Teaching children about 'good touch' and 'bad touch' isn't enough

Stop! Don’t touch me there.

This is my no-no square.

Don’t touch me. Hey! Hey! 

Don’t touch me. 

At age 22, I watched my American roommate recite the ‘protection song’ she was taught in kindergarten as she waved her arms around like she was voguing across the middle of her body. Eight years later, I still remember the song and tune. 

Comparatively speaking, millennials have made great strides, being the most open and honest in their parenting style. But many still rely on the go-to ‘good touch-bad touch’ personal safety talk with our children, struggling to shed the shame of sex talks (and lack thereof) we grew up with. We find ourselves repeating the same statements: “Beta, agar koi strange uncle aate hai aur bolte hai woh apko mummy-papa ke paas lene jaa rahe hain, unke saath kabhi nahi jaana, theek hai? (If a stranger comes up to you and says ‘I’ll take you to your parents’, never go anywhere with them, OK?”

Cases of child sexual abuse (referred to as CSA) have been challenging to quantify, so to speak, given their sensitive nature and the taboo associated with coming forward. “Children are most likely to be abused or neglected by parents and/or caregivers. Global research also suggests that child sexual abuse is perpetrated by a wider group of people, including parents, other relatives, siblings, friends, or others known to the child (such as a sports coach, teacher, religious or authority figures),” says Mehezabin Dordi, a clinical psychologist at HN Reliance Foundation Hospital and Research Centre.

In 2007, the Ministry of Women and Children Development of India interviewed 125,000 children in 13 states for a study and noted that 53% of participants experienced CSA. It wasn’t just girls, boys were equally affected, and more than 20% of boys they spoke to shared that they experienced severe forms of CSA. An extensive 2021 study looked into this past research (national and international) and came to the same conclusion as Dordi. So why do we continue to tell children to fear strangers when it’s more likely that the people we trust, the ones we spend time with and are close to, are the perpetrators?

Preet Atwal, a psychotherapist with the New Delhi-based MindfulHealth clinic, adds that limiting certain areas as ‘bad zones’ and others as ‘good zones’, then separating strangers from relatives (and trusted others) can be confusing for children. That’s why many experts recommend expanding the scope and teaching children about unsafe behaviour and touch, rather than sticking to ‘good touch-bad touch’ regarding children’s safety.

“We can talk to children about ‘stranger danger’ and ‘good touch-bad touch’ but we need to move beyond that too. Also, instilling a deep fear of strangers can have long-term repercussions, it can make socialisation difficult in personal and professional settings,” adds Atwal.

The good touch-bad touch method teaches children that if a touch happens on their private parts, namely genitals, chest, thighs and bum, then it’s bad. But CSA isn’t limited to just a touch or touching what we deem inappropriate or sexual parts of the body. Teaching children about unsafe behaviour and safe behaviour or touch, rather than a binary ‘good’ and ‘bad’, encourages them to tune into their emotions and the signals their body sends them at that moment.

It can be a lewd look, an invasion of personal space, showing sexual media including videos, photographs and audio clips, inappropriate jokes, or the perpetrator showing their own body to the child. The body has a natural stress response when we feel unsafe. “It can be a muddle of emotions, but children feel it right from a young age. They know when something is not right. Teaching children about unsafe behaviour helps them recognise these feelings at the moment it’s happening, understand what it means, communicate them to parents and guardians,” says Atwal.

When should you talk to children about sex, sexuality and unsafe behaviour?

You can be a vigilant parent, monitoring what your children are watching, putting child locks on TV channels, and filters on the computer and phones, but you can’t control everything, writes Anju Kish for Tweak India. What about their friends’ phones or the things they hear and see at school or during dance class? A sex educator and the founder of Untaboo, Kish says that inappropriate or incorrect information can come from anywhere. “What’s the next best thing to minimise the impact of what they see or hear? The answer is simple — teachable moments via conversations.”

The best strategy, according to Dordi, is to begin conversations about sex and sexuality early and continue as your child grows. This way, you can avoid inadvertently treating it like a milestone moment when they reach their adolescence, which may be awkward or confusing because “they may think they already have the information and won’t be receptive.”

Answer their questions as and when they come up. There’s no right age, but Dordi says you can start as early as age 1.

Where and how do you start?

Teaching children about unsafe behaviour can begin early and slowly with safety lessons that will teach them about their bodies and rights, and cement open and safe communication channels. Dordi breaks them down for us:

Call body parts what they are

Parents can get pretty creative regarding euphemisms for various body parts, namely genitals – wee-wee, winky, pee pee, su su part, du du. Some are straightforward ‘swimsuit parts’, while others take a slightly funnier turn, like the family jewels.

“We must teach our children to normalise talking about them without shame,” says Dordi. Encouraging open conversations about the body gives them the language they need to discuss when something may go wrong. That could be an injury and ailment of some kind or an unsafe touch or behaviour.

When we avoid naming things what they are, it creates a shroud of fear and shame. Children may create negative associations with these body parts. You don’t need to get into the details of vulvas, labia and scrotum, start with clinical term of ‘penis’ and ‘vagina’, and give them the details as they get older or whenever their questions come up.

Talk about emotions and feelings of danger

Even as adults, we often miss the signals and emotions our body is stirring up when we go into stress mode. We must also explain the sense of fear and what being unsafe feels like to children. “As parents, we usually discourage fear and anxiety. As a result, kids fail to identify and communicate these feelings,” says Dordi.

You can give them pep talks about being your ‘strong baccha’ and pacify them with sweet words when they get injured or don’t want to sleep alone in the dark. But scolding them about being afraid is only going to make things worse.

Ask them how they feel when they say they’re scared. You can talk about other scenarios that might elicit similar reactions as examples to explain and name these feelings and emotions.

Ask them if their heart feels like it’s going boom, boom, boom (palpitations) or if they suddenly feel cold (get the fear shivers). Did it make them sweat like they’d just finished PT class?

“Many perpetrators confuse and manipulate children, they try to normalise sexual acts. We must teach our kids to acknowledge their signs of fear in various scenarios and encourage them to talk about experiences that may have caused them.”

Make an emergency plan

We hope it never comes to this, but it’s essential to have an emergency escape plan in place. As much as we try and encourage kids to be open and talk freely with parents about what they feel, and how to say ‘no’ when they’re in distress, it doesn’t always work, especially if they start to feel overwhelmed.

In this case, it’s helpful to have a code word that your children can use, says Dordi. Having an escape plan also helps. If someone wants to see or touch their private parts, they can say they need to use the toilet.

Make children the boss of their bodies

Let children feel like they are in charge. Teaching them ownership and responsibility for their own body from a young age helps them learn about body boundaries. It can start with simple things a caregiver might do anyway. Talk them through it, and more importantly, ask them. “Your nose is running, will you wipe it yourself, or should mama do it for you?”

When it comes to body boundaries, we tell kids that no one should be touching them, but Dordi says what we often forget when teaching children about unsafe behaviour is that no one can or should ask your child to touch their body either.

This is not about letting kids run the show and driving parents crazy in the process. Keep a balance between allowing them to express themselves and maintaining parental boundaries and authority. For example, if your child refuses to get ready in the morning, there’s only so much you can run after them before they start feeling like the parent and you, the 5-year-old. Try, “I have a green shirt and a red shirt. Which one do you want to wear?”

They need to learn that they have a right over their bodies. And when it comes to saying ‘no,’ the rules apply to everyone – relatives, other children, teachers and more.

Ask them if they want to hug Nina chachi instead of forcing them to do it. Those rosy cheeks may be irresistible to pinch, but if they don’t like it, don’t force them to endure it. Le them say no and express their dislikes.

Don’t create a bad cop

I think we all grew up fearing at least one of our parents. This fear was used as a threat to get us to do things we didn’t want to do. “You better eat the karela sabzi, or I’m telling papa when he comes home from work.” Fear of getting scolded or a pitai will make them shut down even more.

Sometimes the ‘good cop-bad cop’ mode of parenting can work. But it shouldn’t get to the point where the fear of one parent’s (or both) reaction or response can be leveraged by someone else to commit CSA and instil fear in the child to approach their parents about what they went through.

Talk about online safety

We may have sat through dial-up connections and internet shutdowns whenever nani called on the landline to talk to mom. But from online schooling to social media pages, a child’s digital life starts at an age younger than ever. Personal safety extends to digital behaviour, and this includes your sharenting too.

Talk to them about what is appropriate and inappropriate in the online world, where it can often feel – especially when you’re young – like anything and everything is allowed and possible.

Teaching children about unsafe behaviour applies to older kids, too, says Dordi, as sexual exploitation can extend to communications online.

There’s only so much we can control what our children see and do. Rather than creating fear and shutting them out from life around them, as guides and guardians, we can equip them with the tools they need to navigate the unknown, walking through it with them and reassuring them that no matter what happens, you’re in this together.