In this story, Matilda learns that if you feel unsafe, you need to tell an adult you trust and seek help from them so you can feel safe again. If they don’t listen, you need to persist and keep on telling trusted adults you know until someone helps you.
This story is based on the experiences of the author, Holly-ann Martin, who has over 30 years experience in teaching child abuse prevention education. When Holly was a little girl, she never liked going with her family to visit her uncle because when it was time to leave, he would always scrape his whiskers on her face and take out his false teeth and say “Give me a kiss”. He thought it was hilarious! But little Holly did not like it at all.
This story is about unwanted touching, but in a non-sexual way. As adults, we need to be careful about the unintended messages we send to children through our actions. The key message of this book is to teach children to be persistent when seeking help, but we also need to teach them they can say ‘No’ to an adult if they feel unsafe. We also need to teach children about consent and that they have the right to say who can and can’t touch them and that adults need to respect that right.
This book is designed for parents, carers, teachers and educators to read to children and to talk with them about body safety in a fun and safe way. It also contains resource pages for adults, which include going over the main points of protective education (protective behaviours), and giving specific information to effectively and efficiently deal with receiving a disclosure of abuse from a child.
This book is the first in a series of books where ‘Miss Martin’ teaches her students about protective education and is suitable for children aged 4 to 10 years.
