For grandparents
The one who believes her is a grandmother.
That is not decoration. In a great many families the person a child tells first is not a parent — it is the grown-up who is a little further from the middle of things, who is not tired at bedtime, and who does not seem likely to panic.
If that is you, this page is the short version of everything else on this site.
The three sentences
If a grandchild ever tells you something, these are the words. Learning them now is worth more than anything you could work out in the moment.
“I believe you.”
“You did nothing wrong.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
Then what to do next. Not an interrogation. Not a promise to keep it quiet.
Being the second safe adult
Children are taught here to name more than one grown-up they could talk to, and to keep telling if the first one does not listen. At least one of those people should be outside the child’s household. That is a role somebody has to fill, and grandparents fill it more often than anyone.
What it takes is small and mostly consists of not doing things: not being shocked, not being scandalised, not going quiet when a subject comes up, not saying “don’t tell your mother.”
Say once, in an ordinary voice, on an ordinary day: “You can always tell me anything. Even about somebody we know. I will never be cross with you for telling me.” Then let it sit. Children remember who said that.
One thing that has changed since you raised children
“Stranger danger” was the standard advice for decades. It has not held up. Most children who are harmed are harmed by somebody the family knows and usually likes — which is exactly why the Wolf in this book lives in the village and carries the baker’s flour.
The modern version is simpler and less frightening: we notice what people do. Not what they look like. Not whether we like them.
If you are worried about a child in your family
This is the hardest position anyone in this story occupies, because you may have less standing than a parent and more distance from the day-to-day, and because the person you are worried about may be somebody you love.
You do not need proof, and you do not need permission. In Ontario the duty to report belongs to any person with reasonable grounds to suspect a child may need protection, and it is discharged by contacting a children’s aid society directly.
Where to reportIf a child has told you something
And the ordinary version of all this
Read them the book. Read it forty times. That is genuinely most of the work — the words go in through repetition and affection, not through a serious conversation.