The following activities have been created for parents to use at home with their child. The activities provide an opportunity for parents to be engaged in the learning process. Parental support and involvement is instrumental to your child’s learning. These activities help parents know what information to share.
An important component of child personal safety is helping a child distinguish between harmless secrets s/he can keep and hurtful secrets that need to be shared with a Safe Adult. Many dangerous situations involve some element of secrecy. Sexual offenders often use ploys to manipulate a child into keeping abuse and inappropriate behaviour a secret.
Keep and Speak Secrets was created to address the issue of sexual abuse and secrecy using age appropriate information. The intent of teaching this strategy is to help disrupt harmful situations a child may encounter and to increase the reporting of sexual abuse.
* If your child’s school or child care facility is participating in Teatree Tells, the storybook will be sent home, overnight, along with the lesson and activities.
It is important that parents reinforce the following safety messages (this compliments what your child is learning in the lessons at school or child care facility):
Note: the focus should be on the secretive aspect. If someone is touching or taking secret pictures of a child, s/he needs to tell a Safe Adult.
Together, read through Teatree’s Keep and Speak Secrets storybook. Jointly, generate ideas of a Keep Secret (a secret that is Okay to keep). Next, generate ideas of a Speak Secret (a secret that is Not Okay and needs to be told). Use the following questions to guide your discussion:
Choose one of each type of secret to record onto the journal sheet (click here to download the pdf). Write down the two secrets you and your child select in the space provided. Your child may choose to copy one word for each secret into the space provided for her/his journal entry. Ask your child to draw a picture of one of the secrets shared in the journal entry.
Click here to download the pdf. Together, read each scenario and have your child decide whether s/he thinks it is a Keep or Speak Secret. Ask your child how s/he chose her/his answer.
After completing the lesson with your child, please return the storybook (and puppet) and journal response to your child’s educator.
The Canadian Centre for Child Protection would greatly appreciate your feedback on the Teatree Tells material. Click here to complete the evaluation.