do, right? We need to teach them they can do that, even with us sometimes. They need to know they don't have to be polite. I've always told my daughter, "Use your words first in a kind way.

Use your words stronger, and then you may use your body if you need to, to get out of a situation." Right? Like, if a, you know, a kid in your class is pulling your ponytail or poking at you or whatever, like, you can use your words first, and then you get to be louder. And if that doesn't work, then you get to use your body. So those are things that kids don't always know and don't always understand. And I will say that even when they understand it intellectually, they don't always believe it. So practice it with them.

Practice it. My younger daughter is more of a people pleaser and just sort of naturally. And so the first time we talked about this, she was like, "Oh, I could never do that, Mama." And we had to really talk about why that's important and then practice it. And then actually, my older daughter practiced it with her, which was helpful too. They need to know that kids never keep secrets, ever, ever, ever.

Surprises are awesome. Secrets are not. And they need to learn—we all need to learn this one—to listen to their inner voice, that little gut feeling that says, "Uh-oh," or, "Something doesn't feel good." And we need to teach our kids to listen to that. When that nod of anxiety is there or the "uh-oh" feeling or the butterflies or whatever, that that's something that they should not ignore and they can tell a safe grown-up about.

Mad, sad, happy, scared, hungry. That's not an emotion, but it is a very clear physical sensation. I would get them to tap into those first and help them identify and start making a connection between their brain and the emotion and the feeling. Then I might go into something like, "What does it feel like when you're, like, nervous or excited," right? So, like, you're jumping into the swimming pool for the first time and you know the water's going to be cold.

Where does that show up in your body? Because fear, nervousness, anxiety, those all tend to show up in a really similar place in our bodies. And then I would say—and you can do this over time, like, this doesn't have to all be one conversation—but, you know, do you ever sometimes feel like you get a little knot in your stomach or your chest feels kind of fluttery or tight? And do you ever feel like something just doesn't feel right for some reason?

You kind of feel like it's an "uh-oh." And most kids can connect with that "uh-oh" or the butterfly kind of feeling. And I would say, you know, just like when your tummy growls and it's telling you that you're hungry and you listen to it because you give it some food or some water, you should also listen to it when your tummy says, "Uh-oh," like, something doesn't feel quite right. And you can't feed that feeling. So what you want to do is come tell me or your other parent or your safe grown-up name, you know, put the name in there.

And we can help you figure out what to do about that "uh-oh" feeling. And sometimes we get "uh-oh" feelings because, you know, we're worried about a test at school. Sometimes we get "uh-oh" feelings because somebody's making us uncomfortable. And those are the ones that we really need to pay attention to when it's about another person or a situation, right? Walking down the street and we feel an "uh-oh" feeling, those are the times to go ask a grown-up for some help.

And that's the way I would kind of talk about that, is really help our kids start to connect those brain and body sensations, which, by the way, also helps them in learning to regulate emotion. So that's 8 or 10. I sort of condensed a few of them in there, but those are really the fundamental core things that our kids need to know. And then as they grow, right, from 5 years old to 15 years old, the rules don't really change, but we talk about them differently.

So you're not going to talk to a 15-year-old and say, "Well, you know, your bathing suit areas are private." Right? We're going to talk about that in a different, more blunt way, frankly. We should be by that age, but they should still know all of those things.

Like, something that you're like, "Oh, my God. Lordy, lordy, that sounds ridiculous," right? Because kids do come up with some kind of crazy things sometimes. But we need to listen and say things like, "Oh, tell me more about that. Like, what—why do you think you have an 'uh-oh' feeling about that?" Or, "What do you think your body's telling you?" Or, "Could you be excited?" You know, are you feeling something else? And that's where that emotional language is really important. But if we don't listen and we don't believe them, they learn to stop talking.

And the other thing that we need to be really cautious about is we don't always know who's safe and who's not safe. We really don't know who's safe and not safe. And so if our child says, "I don't want to play with that other kid down the street anymore," that's something to listen to and to dive into a little bit. Even if something hasn't happened, it teaches them that we're a safe space to talk, which when they do hit those teenage years, we want to be that safe space for them to talk.

So a child says, "I don't like to be hugged," or, "I don't want to be touched," or, "Please don't tickle me," and somebody insists on busting through those limits and won't really allow those to stand, that's a red flag and a warning sign. Now, one of the things, as I go through these, that you'll notice, some of them can be harmless ultimately, right? It may not mean that somebody's going to sexually abuse your child. It may just be somebody who thinks that tickling is fun and wants to, you know, tickle your kid.

But it doesn't matter what the ultimate end result is. What we want to look out for is anybody that's not respecting those boundaries, and we want to make sure our children know that that's not okay for people to not respect their boundaries. Anyone who insists on being physical with a child, like having them sit on their laps or hug them or snuggle up with them, you know, anything around sort of physical touch, even when the child doesn't want the contact, right? If you're seeing body language from your kid that's like, you know, "I don't want this," or, "I hate hugging Grandpa," and Grandpa or whoever it is is insisting on that, that's a red flag or a warning sign.

Someone who shares inappropriate information with a child or confides inappropriate information. So this is like the babysitter who talks about their dating life and their sex life with the kid that they're babysitting. Highly inappropriate. The teacher who tells his teenage students jokes with sexual innuendos in them. Inappropriate, inappropriate. And those are all red flags and warning signs that parents, educators, other adults should all be paying attention to and tuning into. Someone who seems overtly interested in the sexuality of a particular child or speaks about their body a lot, you know, "That little girl's going to be such a knockout.

Look at her." You know, like, children are not sexy. And so when you're hearing adult-like language being used about a child or when speaking with a child, that's a red flag and a warning sign. That's a desensitization tool that would-be offenders will use. You know, someone who insists on going into the bathroom or opening up the bedroom door when they know that a child is changing. Someone who tends to prefer the company of children.

Listen, I love my kids. I also love not hanging out with my kids, right? And so if you're at, like, a dinner party and there's one adult who's constantly going upstairs to, like, hang out with where the kids are, red flag.

We need to be teaching educators better to look out for these red flags and warning signs in their fellow educators because I will tell you, I did handle educator misconduct cases. I think we talked about this. And there were always red flags and warning signs. They are always there. When it comes to our children, it is a really difficult thing to navigate, especially when they're younger. And nuance is trickier, right? So where I sort of come down in the way that we talk to them is helping them understand what an appropriate relationship looks like, whether it's a coach, a teacher, a priest, or a rabbi, a music teacher, a dance instructor, right?

We can talk about what's normal, right? It is completely normal for a teacher to have students pass out papers or, you know, have special tasks. That would be normal as long as it's, like, something that's rotated and all the kids are doing it and nobody's alone and the door's open. When it becomes abnormal is when it's one child repeatedly, the doors are closed, right? Something's off about that.

So what we want to really do is help our kids understand what it looks like when it's a healthy relationship so that they can start to recognize when it's not normal and then report that to you, you being the safe adult in their life.

This is, in fact, a solvable problem if we care enough to solve it.