How We Empower Our Kids To Be Safe In Their Bodies
Collage image of Victoria Barendsen, with marigold colored circle, an emphasized stop sign, two talking bubbles, a person’s body with flowers as a head embracing themselves, the TIHWC logos for ‘education’ and ‘relationships’
Most parents want to protect their children but feel unsure where to begin the conversation around body safety, boundaries, and prevention. In this conversation, Emily sits down with Victoria Barendsen — a psychologist specializing in childhood sexual abuse prevention — to explore an accessible approach for normalizing body safety in everyday moments starting from birth.
In this conversation you will learn:
Victoria’s own journey starting from trauma work to proactive prevention
The language and modeling Victoria uses in her own home and teaches families to lay the groundwork for a generation of body safe kids
Practical ways to begin conversations with other family members about consent
The inner work parents and caregivers can do to hold space for their children around body safety
Strategies for handling challenging moments like medical visits and interactions with relatives
What aspects of body exploration is developmentally normal for children
How we can be advocates for protection without instilling fear
Language and techniques to reduce shame and stigma around bodies
This episode underscores why neglecting these conversations can leave children vulnerable, while embracing these tools creates a ripple effect—building trust, resilience, and safety within your family and community.
Whether you’re a parent, caregiver, or educator, this is crucial knowledge to shape a future where children’s bodies and voices are honored.
Resources & Links
Follow Victoria on Instagram @thesafekidsproject
Resources mentioned by Victoria: Body Autonomy Affirmation Cards (Free), Book List (Free), Sleepover Checklist (Free), Foundations of Body Safety (Paid Course)
To stay in touch:
TRANSCRIPT
Emily Race-Newmark
Hello and welcome to This Is How We Care, a podcast that's imagining what kind of world our children want to inherit and how we, the village raising them, can embody that world. I'm your host, Emily Race-Newmark.
Thank you so much for being here for this episode with Victoria Barendsen. I am so excited to share this with you, although I will admit that I had a little bit of resistance to getting this episode done because the topic itself is one of those trickier topics. That said, when I finally sat down to edit it back and release it for you, I was reminded of how accessible Victoria makes this conversation.
What could we be talking about, you may wonder? Well, if you already clicked on the episode, you probably have a sense, but in this conversation, we are gonna be looking at body safety for children. And unfortunately, we're in a time when this is one of those conversations that feels more important to have than ever, but also feels so challenging because so many of us were raised in a generation where we weren't actually given the language, or the experiences, or the tools to have these conversations with ease because there was shame or so much taboo or mystery around our bodies— and really not a lot of modeling around what it means to have the ultimate say on what happens to our bodies.
So we're gonna get into all of this in our conversation with Victoria today.
Victoria is a registered psychologist who has over eight years of experience, including the past five in a private practice where she supported families through some of the most tender and challenging moments of parenting. She specializes in trauma and is also a mother of two who's walking this journey right alongside the parents she works with. Her greatest passion lies in prevention through equipping parents to raise safe, empowered children by making body safety a natural part of everyday life.
She helps families confidently integrate these essential conversations into their everyday routines so that body safety is a trusted ongoing dialogue rather than a one-off or uncomfortable conversation. Victoria believes the most effective prevention begins early through simple language, everyday connection, and consistent messages that build trust and understanding from the start.
I can't wait for you to hear what Victoria has to say, and I want you to listen to this episode with one thing in mind.
If this speaks to you, if you feel like this conversation was helpful, please consider sharing it with the other people in your village. your partner in parenting, your aunties, your uncles, your grandparents, because through the sharing of this conversation, we start to normalize it.
If you haven't yet subscribed “This Is How We Care” on YouTube, make sure you do that now, because we also will be sharing some smaller, bite-sized clips that will make it even easier for you to share this conversation with the people in your life without them needing to get over the barrier of listening to a full hour-long episode.
All right, that's enough for me. I'm gonna hand it over to Victoria. Thanks so much for being here, and I can't wait to hear what you think.
Emily Race-Newmark (03:09)
Hello and welcome. I am here with Victoria and I'm so excited to have this conversation. As a mother, thinking about how to pass on to our children a sense of bodily empowerment and a feeling of safety that comes from within is so important and not necessarily something I learned myself from a young age. So Victoria, thank you for being here. We cannot wait for this conversation.
Victoria Barendsen (03:31)
Thank you so much for having me. I’m so passionate about this topic and when I have spaces where I can talk about it openly, I feel forever grateful. So thank you for having me.
Emily Race-Newmark (03:41)
Do you mind introducing yourself by way of a story and how you got into this work that you're doing in the world?
Victoria Barendsen (03:48)
Yeah, of course. I'm Victoria. I am a psychologist and I specialize in sexual abuse prevention. And at the moment I run an online platform called the Safe Kids Project, which is just my space to share my mission around keeping children safe and encouraging and empowering them to learn about their body. And the way that I got into this has been quite a journey.
I've worked with children my sort of entire career. I've been a psychologist now for eight years and I've worked in various fields in education and then more recently into trauma. I worked in a non-for-profit organization for quite a long time that worked with children and young people who had engaged in harmful sexual behavior towards other children. And that was my introduction into this work.
I've always felt really privileged to do the work. A lot of people will question “how you can do it?”
My true belief is children don't hurt other children out of maliciousness.
There is often so much stuff that sits underneath it.
I started working in that space and that naturally led to me then also working with children that had been harmed and had experienced sexual abuse as well as their families. And so that's sort of where my career was and I was really, really enjoying it. I moved into private practice as well and I feel so grateful to hold the space that I get to hold for people's healing journeys and particularly for young people. It's an area that not a lot of people wanna work in, it feels really scary and overwhelming and of course there's aspects of it that are really challenging, but for me it's such a such a beautiful space to work in.
And the story of how I shifted my work into more prevention was, I was working with a young boy, he was around 14, 15 and he had been sexually abused himself and then he actually went on to harm his siblings and we were working together and this of course was nothing new to me. I'd done this work a lot. But he told me about a young girl he'd met online on Snapchat. And then he told me what his intentions were with her.
And I just froze. Like in the moment, I felt really sick to my stomach. And it was all because I was pregnant with my first baby. And it was this complete shift in me that I wasn't just a psychologist holding therapeutic space for healing and growth, but I also had somebody that I needed to protect.
I remember driving home that night and I thought to myself, how am I bringing a baby into this world? How do I keep my child safe? This could be my child that this person harmed.
And so I just made it a mission of mine to ensure that my child had every resource and skill to keep their body safe. I went on quite a big journey of reading, researching, talking to colleagues and other people in this space. And my husband — he doesn't work in this field, so it was like educating him through it as well — and one day he said to me, “you have to share this information. You can’t just keep it in our family.”
And I was like “that's so true”. That was with my first baby, and I found new motherhood quite challenging, and so didn't have capacity for it then. But after my second, I decided that I'm going to do this. I really want to share this knowledge. And the best way I knew how was social media.
Social media is not natural to me. Speaking with people, speaking to a camera, is not natural to me, but the mission is so important to me that that stepping outside my comfort zone, which is what I'm encouraging my audience to do a lot of the time, was just part of the journey. So yeah, it's been a journey, that's for sure.
Emily Race-Newmark (07:39)
Wow, I bet you many of our listeners can really relate to that feeling of when we become a parent ourselves and we see the possibility for harm or prevention and we see the future in our children and our focus becomes less individualistic and more focused on this collective well-being.
I'm so grateful that you listened to that inner call and that nudge from your husband to do this, because I am one of many, many parents who feels very unsure and unclear: how do we prevent harm from our children without creating fear?
And that's something you and I talked about; approaching today's conversation without instilling fear, because that's not necessarily helpful either.
Victoria Barendsen (08:19)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm super big on this, that the research does tell us that parents need awareness in order to change, but what I'm really mindful of in my content and what I share is I don't want to create fear, because I don't want children to not be able to have a normal part of childhood where they spend time with cousins and aunties.
I really want all of that beautifulness and what you talk about, the village, being a part of my children's life and I don't want my fear of what I know about the world —which is I know the worst of the worst, and I see the worst of the worst— to then impact my children.
And so yeah, I'm really clear and mindful of the way I do it with my children. They don't know about sexual abuse. They don't know about harm and they hopefully never will for a really long time. Instead, what they know is that their body belongs to them and they get to make choices that feel right.
And so it's this real sense of empowerment around... they get to make choices and that's all I'm teaching them on. I'm
not teaching them about all the stuff that we need to hold as parents.
Emily Race-Newmark (09:30)
Yeah, to just pick up that piece around “what we are holding as parents” versus what our children have to hold… and then I'm zooming back to what you were saying at the start. You kind of felt privileged in the sense that you could hold space for what could otherwise be triggering or no one has capacity for it, so they're not able to do that work.
I am curious, what have you found to be a way of resourcing yourself or supporting yourself? I'm sure that could be helpful for someone else to hear.
Victoria Barendsen (09:59)
I’m not really sure how to put it, but I’m very… I get connected to my world around me and I meditate every morning for 20 minutes. This is a non-negotiable for me because I need that time just to come into myself and to quiet my mind before the children wake up. It's like my little reset, and I find that that's super powerful.
I also have supervision, which is really key. So in my work, I have to have a supervisor. I have two, sometimes three that I connect in with if there's something that comes up for me that I'm like, “oh, this just feels too heavy. I need that support. I need to offload this.”
I'm also really mindful of boundaries and it's something I teach in body safety education and it's something that I hold very true; like even today, I have an office that is separate from my house where I do this type of work, and then I have an office out where I see my clients. I'm just really clear that I need to leave work at a certain place and come home and be mum.
I think that's really important. My children don't need a psychologist or a therapist or a prevention expert in their home. They just need mum. So boundaries are a really important thing for me.
Yeah, I have a wonderful husband who holds space for me as well. So I think that that really works. I also like move my body a lot. I like to gym and walk and find joy with the children… Lots of I guess everyday things help me ground back and move and take off that therapist hat.
Emily Race-Newmark (11:32)
Yeah, and I appreciate you touching on that. Even if they do feel like simple things, I know for so many people, including a past version of myself, that morning practice, which I now have as a non-negotiable as well, was a far-distant thing that I felt would never be possible. We need to tend to ourselves in these ways, collectively and with support from others, while also knowing what we need. Thank you so much for being honest about that.
Victoria Barendsen (11:55)
Yeah, and I so feel that to my core as well. I'm a yoga teacher, I've owned a yoga studio in the past, so I have like this connection to my wellbeing and taking care of myself. Meditation for example, I've always known how beneficial it is for me, but it wasn't until I got to a point of absolute rock bottom where I was like, I really have to change something here. And then when I introduced it, it just became… I give to my children, I give to my clients, I give to my work, I need to give back. And so 20 minutes in the morning is actually a very small amount of time when I consider all the other giving that happens.
Emily Race-Newmark (12:25)
Yeah, it is. And yet so powerful, like you said.
I would love to hear from you what your vision for the world is through the lens of what our children would inherit. If you almost picture a magic wand, what world would you love our children to inherit from us?
Victoria Barendsen (12:55)
Oh my goodness what is such a beautiful question.
I think if I had to put it at the highest level of my dream dream dream is that children never experience any form of sexual harm or sexual abuse.
Yeah, the statistics are so incredibly high. Here in New Zealand where I live, we have one in three females and one in six males before the age of 18. And to me, that's absolutely devastating and heartbreaking. So my big dream would be to have no abuse happening.
But I know what sits underneath that is that children are empowered in their body. They know that it belongs to them. They make choices that feel right for them.
And I think that comes from parents or caregivers or adults in their world having those conversations that maybe they never had growing up, that stepping outside their comfort zone and really knowing that body safety education is no different to road safety education.
We teach our children to look both ways. We say, “hold our hand. Can you listen for any cars? Can you see anything?” Whereas when it comes to how do we protect them for their body, a lot of the time we don't have lived experience. We never had parents that told us, “okay, this is your body and this is how you keep it safe”, and without that lived experience, it feels so overwhelming or out of reach on how to do it.
And then we also put in the aspect of it around like the taboo topics of sex or a child's body or autonomy and anatomically correct labels. They're almost like too frightening for people to talk about.
And so, yeah, a world where parents felt confident to educate their child on their body would also be really amazing.
Emily Race-Newmark (14:30)
Yeah, and like a layer deeper beneath that is, how would we as the adults, “the village” raising these kids, how would we relate to our own bodies?
Victoria Barendsen (14:42)
Yes, and that's a huge part of the work that I do with parents is I really encourage that self-reflection.
How do you feel about your body? How did you feel about your body when you were growing up? What sort of conversations did you have about your body?
Because I think if we reflect and turn inwards, we actually find so much about how we've been parent as well or how we show up in the village because yeah, it's not necessarily people — our parents or whoever supported us growing up — their fault because what education did they have in this space? But it is like a deep reflection to help drive the change.
Emily Race-Newmark (15:20)
Yes, I'm hearing in that like bringing the unconscious to the conscious and this is something my husband and I talk about often. In times of stress, which happens often in parenting… you're just defaulting to what was normal for you. So in bringing that self-reflection, it can help you see, my default may be to do this, but I would like to choose a different way.
And another thing I hear this quite a bit in the circles that I frequent, which is this conversation around treating children as human beings and not second class citizens, or that they are not a full human being yet. What are your thoughts on that and what's your vision for how we would view children?
Victoria Barendsen (16:02)
Yeah, I mean, I think you're right, like viewing children as full human beings. For me as a mom, I'm mindful to view my children in their wholeness, like the whole part of my child, and not just the parts that are easy or not just the parts that society love about my children.
I really try and view my child as... as the whole that they are. And I think when we do that, we can then support, provide the resources, provide the education that they need for who they are, rather than “this is how it is, I'm gonna tell you what to do.”
And particularly when it comes to a child's body, I really believe that they get to make choices that feel right for their body, not what we believe as adults.
And there are definitely some limits I put in for my children, like for example, brushing their teeth or changing their nappy, those are things that have to happen, right? But can we do it in a way where a child still feels empowered?
I'm not doing this to you, but you need to brush your teeth. Do you want mama to do the first brush and then you do the second brush? Or would you like to go first? Or what colored toothbrush do you wanna use? What type of toothpaste do you want?
You still need to do what I'm asking around your body, but let's make it fun. Let's give the child a sense of control in that situation. So yeah, I am a really big believer on a child being seen as a full, whole human.
Emily Race-Newmark (17:26)
Yeah, what comes to mind is just some scenarios — and I actually purchased some of the books I think you've recommended around these conversations, like going to the doctor, for example— you know, that's on one end of the spectrum where it's like, “we need to go to the doctor and the doctor may need to check certain parts of our body.”
But I have memories even of going to the doctor and not feeling comfortable with this person. How do we create a context of like, you're still in charge or on like the speed at which her, yeah, like how let's unpack that example even like how do we support our kids and the doctor? Yeah.
Victoria Barendsen (17:53)
Yeah, amazing. Yeah, yeah, so the doctors is a great one because it's that sense of like, how can we give autonomy in a situation where actually they don't have a huge sense of autonomy?
So for doctors, for me, I would always role play before I took my children there so that might, I have a little kid's doctor's set. And I let them play with it. I might get out like a teddy and they can put the things in, listen, do all the bits. They might do it on me with my body and listen to my heart, for example.
So starting the role modeling. And I might ask questions. Like if I know that they've got a sore throat, I'll say, look, the doctor will need to look in your mouth. This is maybe what they'll do. So almost preempting what's gonna happen, giving them the space to talk about it, ask questions if they need to.
And then when you get to the doctor, just being really mindful, "Hey, we practiced this at home, do you need any help? Do you want to sit on mama's knee?” As much reassurance as you possibly can.
I'm really big on when something's happening to a child's body that maybe they're a little bit uncomfortable with or they're not sure about, I use very clear communication. The way I do it is I would say what's happening to their body.
So right now the doctor's going to take your temperature, why they're doing it. “Mama's noticed that you're really hot at the moment and we just want to see what's going on and if we need to give you any medicine or support.” And then I'd say, “Do you have any questions? Like is there anything I can do to make you feel more comfortable right now?”
And that's just saying to a child that something's happening to your body, you might be unsure, here's what's actually going on and it reinforces the idea that a safe adult will never just do something to a child's body.
That the safe adult will give them information about it, what's going on, so they're really informed in the process.
My children, for some reason, like love a doctor's visit, but yeah I haven't had any issues yet, touchwood.
Emily Race-Newmark (19:44)
Yeah, we have a great pediatrician who asks for consent before they check, you know, but everyone may not have that kind of care.
I'm hearing you're being this anchor for the child, this safety spot that they know, okay, well I'm safe here. And this is what's happening. I'm not making up a story because I'm not sure.
Victoria Barendsen (20:00)
Yes, definitely.
Emily Race-Newmark (20:05)
Another question that came to mind in preparation for this was just thinking about the age. My husband and I talk about this all the time. When do we start? Our oldest is now three, and even when she was two, we wondered, when do we start talking about body parts and safe touch versus not safe touch? And how do we talk about that?
And also now that there's more peer play and hanging out with other kids who are older I've noticed in myself a fear of, “What are they gonna introduce into the play scenario that I haven't equipped my daughter for at this age?”
You may wanna speak to this from the different developmental stages that we can meet in our parenting, but yeah, how early and how are you addressing this at a young age?
Victoria Barendsen (20:38)
Yeah, so I am an advocate for as early as you possibly can.
I truly believe that there is no age limit on body safety education and the reason that I'm so confident in that is because I'm not one to say that we have to sit down and have a conversation with a child about consent or this is your body, it always belongs to you. Like those conversations, yeah they're fine, but I believe that body safety can just be part of our parenting and it can be so natural and it can be so normal because a lot of it comes through modeling and a lot of it comes through what we show our children and how we talk to our children about their body or about our body and balance.
And so some examples of how I just make it really natural — I've done this with my children like since birth —Number one, and probably one of my biggest recommendations is using anatomically correct labels.
And what I mean by this is words like penis, vulva, vagina. And the reason for this — I mean there are so many reasons, but there's sort of like three key ones that I like to talk about.
One is the stigma and shame that we create around child's body because we just don't even use the language for what that part of their body is called.
We call a knee a knee and an elbow an elbow and then we might call like a vulva a fanny and it just doesn't make sense because the message we give our children from that very early onset is “we don't talk about that”, like “we don't use the right word for that”.
And so if anything were to happen or they had any questions it's not creating this really open safe space to go actually I might go and chat to mum or dad or about this because it's such a normal part of their body.
I have a story of my daughter when she was two, we went camping with my dad and they went down to the lake and she said, “granddad, is there any sharks in there?” Maybe she was almost three. I can't quite remember, but she was young. And he said, “no, there's no sharks, but if there was, they might bite your bottom.” And she goes, “do you mean my vulva?” And my dad was like, “your front bottom?” and she's like, “no granddad, that's called a vulva.”
And then they laughed and they had a good time. Then they came back and my dad told me and it was such a beautiful segue to start having the conversation with my dad as well, which was lovely.
But also for my daughter, that word is so normal. She has no idea that most adults say it and kind of cringe in their stomach, because for her, she's like, that's part of my body. It's no different to my nose or my ears. That's my body.
And so I believe using the terminology is so good for reducing any form of stigma or shame and really creating an openness for our children to talk to us.
And then from more of a prevention space, there's been interviews done with convicted sexual offenders towards children and a lot of these people were pedophiles or they used grooming tactics and they said that one of the biggest forms of deterrence towards harming a child was if they use the correct terminology for their body because it indicated to them that these conversations were happening at home that this is a child that's learnt about their body and so it felt for them like a very risky child to harm. So from a prevention aspect it's really good as well.
And if something ever were to happen to your child, we need them to have the correct terminology for the legal system as well. I've worked with many children who haven't had the correct terminology, therefore it's impacted that legal process.
One of the number one ways that I've started weaving it into my child's life from a really young age is the anatomical languaging around their body.
And then when it comes to things like body autonomy, I always let my children choose before they have physical contact. And so that happens with me. I'll often ask for a hug — and I'm not perfect. Of course there's times where my kids look really cute and you just have to pick them up and like squish them and stuff, like that's just, you know, being a parent and I think there's finding the balance.
But my children always know that they can say no. Even if I went in for a hug and they didn't feel comfortable, they openly will say to me like, no, or move away really confidently knowing that I'm okay with that.
But also that extends to the village, like aunties, uncles, grandparents, some of our friends.
And the way that I do this is before anybody comes over to our house or before we leave, I will say to my daughter, “hey, remember that we're seeing Nanny today, she's gonna come over. You get to choose how you say hello.” And then once my mom arrives, I would say, “Oh, hi, blah, blah.” And then I'd say to my daughter, “how would you like to say hi to nanny? Would you like to give her a hug or a high five? Maybe you just want to wave.”
And what I'm doing in that moment is I'm creating a really nice boundary for my daughter in front of my mom.
And my mom obviously is on board and is aware of this, but I'm saying in that moment that she's going to decide how you both interact. And I think this is probably one of the most challenging aspects of body safety education is putting in a boundary for our child when other people don't appreciate or acknowledge the importance of the boundary.
So often I get asked, “how do I put that boundary in with family members that are a bit overbearing or they just want the hugs and they don't believe in it?”
Emily Race-Newmark (26:03)
I just want to add to this that what I feel is a sense of entitlement, of “you should give me a hug” or “you owe this to me because we're family” or “this is what you do culturally.”
Victoria Barendsen (26:12)
Yes, yes. Yeah, culturally,
Yeah, definitely. And like a sense of respect, like “that's what you do for people in your family. And if you don't, then you're being rude”.
So how we do it and how we did it early on — I feel very lucky because this is what I do for a job, and so everybody's really respectful because they also know my background — but this is how I recommend doing it, is again, it's the “what”, so we're letting our child decide how they greet people. “Why” you're doing it, or we're teaching them to listen to their body and do what feels right for them, and then you ask if they've got any questions, like “do you wanna ask anything about it”, or “is there anything that's sort of confusing to you”, because again, we wanna open the conversations.
Body safety isn't just within our homes, you know, it really has to start rippling out to all of those other people. So asking if they've got questions or if there's anything that they want to know more on is really important because it sparks those conversations.
Emily Race-Newmark (27:14)
Oh my God. I feel like this is revolutionary what you're saying.
I was just reflecting on this today. I don't know if you've heard of the term the “mommy wars”, but it extends beyond just mommy wars… there's like value systems that are at war with each other, whether it's intergenerationally or whatever. And everyone wants to be right and no one wants to be made wrong.
I could feel around this conversation, amongst other things too, there's a “looking down on them” or like “there's no space for that conversation” because there's the “should”. So really, really appreciate you for bringing in this framework where it's actually the goal to have a conversation and open up and really offer to the other person, “we should be talking about this. I want to hear from you.”
Thank you for that.
Victoria Barendsen (27:53)
Yes, yes. I have a really good phrase that I use with my clients and in my own life when it comes to that sense of conflict around maybe values or beliefs. And it's a two sentence structure that I use.
And the first is “I notice.”
So it might be, “I notice that you're not respecting my family's values around boundaries.” So "I notice" is the first step.
And then you always say, "I wonder", like “I wonder why you're doing that?”
Because I'm not coming at you like “you need to respect my boundaries.” It's coming at it with curiosity. And I think when we bring curiosity into a conversation, we get so much more out of it than just, “why aren't you doing this? Why aren’t you respecting it?”
Because then you can understand their point as well. So maybe that would be helpful in some of those other situations as well.
Emily Race-Newmark (28:48)
Well, yeah, because I feel like the energy of one is — there's a boundary there regardless, right? Like this isn't working for us — but one feels more like “I'm going to push you away “ and the other one's feeling like “I'm going to call you in” or “I'm still committed to our relationship”, which again, from a village building lens, I often think about like, how do we weave village when we may not have the same points of view?
So this is really helpful to just boil it down to a two, two part structure. Thank you.
Yeah. I feel like there's more to say on different relatives and other people in the village, but I do want to come back to this question around other children. Speak to us about the world of creating body safety amongst children.
Victoria Barendsen (29:28)
Yeah, great question because there is a high likelihood that if children experience sexual harm that it does come from a peer and that often it can be more in play and what might be more fun or funny.
And then there are times where it is actually harmful and there is quite a difference.
For children, the work that I do in a prevention space sort of works with children under eight and what we see in that space is a sense of curiosity around another child's body is actually very developmentally normal.
So if children were to play like, “show me yours, I'll show you mine”, or they play doctors and maybe there's conversations around private parts in there, that's actually very developmentally normal.
And so one thing we don't wanna do is like completely shame children for that kind of behavior. But what we want to do is use it as a teaching moment. So say there was children and they were playing like, “I'll show you my butt if you show me yours”, for example. You might say, “hey, I overheard a conversation that you were having before, and I just want to have a chat about what parts of your body belong to you, and what parts do we keep private to ourselves, and why do we do that?”
So never bringing shame to it, like, “don't ever look at somebody's bottom. You can never do that.”
Again, it's that curiosity aspect that allows a conversation to happen, and it allows an openness that if anything were to happen, your child feels comfortable talking to you.
I guess developmentally, there is a lot to that. I feel like we can't unpack all the developmentally normal behavior, but I think there is something there to sexual development. Like that is part of life.
But when our children are engaging with other children, when it comes to things like consent, we want our child's boundaries to be respected just as much as we want them to respect someone else's boundaries.
So the way that we teach consent in our house, and the hope that it ripples down to friends hanging out in like peer relationships, is we model consent.
So that's things like asking before we have a hug. If my daughter's in the shower, I'll ask before I wash her body. When she hops out, I'll say, “would you like to dry your body or would you like mama to do it?” If she's like, if we're playing a game like tickling or bouncing on the tramp and she says, “no stop, like I've had enough”, I respect it right away.
And these are all tiny little moments of that consent, what she's learning and she's seeing from me. And then that I hope transfers into her knowing, okay, everybody that touches my body should ask, whether they're an adult and someone that I love and trust, or they're a friend who I've just met at kindergarten, they still should have this to me because my parents have modeled to me that in order to come into my bubble, I need to ask and I need to feel safe and comfortable with that.
So that's how I work to ensure my daughter feels safe with others.
And then when I'm trying to encourage my daughter to have consent towards others, because she just turned four, and my son is coming up two, is I really encourage her to notice all aspects of the child she's interacting with.
And what I mean by that is I'll encourage her to look at her brother's face and say, “what is his face doing right now?” So maybe she's gone in for a hug. He feels completely like, get off me. And so I'd say to her, “look at his face darling. Is he smiling or is he frowning?” And then I'd say, “look what he's doing with his body. Is he pulling you in for a cuddle or is he pushing you away? What is he doing with his voice?"“ Like he doesn't talk a lot, but “is he saying no or is he laughing?”
So I'm really encouraging her to also notice the boundaries within someone else because that's gonna support her in those peer interactions as well that I need to respect somebody else's boundaries just like they need to respect mine.
Emily Race-Newmark (33:24)
Yes, totally resonate with that.
I want to go back to what you were saying about the shame piece. I'll just share explicitly, there was a situation where my daughter was playing with two of her friends and they like a lot of like wrestling tactile play and she doesn't and they both were wrestling on top of her at the same time, and I turned around and I yelled. I was like, “stop, stop, get off!”
And then I realized, they're just playing, but my daughter looked panicked and it looked like she said “stop” and they didn't hear or they didn't listen.
And so there was like a huge aftermath of that, right? Where as parents, we all came together and we debriefed and one mom was like, “I don't want to instill shame around what is normal developmentally.”
But I think like what that really highlights, vulnerably for me is like, I sometimes it's like a quick, almost like animal instinct to protect.
And so what are some of these things that we need to almost just normalize? And I know we can't go cover everything developmentally, but I'm hearing, it's normal for children to be curious. It's normal for us to like want tactile play sometimes. And I'm hearing it's also normal to say no and like need space.
Is there anything else in the normalization category that you want to highlight?
Victoria Barendsen (34:10)
Yeah, I think it's also really normal for our children to not respect other children's boundaries and for our children's boundaries to not be respected. I think that is a really normal part of childhood and that's where the learning happens, right?
And like your example is perfect that maybe in that moment you felt too elevated and too triggered to have the conversation, which is natural and normal as a mom. But maybe afterwards with your daughter, it could just be a conversation like, “darling, I saw that you looked uncomfortable and if that were to happen again, what could we do differently or what are some words that we could use?”
So using those moments where you notice it to be a teaching moment, but I think normalizing that your child will cross a boundary and other children will cross your child's boundary is actually really normal as well because they're always learning.
Like this is such a process, right? And even as adults, we cross people's boundaries and are learning and everybody's different as well.
I have a really good exercise that I do and it's where I encourage clients or my daughter to walk towards me and then I say “stop” when you're in my personal bubble. And my bubble might be a meter long and then I'd get her to do it and hers might be two meters long.
And so it's the idea that actually we're also navigating everybody else's boundaries. Like we're enforcing our own but then everyone's can look really different.
And so like you say, the two girls might've been really happy playing tactile type wrestling stuff. Whereas for your daughter, her boundary is much wider than that. And so for two young children figuring out one person's boundary is like let's rough and tumble and another person's boundaries like, no, that's too much. That's a learning piece for children as well that when we allow them to interact with their environment fully, they're gonna learn as well.
Emily Race-Newmark (36:19)
Yeah, and I love that you're explaining this through the lens of play as well. Like this is a game to play with. I'm learning a lot that like play is the way to teach our children.
I just want to clarify too in that example that was actually two boys with my daughter. And I think that gendered piece as a woman who's had my own experiences, again, I recognized and cleaned up with the adults like this was my own projection and I really checked in with each child afterwards. So that piece of repair after the heightened emotion being really key there.
Thank you for just walking through that.
So there's also something I've heard you talk about this before, and I'd love to break it down with you around how we create a safe space for our children so they can come to us should anything happen that made them feel uncomfortable and they can have those conversations. So how do you lay that foundation?
Victoria Barendsen (37:08)
Yeah. So I think all aspects of body safety lay that foundation that if they have the knowledge, if they have these natural conversations or these natural moments where I'm checking in during play, like, this still a fun game for you? Or should we do something different? Or yeah, asking before I touch my children's body or dry their body after a shower.
I truly believe it's these tiny little moments every day that teach my children you can talk to mum if you need to. And one sort of big thing that overrides that is when we have capacity as parents or caregivers— we don't always have the capacity, I know personally I don't — but when my children come to me with something, I try and hold the space as best I possibly can because it's saying to them “I'm listening, I'm here for you, I'm going to take this on board” so that we know if we listen in these little moments then mum's gonna listen in the big moments too.
And what we want is that openness and that sense of trustworthiness that actually there's nothing I can't take to mum where she's not gonna hold that space.
And you know, as my children get older, I would have that conversation. Like, you know, mum and dad are always here. We will always listen. Like, there's nothing you can't tell me.
But right now they're too young for that. And instead what they're doing is they're having experiences. You know, I've hurt myself. I've done this. They come to me. I try my best to hold space. I have capacity.
And that's like a little drop in the bucket to be like, “mom's got me.” So I believe there's that aspect of it as well, as just the ongoing everyday moments of education that show them, this is a topic I can talk about. This is something I'm allowed to be curious about. I'm allowed to ask questions.
Growing up, I never would have asked my parents if I've heard something at school. I would have never been like, what's that, mom? That just wasn't a conversation at home.
You know, say somebody said something like a “blow job” or something, I'd be like, “my God, what is that word?” Not go home and find out that information.
And I think as parents, we really wanna be that person for our children. We want to be the person they go to when they have questions or curiosities about their body or about intimacy because... e have the most accurate information that will support them to grow. So yeah, I think there's lots of factors, but holding space where you can, education are all really key.
Emily Race-Newmark (39:37)
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I keep hearing from you that actually the small little pieces, like you said, the drops in the bucket go a long way. We're creating a relationship with our children where this is what's normal. It's normal to talk about our bodies in this way. It's normal to ask for consent. And then in those bigger moments, they will just kind of see it as another experience.
So when we look at like what we need to embody as parents or grandparents or aunties and uncles in this village, what do we need to embody to really create this in the world?
We've touched on our own self-awareness, some of these practices of holding spaces. Is there anything else in the work that you do?
Should someone say, I would like to work with Victoria more? What does that journey look like?
Victoria Barendsen (40:23)
Yeah, I think the self-awareness and the self-reflection is really, really important. And also the awareness of the dangers.
And I don't speak to this all the time. I don't talk about like the latest things in the news necessarily, because I believe that creates like a real alarming response and an urgency type response where actually if we come at this and just try to do little parts where we can. We don't need it to be perfect.
When we go to teach our children how to cross the road, we might miss out, “did you listen out for anything?” And we don't like beat ourselves up for days because we didn't say the right thing. And I think when it comes to educating our children on their body, there's this real sense of like, I have to get it right.What if I say the wrong thing? What if I ruin them?
Your children will forget if you say the wrong thing one time or if you miss one aspect of it out. So I think one thing is really to to have kindness and to have grace in this process as well, particularly if you didn't learn it growing up because it's not necessarily super comfortable and you will be stepping outside your comfort zone, you know, using the term say “vulva” in front of your extended family or aunties, uncles, people in your village that would never use that word.
At the beginning it will feel really uncomfortable but if you can practice it, if you can be kind to yourself and be like, “yeah, this is gonna feel a little bit uncomfortable, but I'm gonna do it anyway.” Those are all really, really key parts to it.
And working with me more, there's lots of different options, I have a lot of free resources online.
So one thing, as we've spoken about, is weaving body safety into every day. And so I have a list on there, these resources are free, of children's books that I highly recommend. They're all body safety structured and you can order them, most of them are from Amazon. So it's like a very simple process. And I find books are such a gentle and beautiful way to introduce the topic, not just for the children, but for also the parents or the adults in that village.
Say like parents buy it, but then the grandmother reads the book. It's almost like it's nicely introduced to everybody in a really gentle and safe way. And the books I've recommended, are. they're nothing too in your face. There are some more that are for older children versus say younger children.
But one of the books my daughter loves is “Don't Hug Doug”. And it's just a whole book about a boy that doesn't like hugs, but he likes high fives and he likes this and it's just so normal and natural. Yeah, so I have a recommended list for reading.
I also have body autonomy affirmation cards and you can download them and they've just got really simple statements that you can reinforce with your child about their body belonging to them. There are things that we put around our daughter's mirror or we might just flick through them at night, put one on the fridge, they're just this little reminder that actually you get to make choices that feel right for you. And again, they allow parents or caregivers to just make it a nice and natural conversation.
And also if your child is at the age where they're doing sleepovers or play dates, I created a checklist for that. And so this has got questions that you can ask the host family and if you get to the point where you think, “okay, this actually doesn't feel right, I don't have all the answers I need”, then I've put in there different ways that you can build the relationship where maybe you are going to the park together and having a picnic so you, as the parents or the caregiver supporting the child are building that relationship so then there will be the possibility of a play date in the future.
I'm not somebody that says no to play dates or sleepovers. I just need to ensure that all of the things are ticked off that list before it happens.
And often I run free workshops and I also have an online program as well where I educate parents on everything that I do with my children around weaving body safety education into their homes. That's called Foundations of Body Safety.
Emily Race-Newmark (44:44)
My gosh, there are so many rich resources. I didn't even know about some of these. Thank you for listing that off and creating them, to demystify some of this, again.
One thing we didn't touch on, but just curious if you have any thoughts or resources here is, what do we do should something go “wrong,” should there be abuse, or even if it was playful in nature, but it created harm for our children. Do you have thoughts on how we can manage that aftermath?
Victoria Barendsen (45:12)
Yeah, definitely.
So if you notice maybe a change in your child's behavior or maybe your child has come and said something to you, it's this time where we want to ask questions that are open and curious, but they don't lead a conversation a certain way.
So your child might say, “when I was playing at this person's house, this happened”. You say, “can you tell me more? That's interesting, what happened next?”
So it's very open in the questioning that you're asking. You don't wanna say, “did they do this? Did they do that? Then did this happen?” Because we don't want to put those ideas in a child's mind either. We really want it to be open and allow that conversation to sort of flow.
Depending obviously on the level and the distress and the intent behind it, there are a few processes, right? If it was sort of accidental, then maybe that's a conversation between two parents to unpack what's happened. Whereas if it is something quite serious, it would be reaching out to local child protection services just to ensure that for that child to be engaging in that form of behaviour, what's happening in their world, do they need support in order to make sure that they are okay?
And of course, if it's done by an adult, then that instantly needs to go to the police as well as any child protection that needs to be put in place.
And I always say, what your child brings to you, just believe them, like really listen to them in those moments because we never want to say, “no, that didn't happen”, or “maybe you've got that a bit wrong” because that's really invalidating for a child and their experience.
So hold the space, keep it really open, let whatever the child needs to say say, and then as an adult, reaching out to the right support services.
And in terms of reaching support in a therapeutic sense, I would be finding some in my local area that specializes in children and working with this type of abuse as well.
Emily Race-Newmark (47:14)
Okay, thank you so much for covering that because… maybe nothing happens, right? But even knowing, “this is how I would handle it should something happen” can kind of quell some of that fear that again, we don't want to project and create.
When I'm reflecting on everything you shared today, it all makes a lot of intuitive sense to me. I think one area that is still like a bit challenging and my husband and I haven't figured out answers for — I wonder if others feel the same— is just this sense of “private parts”.
You you talked about anatomically correct words, right? But there's still this sense of like, “these parts of our body are private”. I don't know if you would use that language or how we talk about it, again, without creating shame, but acknowledging that there's something different about this. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Victoria Barendsen (48:01)
Yeah, it's a really good question and I find this one's probably one of the most trickiest questions to answer because it's like it belongs to you but then every part of your body belongs to you. What makes this part particularly belong to you, right?
Because children are at this age too young to know about sex or intimacy and that sort of thing. And so it is like a really mindful type of conversation.
A lot of people ask me, “I shouldn't use the word private part, should I?” And I think using the word private part in conjunction with the right anatomically correct word is okay.
So my daughter's very aware that that's her vulva and her vagina. But if we are doing something, I might say, “remember that that's your private part, so that's why we wear togs.” So I can interchange between the two because I know she has the knowledge of what they are.
So I wouldn't completely write off “private parts”, I would just be ensuring that my child has the education on what it actually is before I use that term.
And then how I would explain it, I think it's around that “those are the parts of your body that we keep private because they are special, they do belong only to you, other people aren't to touch our private parts because they are yours”.
So yeah, I guess just making it really simple and then developmentally as a child gets older and more curious, I would then have that conversation and so if my daughter is sitting on my knee and maybe might move her hand down my top I might say “please don't do that like mum's breasts are her private parts” and that again just reinforces that actually we don't touch someone else's body and that they just belong to me.
I don't know if that answers the question but that's what I would do.
Emily Race-Newmark (49:35)
Yeah, well, so what's coming up for me — maybe you have thoughts on this response— is I've had that experience too where my older daughter goes to touch my breasts or something, and I'm like, “I don't want to be touched”. Obviously there's a general sense of like, this is my body, but also like, “that's very sensitive. this is very sensitive to me.”
And so I think like, for me touching on the fact like that, that it does feel different versus like you touching my arm, like could maybe help create a framework for her that, I don't know if she would notice that in her own body yet or not, but yeah, what are your thoughts on that approach?
Victoria Barendsen (50:13)
Thank you, yeah, great.
I love the word that “that's a more sensitive part of mum's body.” That's a really nice way of putting it.
I am really big on putting boundaries in for our own bodies in front of our children. So my daughter and I were having a dance party the other day and we danced together a lot and it was really fun. And then I just got to that point where I was like, “no, I'm touched out. And I had had enough.” And so I said to her, “mama would just like some space. Can we dance next to each other? I just would like to have my body to myself.”
And this is so important as part of this body safety work because what we want is our children to see us putting in a boundary because it gives them a permission slip to put in the boundary for their own body. They're like, “my mom who I love and I look up to, she does this. So therefore when I'm at Kindi and maybe dancing with some friends and they get too close, I'm allowed to say this is too close, please stop.”
And yeah, there might be times where our children are sick and things like that and our boundaries are crossed more than other times and we allow that to happen but in a general sense it's important for our children to see people putting boundaries in for their bodies too.
Emily Race-Newmark (51:25)
Yes.
Well, thank you, Victoria, for covering all of these questions. I hope I speak for many, many listeners when I share some of the things that are top of mind and heart for me, because I think culturally, we just have a gap to close in terms of what we normalize and how we show up for ourselves as well as you're touching on, so thank you for the work you're doing. I am excited to direct everyone to the resources you've mentioned and I look forward to taking your course myself because I feel like you just can't learn enough about this.
Victoria Barendsen (51:54)
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so grateful to be able to share this message and hopefully inspire and empower some people in your village of listeners to make change and just start something small.
Emily Race-Newmark (52:11)
Exactly, just start something small. It doesn’t need to feel so big. Okay, Victoria, thank you again. Take care.
Victoria Barendsen (52:14)
Thank you.
Emily Race-Newmark (52:18)
Thank you again for listening to this episode with Victoria. hope that you found it to be as helpful as I did.
And again, if you did get something from this episode, please share it with the other parents, aunties, uncles, grandparents in your village.
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Thank you again for being a part of an amazing listenership and for being someone that cares deeply enough about the kind of world that our children are inheriting.
Through conversations like this one and the ways that we embody these practices, we start to shift the kind of world that we leave behind. Thank you again. Take care.