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

In Episode 3, we spoke with Christy Keating about what grooming is. But we still had a few more questions for her, like: What should parents look out for? How can parents protect their kids? And when should parents start talking to their kids about grooming? Christy shares her eight safety rules that every kid should know and gives us language to talk to our kids about physical, personal and relational boundaries. You can find a ton of resources and check outChristy’s work at https://theheartfulparent.com/ Reach out to our team at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. If you or anyone you know is experiencing sexual violence and needs help, please visit rainn.org http://rainn.org or call the national hotline at 800-656-HOPE (4673) or text HOPE to 64673. You can anonymously report school employee boundary crossing and grooming and educator sexual misconduct to Safe Oregon. You can call or text 844-472-3367 or email [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. If you’d like to learn more about educator sexual misconduct and get involved, there are many great organizations doing research, education and advocacy work, including: S. E. S. A. M. E. https://www.ncsesame.org/– Stop Educator Sexual Abuse Misconduct & ExplotationEnough Abuse https://enoughabuse.org/The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children https://www.missingkids.org/homeAmerican Association Of University Women https://www.aauw.org/Stop Sexual Assault in Schools https://stopsexualassaultinschools.org/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:00Sydney Gladu?

  I'm Sydney Gladu, and this is not just a terrible story. I'm excited to share this conversation Katie and I had with Christy Keating. She's the prosecutor you heard in episode three. Christy took what she learned from her career prosecuting cases of child abuse and educators' actual misconduct, and became a certified parent coach. She now works to educate parents and teachers about grooming, boundaries, and red flag behavior, all with the goal to help adults keep kids safer. You'll hear Katie first.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  I wanted to do a bonus episode with you because I feel like as a parent, you're like, oh, my gosh. Okay, I'm understanding grooming a little bit more. I am concerned, but like, what do I do about it?

• 1:39Speaker 03

  Right, right, right.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  And I think, yeah, you're the perfect person to have that conversation with.

• 1:44Speaker 03

  Excellent.

• 1:45Sydney Gladu?

  I'm curious how your time as a prosecutor shaped your work in educating parents about grooming and boundary crossing.

• 1:52Speaker 03

  When you, as a professional, have to put a six-year-old, or an eight-year-old, or a 12-year-old, or a five-year-old

• 2:04Speaker 03

  on the stand to describe things in a public, open courtroom that happened to them, makes a pretty big impact, not just on me as a prosecutor, but on the judge, on the court reporter, on the bailiff, on the jury, on anybody watching. 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

• 2:45Speaker 03

  parents aren't getting the information that they need to be getting. Why this isn't

• 2:54Speaker 03

  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 for 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, and why it doesn't warrant its own

• 3:37Speaker 03

  five-page packet, I don't know. But that's where we are.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, Christy, that's so interesting. I get those. My kids are four and seven, and it has everything from like nutrition and teaching kids to move their bodies and enjoy movement and screen time and limits and reading guides and all these other milestones. And that seems like such a good place to put it. But I also know, like, I have no memory of having any kind of proactive conversations about this with my parents. I feel like current generations of parents are really the first parents who are getting instruction where there are resources about this.

• 4:14Speaker 03

  What I saw as a prosecutor is that there's a lot of holes in the system. And there's a lot of touch points where we are not

• 4:23Speaker 03

  catching parents or kids in a safety net. So for example, you take your kid to the pediatrician. Now, I have started to see a shift that like when the doctor looks at my child's private area, the doctor will usually say something, you know, has sort of a little rehearsed speech. 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, duh, duh, duh, duh.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  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

• 5:15Speaker 03

  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 were 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.

• 5:59Speaker 03

  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.

• 6:14Sydney Gladu?

  Yeah, absolutely. Which is why I think the work you're doing is so important and parents, you know, having to lead the charge on this education isn't ideal because, again, we just get more gaps where some parents are probably, you know, getting your course through their preschool and other parents aren't. Grooming is something a lot of parents, maybe they know about it, but they don't exactly know how to start talking about it, or when's the right time to start talking about it.

• 6:39Speaker 03

  I want to just clarify one thing and say that I would certainly talk to children about things related to grooming. But I would not use the word grooming when speaking with a child. That's a technical term. It's a grown-up term. It's a very misunderstood and misused term. It's become a political flashpoint in many ways. And it's not a phrase I would use when working with kids themselves. That being said, as a prosecutor, I certainly saw it in action

• 7:17Speaker 03

  or I guess after the fact, when we were reviewing cases where kids had been victimized.

• 7:25Sydney Gladu?

  But I guess in the meantime, you have some safety rules that you want all parents to start teaching their kids when they're little. And I guess, could we just go through those for people?

• 7:35Speaker 03

  So, yes, there are a series of safety rules that I think are really important to teach every child. And these are rules that really should coincide with educating our children about their bodies, about other bodies, about sex and sexuality. And a lot of parents, when I say that, they kind of go, whoa, well, then that's not happening till they're, you know, 19.

• 8:05Speaker 03

  And the reality is those conversations really become appropriate around age four. In very basic, kid-friendly terms, there's very accessible books that make these conversations very easy for parents, feel like they're not in 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 four to five, 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

• 8:51Speaker 03

  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.

• 9:36Speaker 03

  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 ahold 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.

• 10:17Speaker 03

  So the story that I always tell around this one is that my daughter, when she was younger, it was a, 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.

• 10:58Speaker 03

  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. So our kids need to know that that's a private part of their body.

• 11:41Speaker 03

  And the really easy way to describe this to kids is like, we don't let other people put things in our mouth. Like we don't share straws. We don't share lollipops. We don't share toothbrushes. Like we're not sharing those around because that's just not a safe thing to do. And so we should never just put something in our mouth or put our mouth on any body part. This is not a place where with a young child, you need to go into detail. 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.

• 12:21Speaker 03

  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, that kids don't always know and don't always understand.

• 13:01Speaker 03

  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

• 13:15Speaker 03

  more of a people pleaser and it just sort of naturally. And so when 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. Um, 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.

• 13:58Speaker 03

  When that knot 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.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  In the 1960s, the federal government embarked on a huge experiment.

• 14:21Speaker 04

  It was groundbreaking at the time.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  The goal, to figure out the best ways to teach.

• 14:26Speaker 05

  They evaluated different philosophies of education.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  When it was over, one approach stood above the rest.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  But a lot of people didn't like it.

• 14:39Speaker 06

  One educator has called the approach totalitarian, another horrible.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  The kind of teaching that works so well, most schools don't do it. I'm Emily Hanford. On the new season of Sold a Story, we investigate why. Follow Sold a Story in your podcast app.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  Christy, can you say how you would talk to a little kid about that uh-oh feeling?

• 15:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Do you have a few words or phrases to use with little kids?

• 15:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. So with a really little kid, I would, I would start with, you know, getting them to tap into feelings that they get in their bodies. So what do you feel when you get hungry? You know, tell me what your body does when it gets hungry. Tell me what you feel when you get sad. Like what does your body do when it gets sad? You know, tell me what it feels like when you get mad or frustrated, right? And so I would start tapping into some emotions that they really understand. Right? Mad, sad, happy, scared, hungry. It's not an ocean, but it is a very clear physical sensation.

• 15:50Speaker 03

  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.

• 16:03Speaker 03

  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,

• 16:28Speaker 03

  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.

• 17:13Speaker 03

  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.

• 17:22Speaker 03

  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.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  So that's eight or 10, I sort of condensed a few of them in there, but, but those are really the fundamental core things that our kids need to know. And then as they grow, right? From five 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. 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.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:42Sydney Gladu?

  Yeah. Giving that language early on is, I mean, it's honestly a huge gift in a lot of ways. But so just having that open path of communication from an early age seems so important.

• 18:52Speaker 03

  So important. And the really critical piece of this, grownups who are listening to this, we have to listen to them when they tell us, right? And it doesn't matter what they tell you. Because if we don't listen once, they won't talk a second time. Like that's, that's the risk that we run. So even if they say, I have an uh-oh feeling about,

• 19:22Speaker 03

  I don't know, the cat doing something, right? Like something that you're like, oh my God, lordy, lordy, that sounds ridiculous, right? Cause 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, could, is, are you feeling something else? And that's where that, 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.

• 20:08Speaker 03

  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.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  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.

• 20:33Sydney Gladu?

  Yeah, and that's such a great point of listening to everything. Because I'm not a parent myself, but I've worked in childcare before and just sometimes kids are telling you something else. And I think you're, they're not using the exact phrasing that you would use as an adult. Right? Like, they're not always going to you and saying like, this person has made me feel uncomfortable, you know, they're talking around it or they're avoiding. So what are some of those other things, um, once we have this like groundwork kind of laid? And they understand the rules and we're kind of giving that age appropriate language. What are some of the other things we should be listening for?

• 21:12Speaker 03

  We need to start listening to what's going on with the other people in our children's lives. Right? So there are what we call red flags and warning signs when it comes to, to a would be perpetrator. It's any individual who repeatedly ignores limits that are set either by an, a safe adult, right? Like if I set a limit for my child and another adult ignores those, or a limit set by the child themselves. Right? 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

• 21:57Speaker 03

  and won't really allow those to, 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 is 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,

• 22:42Speaker 03

  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

• 23:25Speaker 03

  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 is 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, um, that would be offenders will use. You know, someone who insists on going into the bathroom

• 24:07Speaker 03

  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.

• 24:29Sydney Gladu?

  Yeah.

• 24:30Speaker 03

  Things like that where you just go, you know, that's kind of weird. Also bribing, um, an adult who bribes kids with things, you know?

• 24:38Sydney Gladu?

  Yeah.

• 24:39Speaker 03

  That's another one.

• 24:40Sydney Gladu?

  You talked a little bit about this, where like there are people who have implicit trust, like teachers and coaches. And we want to teach our kids to, like you said, not just err on the side of politeness, feel confident to use their voices and say no. And then we're also coming up against the fact that in school environments, there's a certain level of respect and that's like a really tricky tightrope to walk. And so I'm curious, what are some of the ways we can teach kids to question that authority?

• 25:06Speaker 03

  This is a really tough tightrope for kids to walk, which is why I say, this actually isn't a kid's job.

• 25:14Sydney Gladu?

  Yeah.

• 25:15Speaker 03

  This is the job of educators. And there was research done a, a while back by a woman named Dr. Cheryl Shake Shaft, who found that 89% of educators, when asked sort of in a uh, private, you know, survey, would not report suspected misconduct by a fellow educator. And it really comes down to the fear that they're getting it wrong, that they might ruin an adult's life. What they're not considering is that by not reporting, they might be ruining a child's life. 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.

• 26:00Speaker 03

  And there were always red flags and warning signs. They're, 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?

• 26:42Speaker 03

  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.

• 27:26Sydney Gladu?

  Yeah.

• 27:26Speaker 03

  So there's really several different levels of boundaries that I like to make sure that parents are teaching their kids. And those are physical boundaries, which is that we own our bodies and our space around them. Personal boundaries, which are all about those inappropriate conversations and questions. And then the relationship boundaries, which is what I've just described, which is what's appropriate for a coach, teacher, religious figure, neighbor, right? And then we tell them anytime something feels off or like, maybe this isn't what teachers and kids normally do, you can come talk to me.

• 28:00Sydney Gladu?

  Yeah.

• 28:00Speaker 03

  I'll help you know, I'll help you understand if it's okay. Right? Any questions, you just come tell me. And then we've given them sort of a clearer way of getting it, if you will.

• 28:11Sydney Gladu?

  Absolutely. So helpful and I think this would be like a great resource to share with listeners. And I just think that providing some of this will definitely help answer some questions.

• 28:23Speaker 03

  The research is really clear that when parents and educators and other people in the world of children get training, they have me or somebody else in to do a training that at least 85% of dangerous situations can be avoided. And for every adult who gets trained, at least 10 children are kept safer. This sometimes feels like an insurmountable problem. And it's not, it is, this is in fact a solvable problem if we care enough to solve it.

• 28:59Sydney Gladu?

  Wow. Yeah. Then we have some feelings there.

• 29:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, well said. Thank you.

• 29:05Sydney Gladu?

  Thank you so much.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  You're so welcome.

• 29:10Sydney Gladu?

  Thank you so much for listening to Not Just a Terrible Story. We are an independent production. You can support us by sharing this podcast with a friend and leaving a five star review wherever you are listening right now. Or hop over to our Substack, terriblestory.substack.com. There's a lot of great free stuff over there, archival photos, resources, and stories that didn't make it into the show. And you can also get early and ad-free episodes as a paid subscriber. To get in touch, send us an email at [email protected]. This podcast was created and produced by Katie Klein and me, your host, Sydney Gladu. Show art by Casey Burnell. Original music by Sean Simmons. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions. Maria Palaiologos is our strategic growth advisor.

• 29:55Sydney Gladu?

  And a very special thank you to Stacy Love, whose bravery, honesty, and determination made this series possible. May her truth telling give others permission to trust their own stories, use their voices, and know that they are not alone. If you or anyone you know is experiencing sexual violence and needs help, please visit rainn.org. That's R A I N N dot O R G. Or call the national hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE. Or text HOPE to 64673. If you'd like to learn more about educator sexual misconduct, check out the show notes for additional resources.

• 30:49Speaker 02

  In the 1960s, the federal government embarked on a huge experiment.

• 30:55Speaker 04

  It was groundbreaking at the time.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  The goal, to figure out the best ways to teach. They evaluated different philosophies of education. When it was over, one approach stood above the rest.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  But a lot of people didn't like it.

• 31:13Speaker 06

  One educator has called the approach totalitarian, another horrible.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  The kind of teaching that worked so well, most schools don't do it. I'm Emily Hanford. On the new season of Sold a Story, we investigate why. Follow Sold a Story in your podcast app.