For families
Listen. Believe. Protect.
Your child does not need to become responsible for spotting predators. The whole goal is smaller and more achievable than that: normal words for bodies and boundaries, more than one safe grown-up, and total certainty that they can tell you.
Before you read it together
- Ask what your child already remembers about Little Red Riding Hood.
- Say: “This time we’re going to watch for the Wolf’s tricks.”
- Do not quiz. Ask open questions instead: “What do you notice?” “What could Red do?”
- When Grandmother responds, say her three lines slowly, and then say them again as your own: I believe you. You did nothing wrong. Thank you for telling me.
The five family rules
- Your body belongs to you.
- Safe is more important than polite.
- Nobody gets to make unsafe secrets about bodies.
- You can always tell us — even about somebody we know.
- You will never be blamed for somebody else’s behaviour.
Print the one-page family sheet →
Talk about behaviour, not “bad people”
Children under six cannot reliably sort people into good and bad, and asking them to try produces two failures at once: they become frightened of harmless strangers, and they stay unguarded around the people who actually pose a risk.
Something like this works better:
Most people want children to be safe. Sometimes somebody can still do something that isn’t okay — even if that person seems nice, even if we know them, even if you like them. You can always tell me about what somebody does.
Surprises and speak-secrets
This distinction does more protective work than almost anything else you can teach a four-year-old, because grooming almost always runs through secrecy.
| A surprise | A speak-secret |
|---|---|
| Has a happy ending when the person finds out — a present, a party, a card you made. | Involves touching, pictures of private parts, threats, fear, pressure, or anything that worries or confuses you. |
| You keep it for a little while, and then everybody is pleased. | You do not keep it at all. You tell a safe grown-up straight away. |
Never make getting away the test
Say all four of these out loud at some point. They are the most protective sentences in this whole site.
If you couldn’t get away, it would not be your fault.
If you froze, it would not be your fault.
If you did what somebody told you to do, it would not be your fault.
If you told me much later, it would not be your fault.
Build a safe-adult hand
Trace your child’s hand and name five grown-ups they could talk to. Make sure at least one is not a member of your household — a teacher, a coach, a neighbour, an auntie. This matters more than it sounds like it does, and the reason is uncomfortable: sometimes the unsafe person is at home.
Keep it somewhere private. Do not post it where visitors can read it.
At bedtime, once in a while
“What are Red’s three things?” — Notice. Go. Tell.
“What do grown-ups do?” — Listen. Believe. Protect.
“Can you always tell me?” — Yes. Even if somebody said not to. Even if you think I’ll be angry. Even if it happened a long time ago.
If your child tells you something
There is a page for exactly that moment, written for somebody whose hands are shaking.