Activity One
(ages 11 - 13)

Key points

What does your child know and understand about abuse?

Abuse is wrong!

Before you begin the activity

Say to your child, "Because I love you and care about you, I want us to work together on some activities over the next week (or timeline that suits). The activities are about abuse, especially child abuse, and it is important to me to work through the activities with you because I want you to be safer and protected from abuse."

You can also give your child the opportunity to share with you knowledge that they may already have about child abuse and methods to keep themselves and others safer from abuse. "You may remember working on activities at school about abuse. Can you tell me about any of them?" This gives your child the opportunity to talk about Keeping Ourselves Safe or any other child abuse prevention programmes they may have completed. If your child cannot remember working on any activities about child abuse prevention, or is vague on the subject, a simple overview of the types of child abuse and examples can be given. (See adult activity titled: What is Child Abuse? Alternatively, you can select activities from other sections of the project to complete before working on this section.)

Activity

Read aloud the scenarios listed in How I See It. Discuss each scenario, and ask your child to say whether the situation is ok or not ok (you could also say abusive or not abusive). Think of two more situations you could talk about. These should be appropriate to your child's situation and environment.

When you have finished the activity

Finish the activity by designing graphics to support the anti-abuse messages on the activity sheet, Headlines. Try to add new anti-abuse messages of your own. This activity can be completed co-operatively or, if the child prefers, by themselves. Whilst completing this activity sheet, reaffirm the anti-abuse key messages by stressing that "Abuse is ALWAYS wrong, and it is NEVER the victim's fault."

Put your completed activity sheet on display as agreed between you.