Kristi McVee (00:00)
Hey Kristi, how do I balance giving information and not scaring my kid? He's five.
Short question, huge topic, and honestly, this is the question I get asked more than almost any other because this is the thing that stops most parents before they even start. They want to protect their child and they want to educate their child, but they're terrified that the moment they open their mouth, they're going to plant a seed of fear that they can't take back. So today we're going to sort that out because I promise you, done right, these conversations don't scare kids, they empower them.
Welcome to Ask Kristi. I'm Kristi McVee, and this is the podcast where real questions from real parents get real answers. I spent a decade with the West Australian Police, nearly six years of that as a detective specializing in child abuse investigations, and close to nine years as a specialist child interviewer.
I've sat in rooms with children who have experienced the very worst. And what I can tell you from every single one of those experiences is this:
The children who coped best, who could communicate what had happened to them, who understood that what happened to them wasn't their fault. Those children almost always had an adult in their life who had given them a foundation of knowledge before anything went wrong. The foundation starts at five, it starts even earlier, and it doesn't have to be scary. So let's bust the myth first. I want to address the fear behind the question before I answer it because I think it's really important.
A lot of parents believe that talking to their young child about body safety, about unsafe adults, about what to do if something doesn't feel right, that talking about it sometimes introduces danger into their child's world. Like if you don't say it out loud, then the risk doesn't exist. I understand their instinct completely, but here's the truth.
The danger exists whether you talk about it or not. The difference is whether your child has the language, the knowledge, and the permission to tell you if something happens. In my years as a detective, I never once met a child who didn't have an adult in their life that they could have told.
The problem was no one had ever told them it was okay to speak. No one had given them the words, no one had made it clear that their body belonged to them and that secrets about bodies were never okay to keep. That's what these conversations do. They don't introduce fear, they build a safety net around your child. So, what do you actually say to a five-year-old? Here's the thing about five-year-olds:
They are incredibly capable little people. They are sponges. They learn through play, through story, through repetition, and they don't have the same emotional weight attached to topics that adults do. I know my five-year-old was way more onto things than I realized and thought that she was ready for, and that's why I know that five-year-olds can handle some of these topics, because my five-year-old did.
To a five year old, a conversation about body safety is just another conversation and it's not loaded, it's not traumatic, it's just information, like knowing to look both ways before we cross the road. So here's how I'd approach it. Start with the body, not the danger. You don't start by saying there are people out there who might hurt you. You start with your body belongs to you, every single part of it.
That's it. That's the foundation. Everything builds from there. It's like a scaffold. You build the bottom layer and then the next layer and then the next layer until you get to 18 and they're off on their own.
From that foundation, you can introduce the concept of private parts, the parts covered by your swimsuit or underwear, and explain that those parts are private, which means they belong to you, and nobody should be touching them or looking at them unless it's for a health reason, like a doctor, then mum and dad will be there.
and we use the right correct anatomical names for body parts. I know that makes some parents uncomfortable, but here's why it matters. Children who know the correct names for their body parts are more easily understood when they disclose to police or to someone like me who is a specialist child interviewer.
It can get very confusing to children, especially when someone's grooming them, if they don't know the right terms or if the person uses an incorrect term for their body parts, which quite often happens when they're being groomed and they use nicknames or cute names for their private parts.
They're also more likely to be taken more seriously, and it removes the shame and secrecy that offenders rely on.
Vagina, penis, bottom, they're just words, they're just body parts. We need to teach them. In fact, the kids who knew that and had those conversations with their parents were less likely to be targeted by abusers. Because
they're risk to a predator because if they know what they are and they're comfortable in talking about it in that language, then the predator is more likely to be found out if they do groom and abuse them. So introduce the idea of safe and unsafe feelings as well. Five-year-olds understand feelings really well,
talk about the feeling in your tummy when something doesn't feel right. You might call it a worry feeling or a yucky feeling or that doesn't feel right feeling. But you know, they can understand that when that feeling happens, they need to come and tell someone, someone on their safety network, a safe adult, you.
Tell them that this feeling is important. It's their body's early warning sign, their warning signs to say, I don't feel good. Their body is really smart, our bodies are really smart, and when it sends them that signal, they should tell us safe adult. Talk about safe adults, not strangers. The old stranger danger messaging is outdated, actually not that helpful, because the vast majority of abuses perpetrated by someone your child actually knows and trusts. Instead of strangers, talk about safe adults and tricky people.
Who are the people in your life that you could tell anything to? Help your child identify three to five safe adults, people they trust, people who would believe them, people who would listen to them, and people who would help. And this is crucial. Tell them that safe adults never ask children to keep body secrets or secrets.
That's the clearest line we can share with our kids. If anyone asks them to keep a secret about their body or about touching, it's not a safe secret. That is a tell mum secret, a tell dad secret, a tell-your-safe adult secret every single time. These are the languages of empowerment, not fear. Here's the shift I want you to make in how you think about these conversations.
You are not warning your child about danger, you are giving your child power.
There is a massive difference between saying there are bad people out there who might hurt you, which is frightening and vague and leaves a child feeling small and vulnerable, and saying your body belongs to you, you are the boss of your body, and if anyone ever makes you feel unsafe, you can always tell me and I will always believe you. See the difference? One of those sentences shrinks a child, the other one helps them grow.
That's the tone I want you to bring to every single one of these conversations. Calm, matter of fact, empowering, like you're passing on important information, which you are, not delivering a warning about a terrifying world. And I want to say something about that personally.
I was very open with my own daughter about body safety from a very young age, two, three years old, when I became a police officer and I became aware of how to protect my daughter. I talked to her in age-appropriate ways, the same things that I teach in my
Conversations with kids' body safety cards in this podcast, in my resources, and using the language she could understand, building on it as she grew. And it didn't make her fearful. You know, obviously obviously some of these things are very scary, but the more that we empower our kids and they know that they can come to us, the stronger and less scary it is.
For my daughter it made her someone who knew her own boundaries, who could name her feelings, and who she knew without a shadow of a doubt that she could always come to me. That's what you're building with your own child, not fear a foundation.
So keep it ongoing and keep it normal. And this one thing is so important. This is not a one-time talk. This is an ongoing conversation that you will weave into your normal life, your everyday life in teachable moments. Bath time, getting dressed, reading a picture book, watching a TV show where a character feels left out or unsafe. These are all natural entry points and talking points. You don't need to sit down with your five year old for a serious conversation with a capital S. You just need to
look for the moments and use them. The more normal these conversations become, the more normal it is for your child to come to you when something doesn't feel right. And that that opens doors and it is the most powerful child safety tool you have.
There are also some brilliant resources to help you. Five-year-olds love a good book. So books like My Body Belongs to Me or No Means No are fantastic for this age group. And of course, I've got the Conversations with Kids Body Safety Deck. It's designed specifically to open these conversations in a way that's calm, age-appropriate, and actually fun for kids. You can find it on my website at kristimcvee.com.
So, to the parent who asks this question, you are already doing the right thing by asking it. The fact that you want to get this right, that you care enough to think about how you say it, your child is already safer because of you. Don't let the fear of getting it wrong stop you from starting. An imperfect conversation that opens the door is worth so much more than perfect silence.
I'm Kristi McVee and this is Ask Kristi, where we have the conversations that matter so your kids know they can too. See you next time.
