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Summary

In this conversation, Rosalia Rivera, a consent educator, discusses the importance of child sexual abuse prevention and the role of parents in educating their children about body safety and consent. She debunks common myths about child abuse, emphasizing that most abuse occurs from known individuals rather than strangers. The discussion also covers the signs of grooming, the rise of peer-to-peer abuse, and the necessity of creating safe environments for children. Ultimately, the conversation highlights the importance of empowering children to understand their rights and set boundaries. In this conversation, Rosalia Rivera discusses the importance of fostering autonomy in children, emphasizing the need for open communication and the development of critical thinking skills. She highlights the significance of parents learning alongside their children about boundaries, safety, and body literacy. The discussion also covers the complexities of navigating family dynamics, particularly regarding sleepovers, and the necessity of empowering children to advocate for themselves against potential abuse. Ultimately, the conversation underscores the transformative power of connection and understanding in parenting.

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Body Safety Book Recommendations can be found here (ie. Duck Duck Groom)

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Read the Transcript:

Adrienne (00:00)
Hi everyone, welcome back to the show. I have Rosalia here with us. Could you take a moment to just introduce yourself, what you do, your page, your work, what you’re all about.

Rosalia Rivera (00:09)
Yeah, so thanks for having me. I’m a consent educator. Principally though, I really focus on child sexual abuse prevention and that’s my specialty. So I help parents learn how to talk to their kids about body safety, which includes consent education, as well as helping parents learn how to talk to the adults in their kids’ lives about abuse prevention as well, really enforce a 50-50 model. So I really want parents to become empowered about these topics and not just focus on teaching their kids, but also being really powerful advocates for them on behalf of them. And just to raise awareness about this issue so that we can really reduce these numbers that have been on the rise over the last couple of decades.

Adrienne (00:57)
Mm Yeah. And I love that I really unschooling the way I teach it is that it’s consent based education and consent based parenting. So we can use curriculum, textbooks, schedules, whatever. But the main point is that it’s consensual with our kids and the way that we are doing home education is not top-down parenting, top-down teaching, replicating the school system at home. It’s really making sure that not only am I advocating for my kids, but that they are able to advocate for themselves. That is, you know, they should be their number one advocate and learning that it’s not necessarily gonna be me speaking up for them, but that I’m making sure they’re empowered to use their own voice and making their own decisions and knowing that they’re in charge of their own bodies. So thank you so much for being here. And of course, this month is Sexual Abuse Prevention Month. why don’t we start with maybe debunking some myths? What are some things that maybe parents don’t understand necessarily about child abuse, child abuse prevention? I know when I found you, I was asking people on my page about sleepovers. We had done sleepovers my whole life growing up. Fortunately, I never had a particularly negative traumatic experience and my whole family lives in town. We have 11 cousins and the cousins are constantly having sleepovers. And we got into this really big conversation and someone mentioned your page because I didn’t really understand the statistics about how often abuse is actually from people that you know and not how we grew up in the 80s, whatever, with Stranger Danger and it’s gonna be some creepy guy in a van offering my kids ice cream. So could you expand on that a little bit, please?

Rosalia Rivera (02:44)
Yeah, yeah, I love that you’re raising awareness this month. It’s such a great opportunity. I hope that everyone who’s listening will take some of these and continue sharing that information too. Because yeah, there is still not enough awareness around the issue. And because of that, there’s lack of education and there’s still a lot of myths. And interestingly enough, even in the eighties when there was the idea of stranger danger, like even in the eighties that wasn’t really accurate. It was still at that time, 90 % of abuse happening by people that children and their families knew and trusted. So that hasn’t changed. It has continued to be really foundational to people’s understanding because when we think the danger is outside the home, then that’s what we’re focusing on. When we think that the danger is coming from a stranger, then we’re not looking at our inner circles. So it’s important that parents understand that whether your child is going to a sports camp or a religious institution, whether youth leaders or anywhere where there are adults and children, it’s important to know that

those could be potentially unsafe people. can’t just give a blanket approval to everyone just because we know them. So it’s important that people know that only 10 % of abuse actually happens by strangers. And this is where we see things like abductions and whatnot. So a lot of parents tend to think, my kid is not in danger. I know everybody who my kid interacts with. They all seem really great. that’s what

unfortunately offenders use to hide behind, right? They know that parents, if they’re trusting, if they can show themselves in a really positive light, then they may then have access to children. So what we really need to learn about today more than anything is the idea of grooming and what that is and ultimately what it’s not because there’s also a lot of misconceptions about what it is and what it’s not. So.

Grooming is one really important piece for parents to learn about so that they can detect signs of grooming before abuse happens. It’s the precursor to abuse. And also so that they can start to teach their kids about what are those red flag signs that they need to look for so that if they spot those, they can listen to their intuition, they have the knowledge to connect the dots and then be able to report it right away so that hopefully it doesn’t escalate to abuse.
And also so that they can start to teach their kids about what are those red flag signs that they need to look for so that if they spot those they can listen to their intuition.

And then the second piece is really important to understand today, especially more than ever, and as a release to sleepovers, is that the rates of peer-to-peer abuse have been on the rise.
And then the second piece that’s really important to understand today, especially more than ever, and as it relates to even sleepovers, is that the rates of peer-to-peer abuse have been on the rise for the last five years. In North America, the rate of abuse by peers, by juveniles, was 40%, which is still quite a high number. But most of the most recent data that has come out in pointed to the fact that this number has actually increased to 70%.

So that’s a huge increase. We’re talking about rates of peer-to-peer violence skyrocketing. There’s lots of reasons that experts are pointing at as to why. But what we need to know is that when it comes to sleepovers, we need to also be aware of, do I feel that the family is safe? But also the child that my own child is hanging out with understands body safety, knows what’s safe and unsafe, what’s appropriate or not. Are the parents teaching it in the home? So it goes beyond just being aware of like, are there safe adults in the home, but also are they doing what they need to do to ensure that their child’s being educated about body safety as well. Those two things, I think, you know, the 90 % of abuse happens by people you know and trust, you know, so that you understand why learning about grooming is so important is one really important piece of body safety in 2025. And the other piece is recognizing that the other piece is recognizing that the rates of peer to peer the rates of have gone up. And this is also a really critical piece of information that will guide how parents can talk to their kids and teach their kids about body safety. So I think those are the two most important numbers that people can keep in mind. And then the last, I guess, statistic that I’ll point to as really relevant here in North America are the rates, right? Like how prevalent is this? What are we talking about in terms of like, what kind of risks are my kids at? So 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused before the age of 18 if we don’t change things. So I always say if we don’t change things because I don’t want people to think that that’s set in stone and that’s always what it’s going to be. The good news is that child sexual abuse is preventable and it’s not inevitable and there are more resources today than ever to help parents do that. So that’s the good news.

Adrienne (07:23)
Okay, thank you so much. So let’s start with the first one then signs of grooming what that looks like. So let’s start with the first one signs of grooming what that looks like what it doesn’t look like. And I think you posted something a while back that I think they were words from convicted pedophiles who were talking about things that they look for or things that make made it difficult for them to groom a child and they it was kind of like a perfect blueprint for us to for what to look out for or not. So yeah, let’s get into that. And then and then we’ll go into step two and step three. But let’s start with grooming.

Rosalia Rivera (08:01)
Yeah, so grooming essentially are the behaviors and the strategies that offenders use to gain access to a child for the purpose of sexually abusing them. And this process varies depending on the abuser and the age of the child and the setting, right? And so essentially what we want to look for are certain signs of attention or favoritism towards a child. So these can look like, you know, just giving the child lots of attention, affection, words of praise. You know, this can also be called love bombing. Usually that’s used as a term when there’s like peer to peer situations, like if, you know, a teen is love bombing another teen, possibly for the purpose of trafficking them or something.
That’s usually where that term is used, but it can apply here where essentially you notice that an adult is really lavishing attention on a child more than others. So maybe we’ll see this in a group of kids that are being coached. Maybe the coach is like really focused on this one child. So that is, you know, an interesting behavior to pay attention to. Also looking to isolate the child is this person trying to get alone time with them. this could be a situation where a family member is saying, you know, I can take care of the kids and don’t worry, you can go do whatever. Or if it’s a romantic partner who’s looking to, you know, volunteer time to babysit and give mom some extra time off. You know, those are ways that an offender is trying to get that one on one time because abuse really can only happen in secrecy and that can only happen with those one on one situations.

Other grooming behaviors could be that they are gifting the child something. This could be large gifts or little gifts, right? But over time, they feel like they’re getting this special treatment. And especially if that’s combined with secret keeping. So if somebody is gifting your child something and they told the child not to tell the parents, because then maybe the parents won’t let them have the thing or won’t let them hang out with that person.

So they really try to go out of their way to form a bond with the child. Now that’s when the offender is trying to groom the child. But I want to be really clear that offenders actually start by trying to groom the adults first. And most parents don’t realize that, right? They think, I’ll notice when my child, you know, when somebody is really focusing on my child, like I, that will like turn the alarms on. But the truth is that offenders try to groom the parents first. Once they get that trust built in for the parents, then the parents are gonna give that access to the child. And they might, at that point, it’s almost too late because the parent has been blinded by this really amazing person that’s come into their life and built this trust with them and shown them what a good person they are and how much they’re trying to help be this amazing support person within their family. Sometimes it’s because that it might be someone who has access to something. So in a position for a coach, that if your child is wanting to play baseball and this baseball coach is the ticket to entering this bigger league or this sports trip that they wanna go on, then that parent might initially be like really wanting to make that coach part of the family group in a sense, right? So it’s really important that parents are aware of how adults groom adults. And there’s a really fantastic book called Duck Duck Groom by Anna Sinoda. I can send you the link for that. Really great book to understand comprehensively what grooming is. But I also have lots of resources for parents if they’re not like into the book yet, but it’s a really great resource. So highly recommend that parents get in tuned with what grooming looks like as an adult to an adult, and then what would those stages look like? If you’re maybe already past that point, you might start reading the book and go, my God, like these are some of the things that I’ve noticed, what do I do now, right? So you wanna make sure that you have some steps for like interfering, interrupting that grooming process so it doesn’t go any further.

Adrienne (12:08)
Okay, thank you. That actually really reminds me of my son did competitive gymnastics for a long time. He’s almost 12 now. And there was a point at which he was getting to the age where the coach was like, okay, now we’re going to start going on trips. And we travel as a team, we sit on the plane as a team, we’re in hotel rooms as a team. And I was like, you know what that like actually makes me really uncomfortable. I really don’t feel like he should go without us. And they were like, no, like this is how it goes. Like, trust me, they’ll be with another athlete. And I’m just like, this just sounds like a huge setup for possibly something to go wrong. Like I didn’t look at any of those other kids or even the coaches thinking, like I didn’t have any ill will or any reason to be suspicious of individuals and their personalities and their characters. Like we definitely came to this point where we are this little family because they’d been training together for 10 hours a week for years and years and years. You get close to people. And so you don’t wanna be that one that’s like, well, no, we’re gonna like some things up and I’m gonna insinuate that it’s not a safe situation, which obviously gets people really defensive and gets their backs up. But honestly like,

That’s our, our high school gymnastics teacher was caught with many girls and died by suicide. And luckily I wasn’t one of them, but he absolutely was alone with me a lot. I really liked him. He was so kind and like supportive and was a great coach in, from my perspective at that time until something like that happens, you’re like, wow, I could have been so easily could have been one of those girls because you train late, you train often at night, you’re gone on trips on the weekends, your parents aren’t always right there. And we like shame helicopter parents, right? Like that’s becoming a huge thing with people being too involved and too like uptight. so anyway, like, I became really unpopular, have since removed him from that sport and that gym because he could no longer, like he either had to do that or he couldn’t compete and he couldn’t be a part of the team anymore, which was a huge, huge decision and like super disappointing to my son, but there was no way to continue on without adhering to the culture and those rules. And it just was something that wasn’t worth it to me.

Rosalia Rivera (14:47)
Yeah, I mean, thanks for sharing that because a lot of parents go through that struggle. And sadly, a lot of it has to do with the fact that schools and sports organizations are not equipped, they’re not set up to really enforce or create a culture of safety. It is sort of this like, you know, of course we’re safe, should, you know, why would you think anything else? And unfortunately, that’s exactly what offenders look for in organizations when there is no real clear child safety policy in place, then there are loopholes that can be exploited, right? And so in situations like that, what I would recommend is for a parent to say, I’d love to see your safety policies around travel and sleepovers, and how are you ensuring that there is enough of a ratio of adults to students and that there are enough practices in place to ensure safety in different ways, right? And there shouldn’t be any resistance to that. Any organization that really does put child safety first is gonna go, sure, we actually have that. I’m happy to show it to you and really help parents understand that it is a safe culture, because there’s been thought put into it. It isn’t just like, you should trust us because, right? I always point to a perfect example in Rochester, New York, there was a principal who was at that school for 17 years and they had never implemented enough policies and child safety practices for the students to actually be safe. And when Aaron’s law, which is a law that mandates schools provide body safety education curriculums to students, this body safety class was taught to the school by a, I think it was a child advocacy center came in and taught a class. And there was a student who came forward after taking that class and recognizing that what was happening to him by the principal was in fact abuse and that he had a right to tell and he was able to come forward. And in the very end, after the case went to trial and everything happened, there were like, over 20 students that had come forward and shared that over the years, over the last nine years, this principal had started offending, abusing children. And again, this is someone who’d been there for 17 years. Everybody thought he was great and loved him. And there were teachers who actually did notice things, but didn’t speak up because they weren’t educated on what to ask or what to say or who to report to.

They were afraid of rocking the boat and being that teacher who was like, you know, what if I’m wrong and I wreck this guy’s, you know, career because I just, I’m not sure. So really, again, back to education and education is what informs good policies and procedures in any organization, whether it’s a church, a synagogue, a, you know, sports organization.

If you have that in place and it’s something that isn’t just a box that’s checked or a piece of paper that says, is what we do, but you see that that culture is open by the way that they respond to parent questions, that will give you a sense of this is a safe organization or this organization still has a lot more work to do. And a lot of times it’s not even that it is an unsafe organization, it’s just that they haven’t taken the steps to ensure that they are safe and to ensure that the people working for them who are interacting with kids have gone through the due diligence, that volunteers are taking trainings and that they get background checks. So, you know, there should be some processes in place so that parents, when they ask, they don’t feel like they’re asking something, you know, crazy. They’re just asking for information that the school should be very happy to supply, right? So I think it’s really important that when you get this information, you can talk to other people about it. And then if they have questions, you can point to maybe Darkness to Light, which is one of the organizations that I’m certified under. They have amazing resources for organizations. And you can point to them and say, if you’re not up to date with it, I know these policies need to be updated regularly because of how times are changing and all the research that’s coming out and all the evidence we have now you know, would you like some more information around that? And a good organization will say, absolutely, we’d love to, you know, see what that information is. When you get pushback is when I would say, you know, that’s pause for concern. And it is a hard decision to make as a parent to go, I don’t feel safe putting my child in this. And I’m unfortunately going to have to opt out, you know? So I just want to commend you for taking that action, knowing that those would be high risk situations if they aren’t being set up properly.

Adrienne (19:29)
Mm. Well, let’s dive into something I thought of was so I grew up in in the Mormon church, which I am not no longer a part of. But growing up in that scenario with parents who were fully on board with what was happening in the church, I found myself in situations where I look back on it now and feel like I was very much getting primed unconsciously for abuse. So I don’t feel like my parents and the church were necessarily priming me with the purpose to then abuse me. But I found myself later on in so many situations where I quote unquote accepted, I don’t want to use accepted but like allowed lots of abuse to happen because one, I wasn’t sure what it was and two, I had been feeling that my entire life. So being told between like French Catholic school, the Mormon church and my personal household that, you know, I wasn’t in charge of my body that either implicitly or explicitly I was going to be told what to do, when to do it, how to do it, why to do it my entire life, all day, every day between church school and home. And then being put in situations where, so from the age of 12, for example, you meet with your church leader who is a cis straight middle-aged man alone in a room to talk about your sexual thoughts, your sexual history, masturbation, where you had to report in detail who was taking your clothes off and where they were putting their hands and like in graphic detail. And because I had done that from the age of 12 when I was still doing it at the age of 25, because that was church culture and that’s what you do, particularly the use of shame and guilt because that, you my parents were putting me in this room because that is how our church runs and you get kids to feel bad about what they’re doing because it’s a sin. And so you get them in this situation where they’re being abused, they’re powerless. They are the ones, you know, in trouble sharing these sins. You’re bonding with this character that’s there like representing, representing God and representing power. And this person is like, Hey, you tell me all your sins and I will forgive you and I will make you feel better. And I will wipe this clean for you or whatever and just this like awful trauma bonding like exploiting kind of thing that by the time I was in my early 20s and had come home pregnant with someone that I wasn’t married to it was so easy for them to be like yeah you have to give this baby away to this other Mormon couple because they’re more righteous and I was just so used to one other people making decisions for me, but to being exploited and being really vulnerable and having no voice and having no situation growing up where I was encouraged to stand up for myself or encouraged to rock the boat or encouraged to feel empowered in any kind of way. And so I do want to talk about that for a little bit in our systems in our homes where we are setting kids up to accept difficult things happening to them because from toddlerhood it’s I’m the parent because I say so, my way or the highway, putting them in institutions like school, church and sports where they don’t necessarily have a very big voice that gets heard or they get punished for talking back. And so a lot of the work that I do is about helping parents reframe how they see parenting in school and church and any kind of environment that a kid is in and making sure that that kid actually is encouraged to one, listen to their own intuition and their own bodies and two, to speak up when they do feel uncomfortable, even if that’s against us or even if it’s against someone in a position of authority where it might, you know, get backlash and be rude or, or whatnot.

Rosalia Rivera (23:44)
Yeah, absolutely. And I’m so sorry that you went through, you know, that growing up in that way, because essentially, yeah, what you’re saying is you were taught that your voice didn’t count and it didn’t matter and you just needed to be obedient, right? And sadly, you know, where we see a lot of religion, people in positions of power, take advantage and exploit that position, particularly when it comes to children, is because they will start to indoctrinate them into obedience as the way of being and not to understand their right to agency, And so I think it’s really important to understand that this is what makes children in part vulnerable but also how adults play into that without realizing it, right? And if we don’t recognize the way that we were raised and the way that we set boundaries or not set boundaries or the way we use our voice or don’t use our voice, when we don’t heal that part of ourselves and do that work ourselves, it’s really challenging to then try to teach it to our kids or to even parent in that way, where we’ve shifted the perspective of what it means to be the parent and the child and what’s the dynamic of those relationships? How do we empower our children, but also get them to do the things that we need them to do because of health or safety or hygiene, right? So it’s such a push and pull for a lot of parents. And it’s so understandable when, if you’ve grown up in a culture, particularly within your domain of culture, that tells you, do as I say and obedience is king, right? So I think one of the first things I always tell parents is to examine yourself. know, and I do this even when it comes to helping kids learn about sexual health, is like, look at what are your own sexual values and where did you learn them from? Are they still what resonates with you today? What have you learned since then that, you know, maybe contradicts those original beliefs so that you can unlearn them and then actually implement the things that you do value, that are your values today, and that you wanna pass on, right? So that we’re not perpetuating cycles of obedience and abuse, or that we’re perpetuating the potential for our children to be victimized, right? So how do we begin to do this when it comes to body safety? And the first thing I wanna tell parents is that when you think about your day-to-day interactions with your children, I always prompt them to do a journal and write down like, what does a typical day look like for you? How many times do you tell your child what to do when you don’t actually need to, right? So an example of this would be, you telling your child what clothes to wear, how to do their hair, how much to eat? where those are not absolutes and necessary for you to control. So a lot of that is looking at ourselves and going, why do I feel such a need to control certain things that aren’t necessary? And so that my voice doesn’t just sound like no, no, no, no, no all day long, right? So when you kind of do that tally, you start to get a sense of like, I probably don’t need to control that. And I could give them a lot more agency there.

And here are the areas that are absolutely must, you know, they have to follow these rules. So it isn’t about not setting boundaries. I think a lot of parents mistake it as, I don’t want to raise a rude child or somebody who’s feels entitled to do whatever they want, whenever they want. So we’re not talking about going from one extreme of complete obedience to the opposite of free range parenting. Boundaries are incredibly important to have and to set and to teach children.

how to have them and how to set them, but they also need to learn to live within boundaries, right? Because in the world, we ultimately all do. We have laws that we have to obey. We can’t just speed down the highway if we want. So we all still operate within rules and boundaries. what I help parents understand is when it comes to health and safety, those are the things that our kids won’t have agency.

Agency unlocks at different stages throughout our lives. And this is why, you know, when a child turns 18, they’re officially, you know, quote unquote an adult. That’s when their full agency is unlocked. And what our job as parents are is to, number one, teach our kids that they have rights, that we want to honor their rights, that we respect their rights, teach them what those rights are and then teach them how to set boundaries around those things, right? And those are individual things that they have to determine what those boundaries are. Maybe they love hugging people, maybe they hate hugging people, maybe they love being tickled, maybe they hate being tickled, maybe it’s only by certain people, maybe it’s only at certain times. So we wanna help kids develop their voice to set those boundaries once they understand their rights.

And so that’s one of the first pieces of understanding autonomy and how it kind of unlocks at different stages. So the next piece that we want to help kids understand is what are the things that we as their parents have to enforce because we know about health and safety in ways that we are now going to start teaching them. Because if they want to become full adults that are able to have full autonomy, that means learning how to be a responsible person with your body.

So this means teaching about body literacy and that means the names of your body parts and it means understanding how those parts function. So we’re gonna teach this at different stages and it scaffolds, right? So we start with those initial building blocks, but teaching kids about their bodies, that they have a right to choose how they wanna receive affection, but then also teaching them, there are certain things that even mom and dad have to have rules that we abide by. So when we get in the car, we have to put a seatbelt, which means we’re not driving out of this driveway until a seatbelt has been put on. Sometimes we have to go to the doctor and they have to check on certain things on our bodies. I’m gonna be there and I’m gonna make sure that you’re safe because my job is to keep you safe. So if something doesn’t feel right, you can tell me and I can help you and we’ll figure it out together but we have to go to the doctor. So there’s certain things that you wanna explain to your child and say, there are certain aspects of safety and health that it’s my job to teach you how to do. And in the meantime, I’m gonna do those things for you or with you. And so something as simple as crossing the street is giving them still some autonomy and saying, do you wanna hold my hand or do you want me to pick you up to cross the street? When you get older, you’ll be able to cross the street by yourself once you’ve learned all the safety rules. That unlocks your next stage of autonomy, right?

So when we give kids this understanding that, you know, right now this is what you can work within, and then as you get older, you’re going to get more of this, you know, ability to decide things for yourself. So as we help them do that, they start to understand what autonomy means, what, you know, they might want to challenge you on those things.

The way that we respond to those challenges is also just as critical, right? So when we get pushback of like, I don’t wanna wear a coat, even though we know it’s snowing outside, what we can say is, I totally get that you don’t wanna wear a coat. How about we put the coat in your backpack so that, you if you go outside and you realize it’s cold, then you can put the coat on if you want, right? And so we’re still giving them a bit of agency. We’re not trying to control every single thing.

It’s important that they learn how to take care of their bodies, right? That’s all part of that agency and and then in terms of you know when it comes to things like religion and these ideas that are kind of overlaid on our sense of values That really is is important to say, you know these are ideas that I believe in or these are ideas that certain groups believe in and we can explore those ideas together. And if there’s something that doesn’t feel right, we can talk about it, right? So it’s not about asserting our sense of dominance and, you know, this is how it has to be, but letting our kids learn how to develop critical thinking skills, right? So that they learn how to assess a situation and learn to listen to their intuition, because that’s also a part of ourselves that we want, you know, to foster and help them develop.

And those are the things that will help reduce risks because once kids know what their rights are and they know that they have you as an advocate to support them in upholding those rights, then they feel like they can come to you if something feels unsafe, that they know that they can come to you if, you know, so-and-so said, you know, do this, but it didn’t feel right and, you know, they can trust you because you’ve opened up that safe communication space, then there’s no shame.

And that shame is really one of the things that offenders use to try to keep secrecy and to try to keep kids silent. So when we create those channels of open communication and space to even challenge us, right, then we are actually helping them develop their voice. And by doing that, when we listen to them and we’re having that open conversation, they learn that that’s the right thing to do always, that they can always look for someone, even when they get to be adults, you know, they can turn to someone to say, this doesn’t feel right, I’m not okay with this, and something’s got to change, right? Or I’m stepping out of the situation. Giving them that ability to have the courage to do that is fostered through these small decisions that we make every day in our parenting with something as simple as, you know, instead of forcing them to put a jacket on opening up the discussion to say, what about these options? Right. And I get it also, I want to just, you know, for those parents who are listening, who are like, I have three kids, I’m burnt out. I don’t have the patience or time, you know, to give my kids these options. I need them to do what I need them to do now. This is why having the conversations outside of those pressure cooker moments can really actually make your job as a parent easier.

So these great conversations to have at bedtime, great conversations to talk about after a situation. Sometimes we can’t deal with it in the moment, but we can still unpack it later. even repairing after the fact can be really powerful. So you were rushing out the door and you had to tell your kid to put the jacket on and maybe you forgot these other steps that you could have taken. You can go back later and say, you know, as we’re learning this,

Process of you having you know autonomy or agency or however you’re explaining it to your child based on their age You can say I realized that I kind of went back into my old patterns of just wanting to tell you what to do because that’s how I grew up and I don’t want you to grow up the same way because I didn’t feel like I had a voice and I want you to have a voice and so I’m sorry that that you know I rushed you and we didn’t have time What do you think we could do next time so that we don’t end up in that same situation, right?

So repairing can be just as powerful. So I wanna remind parents, even if you don’t get it right the first time, even if you don’t get it right the first five to 10 to 20 times, repairing and going back and actually making those small changes each time can be really powerful in showing your kids, even my parents make mistakes and when they make mistakes, we can talk about it and nobody’s gonna be in trouble, nobody’s gonna die, nobody’s gonna lose love.

You know reinforcing the idea that like even when we make mistakes we’re still lovable is really powerful to teach kids because when they feel like they have a risk of losing your love that actually Increases their risk for being abused and keeping you know keeping secrets from parents so there’s so many powerful ways that we can help kids learn about autonomy and Learn about it ourselves in the process if it wasn’t something that we grew up with

Adrienne (35:17)
Well, yeah, and I like that you touched on things that we didn’t grow up with because that was my entire life. And I just want to point out if we use body literacy and sexual literacy as an example, I’ve been reading these books to my kids since they were quite, quite young, which starting early is really such a key not to discourage people who are starting late. Obviously, anytime is a good time to start. But when you start that so early, it’s so normalized. periods are normalized for my kids, tampons and the correct terminology. Like we don’t use these who how words we use vulva, we use penis, we use, you know, scrotum, whatever. And that has been normal from day one. And again, I didn’t have that modeled to me growing up, but just like anything else that I don’t know, learn right alongside with my kids. And I think taking a moment to be like, it’s okay, I can be humble, I can, I’m not up here on this power pedestal of knowledge and we have to get over our ego of needing to be this person that’s in charge and has all this authority and knows everything. Because if I show any sign of weakness or not knowing something to my kids, then, you know, I lose that control and it’s really scary for people who rely on that control to parent and rely on that, you know, kind of fear based parenting instead of coming right down and eliminating that power balance and being like, I don’t know about this either. You don’t know about this. Let’s read about this. Or like, I always try and throw in, I didn’t know that. That’s really interesting. Or, Hey, did you guys know that? Like that actually creates in my opinion, a much safer atmosphere and an atmosphere where kids feel like, okay, I’m not the only one who doesn’t know this, I feel more comfortable asking questions. And I particularly try and encourage them to notice that when we have a question, it’s not just come to mom, she knows everything. I’m constantly like, well, let’s, you know, pull up a video about that. Let’s find a book about that. Let’s check out these other sources who are experts on sex ed for kids or body literacy for kids. Which is kind of part of the whole unschooling philosophy in general is that I don’t know everything about math or physics or anything else indigenous culture. So we go to these other sources, which I think takes a lot of the weight off for parents. Like you don’t have to know every answer. It’s okay to say, I don’t know. It’s okay to say, let’s look it up. It’s okay to say, let’s find this out together. And I think when you’re learning both kind of learning at the same time, it creates this much more open, like, okay, let’s all take a breath. Let’s all step back and look at this as something that we’re doing together. This isn’t mom being like, here’s what you need to know. You’re like an empty bucket and I’m going to fill you with this information. And you know, you’re younger, so you don’t know. And I’m more experienced and I’m more like this keeper of all the knowledge, but instead really just going to the library, getting these books out together and learning about all these things at the same time. Because I think, I know you’ve posted about this lots, but the kids who are really confident and secure in their autonomy knowledge and body knowledge and sexual health knowledge, which is counterintuitive to what we’re taught I think culturally and societally is that that’s grooming. Like how dare you talk to kids about sex? That’s what’s grooming, which is so just the opposite of everything that you and I know about abuse prevention, that that literacy is what saves so many kids because groomers, that’s such a, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think a red flag for groomers when they’re looking for kids, the ones that are very confident in their body, their body language, that literacy, the correct terminology, those are way harder to groom.

Rosalia Rivera (39:47)
Yeah, absolutely to your point about parents learning alongside their kids, I can tell you from experience of working with hundreds and thousands of parents at this point that the majority of parents really are learning about boundaries alongside their kids. And I run this program called Prepare to Prevent, which actually is to help parents who are going to put their kids into the school system learn how to prepare their children, but also communicate with the schools, because it is quite the learning curve. And again, this is another space where it’s like parents have assumptions or they think, I need to know certain things in order to teach my kids. And so it deters them from homeschooling where the interesting thing is that we’re actually, whether we want to accept this or not, we’re parenting ourselves as we parent our children. And a lot of times if we don’t do that work, ourselves of just healing whatever kind of, you know, childhood wounds or trauma we have, we end up passing it along. So what I found in doing these programs, these cohorts of parents that I’ve worked with, is that when we get to the point of the program where I say, OK, we’re going to start learning about boundaries, but this isn’t like what you’re going to teach your kids. This is about examining your own boundaries as our first step towards then teaching our kids.

It’s amazing to hear how many parents say, this was so eye-opening for me because I didn’t realize that I had such a hard time setting boundaries. Like you don’t know it until you start examining it. And then they realize, yeah, if I can’t model this to my kid, which is ultimately one of the most powerful ways that our kids learn from us is through modeling, not through the words that we speak, but through the actions that we take, that they realize.

I have a hard time setting a boundary with my in-laws or with other parents and I’m not sure how to address when something’s uncomfortable or I don’t like what uncle so and so is saying or doing. So then they examine that and they go, my gosh, I’m learning about boundaries alongside my child. that can, for some people, depending on your ego, can feel like a blow or it can feel like an awakening.

And I’m hoping that, you know, for the most part, it will feel like an awakening. It can still feel scary because a lot of times you’re like, why can’t I set those boundaries? Why does my body respond this way when I have to say something or somebody, you know, I’m at Thanksgiving dinner and so and so asks me an inappropriate question about my life. I don’t know how to, you know, set the boundary that I’m not okay talking about that. So how can I then teach my child? Right. And so.

This can be a really powerful shift for a lot of parents where when they start teaching their kids how to set boundaries, they start learning how to do that. And it is such a beautiful co-creation of, you know, breaking cycles and empowering ourselves and our kids. So I just want to encourage parents to know that as they start doing this work, it can feel really like a moment of awakening and a beautiful way to empower children. When you say, didn’t grow up with this, I didn’t know I had a right to my voice, I want you to know that you have a right to your voice. And so some of this we’re learning together and that’s okay. And it really humanizes children, it helps them to want to learn more because you’re learning together instead of just being taught. Like being that, like you said, that top-down model where I know and I’m gonna tell you versus we’re discovering this together and it feels like such a powerful journey and we might both make mistakes and that’s okay. Like we’re gonna learn and my job is to try to like ensure that you’re as safe as possible. And for parents, like I just also wanna say that this does take time. This isn’t something that you need to do overnight. It’s not gonna happen in a month. These are ongoing conversations that you’re gonna have year after year as your child develops, as their sense of understanding changes, you want to revisit some of those old things. I have a lot of parents who are like, I taught my child about all these things when they were three, and now they’re five, and they’re doing some of those things that I told them not to do. What did I get wrong? And it’s like, well, your child’s understanding at three is going to be very different than at five. The amount of development that happens in these short childhood years is radical. And so it’s important that we make sure we keep these conversations going and that they’re relevant at our kids’ different stages. And even in things like sleepovers, I want to just also point out, because I know you mentioned that in the beginning, that this isn’t just about being the helicopter parent. I actually am very against overprotection because I grew up with that kind of mom. She didn’t let me do anything. I wasn’t allowed to go to sleepovers or to play dates or to, you know, there were so many things that my friends were doing that I wasn’t doing and I missed out. And then when I got old enough, I became very rebellious because I was like, I didn’t get to do all these things. And so I would sneak out or I wouldn’t tell my mom, you know, the truth about things. And I ended up putting myself in a lot of unsafe situations without skills, right? I wasn’t taught those skills. So what I always say to parents is, being proactive is great. Being overprotective doesn’t actually help your child develop skills to learn. And again, I just want to also reiterate that it’s not a child’s job to prevent abuse. That’s our job. So we’re not teaching these skills because that means that the child’s going to be able to stop a perpetrator. They might, and that would be great if they do because maybe they’ve practiced lots or they have that kind of personality where they can stand up. Not all kids have those personalities and not all kids are in a position, you know, they might be in a position of power where someone’s bigger and stronger and they feel, you know, they go into fight or flight mode, right? So we don’t want to put that onus on kids. But what we do want is to empower them with the knowledge that if something’s wrong, something feels unsafe or uncomfortable, they can go to you, they can talk to you, they can report it and that they have a right to that. And then nothing negative, no negative consequences are going to come out of them saying something.
Ultimately, there will be some because you might lose that relationship or you might find out that that person is actually really unsafe. But that’s obviously a better decision to make than to be blindsided and not know because all you were doing was overprotecting instead of empowering your kids with skills. So it is important to learn this and teach this, but it’s also important to learn how to be an advocate and also not be afraid to speak up because you’re not being overprotective, you’re being proactive. So there is a difference. And I just want to say to parents who are like, I’m just going to keep my child close to me, your kid is eventually going to grow up. And if they didn’t develop those skills of understanding their rights, their autonomy, their agency, their voice, their boundaries, then when they get older, they will be actually more vulnerable. So doing this work now even though it does take some time and it does take some effort and energy and even courage, you know, if it’s something that you went through yourself as a survivor of that kind of abuse in childhood, stepping into that healing and doing the work for you personally is going to be just as important as a prevention strategy as anything else that you do.

Adrienne (47:11)
Mm hmm. Yeah, I love that. I want to talk about two things before we go. But one of them that came up with sleepovers was so many parents were like, Yeah, I I’m not going to do sleepovers except for with family because I don’t know these, you know, kids parents at school or sports or whatever. But my family I do know like, of course, I trust my parents, their grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. But we know that the numbers are actually often more likely to be within that inner circle, but so many parents, it’s unfathomable to think of this happening within that extended family, our village essentially that is our inner social circle and the people that we have Sunday dinner with every weekend and our cousins who are best friends and play soccer together. And so I just wanted to see if you could address that for a second. And maybe there is no answer there, but I did want to address it because that’s the thing I think that came up for most people in that reel that I posted about whether you do sleepovers or not was, well, I’m comfortable with family only, but then we know the numbers tend to be that family.

Rosalia Rivera (48:11)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there’s a few things that I recommend in terms of assessing whether you should do sleepovers or not, especially when it comes to family, because like you said, it kind of makes it permissible for a lot of people. But what it’s important to note is that there’s two things that you can do to minimize risk if you decide to do that. So one is to talk to those adults about your home family safety rules, right? So as an example, if you’re even doing a drop off play date, right? Not even a sleepover, but a drop off play date. Ask the parents or the family or if it is grandparents or whatever, or a cousin that they’re gonna go visit, let them know we don’t do closed door play dates. So if they’re gonna be hanging out in the play room or in the bedroom, we don’t do closed doors. Or we only do common spaces, right? So what are your family rules? Be clear on what those are and then convey those to whoever it is that’s hosting. So that, you know, when it comes to sleepovers might be like, you know, we don’t do screens past a certain time, or we only do screens in common spaces, or we only do screens for a certain amount of time. So can you share what your policies are or do you do anything in regards to those specific things? So getting to know what are the home policies of the home that’s hosting, who are the people that are living there? Are there older siblings? What’s the sleeping arrangements? What are the sort of tech policies that are in that home for that older sibling? Those are particularly important because again, the rates of peer-to-peer violence, right? And a lot of that, what experts are pointing to is potentially, you know, access to pornography, if they’re being groomed themselves by someone. So what are those policies within the home for tech? And what are the ways that my child can connect with me if they feel unsafe? Does my child have a device? You know, is it easy for them to get to a phone in that home? How can that, how can my child connect with me, right? So there are a lot of different options for different ages.

But also, you know, have you set up your child to know certain things in terms of exit strategies? And usually when I say all these things, most parents will go, yeah, no, I haven’t done that. I haven’t done that. No, I didn’t do that. I don’t know if I can do that. I haven’t checked this. So usually once they go through that checklist, they’re like, yeah, my child’s not ready yet. But, know, you might say, okay, I think my child will be ready when they’re 12 because then they we will know all these things or they can, know, or I have a grandparent who is amazing and I trust them and I’ve had that conversation out with them. There can be no other adults in the home when there’s a sleepover. I want to have certain things set up so that I can communicate with my child before they go to sleep at night. So what are the key pieces that you can put into place if your child’s really young and they’re going to a grandparent’s for a sleepover?

have those conversations, even down to things like, I’m teaching my child that we don’t keep secrets, so please don’t give them extra dessert and then tell them not to tell me because that’s one of the strategies that groomers can use to, you know, that offenders can use to groom my child. you know, explaining to those people the why is also really powerful, especially when it’s family members, because that’s sometimes where you will get that like really open and honest pushback, like…

What, I’m not gonna do anything bad? Like, why can’t I my grandchild ice cream? And it’s like, well, you can, and that’s fine, but don’t tell them to keep it a secret from me. We do not keep secrets, that’s a family rule. Now, nine out of 10 times, when an adult has a conversation with another adult, if that adult is an unsafe person, that’s gonna be a signal to them that you are a vigilant, educated parent who is teaching your child who is willing to have these open conversations, this means this child is not gonna be an easy target and they will likely not be targeted by that adult. So having these conversations are critical to our kids’ safety if we’re putting them in the care of those adults that are part of our family. So the more we’re willing to have these open conversations and also just educate those people about what we know because if you just learned it, guaranteed they probably haven’t. And so it can be your golden moment to say, I just learned this. And so this is why we’re creating this family rule. We would love for you to be part of our safety team and be on board with this. What do you think? And nine out of 10 times, a safe adult is going to go, I never thought of that, or I didn’t know that. And you know what? That sounds like a great idea.

Or they might say, I’m not really on board with it, but I respect your parenting. Or, I didn’t know that that didn’t happen in my time, but I can see how that’s a problem now. And thanks for sharing that with me. And sure, we can do that. So that response is going to also help you determine, is this a safe person? Or is it someone who’s like, that’s ridiculous. Don’t worry about that. If I want to give my grandchild ice cream, like, you might say, okay, well, you know, we might have to wait for a sleepover then, you know, we might not be comfortable doing that right now. It might cause some tension and that’s okay too. Like, again, that kind of goes back to like, am I reverting to my own childhood where my parent was in control and I have to do what they say? Or am I in control as the parent here setting boundaries that I know are for my child’s safety, right? So a lot of that kind of comes back to again healing those old patterns and kind of like stepping into a new way of engaging with those adults now that we’re adults. it can be complex and sometimes it’s like not the answer that people want but when we’re talking about if you want your child to go on a sleepover then these are the checklists that we need to do today compared to 20 years ago when there was no internet and there wasn’t you know, all of the different issues that young people are facing today 20 years ago, right? So we’re living in different times. And I always find it funny when people say, you know, I had a great time going to sleepovers and nothing ever bad happened there. And it’s like, well, that’s great. I’m so glad. And that doesn’t mean that, you know, we should just be very willy nilly about it with, you know, our kids.

Adrienne (54:35)
Well, and we have the numbers now. like whether or not you had a positive experience is kind of almost irrelevant to what we know now. And I just want to point out like a couple of things. One, having that conversation to where I’m present, the other parent is present, their kids are present and my kids are present is so powerful. Like everyone’s in this conversation together so that I know that that parent knows and that I know that their kids are listening too. So it’s not just me talking to my kid or me talking to that parent. Like we are all here aware of what each other’s rules are. I think can be really, really powerful that we’re all aware. And I think maybe too that that puts that dangerous adult. They see, okay, everyone, this is talked about comfortably. We’re willing to have these difficult conversations, which again is always going to be worth it. Nothing is worth child abuse or sexual abuse, right? So as uncomfortable or as difficult as conversations are, it’s still worth it, right? To have. And again, it gets easier and easier. Like I think doing that first, just like exercise, just like anything, like doing that first jump can be so hard, especially if it wasn’t modeled for you, especially if it makes you super uncomfortable.

Adrienne (55:52)
But like the more you do it and particularly with kids because to them, like when they’re young, especially coming to them with almost anything is going to be new. Like they are new to this world. And so when we coming to them with these different things is going to be new. you’re talking about, you could be talking about physics, you could be talking about a different culture, like that’s gonna be just as new to them. And so it’s okay to do and wonderful to do. And it’ll just get easier and easier the more that it’s normalized. And I think you’re right, like I’ll link all those resources below because

There are videos out there. There are videos made for kids. There are books made for kids, especially for this. are books made for parents, right, to make, this isn’t the 60s anymore. We have so much information and so many resources available at our fingertips. And the other thing that I wanted to talk about with sleepovers for a moment is I remember this one story where a friend had, you know, sent their daughter over to a sleepover. The parents were like, Hey, we’re gonna go on a date like the older brothers are here. They can babysit it happens all the time. But you know, the the parent was not made aware of this. And then those kids had their neighborhood friends over and nothing happened. But recounting the story, the mom was like, so many things could have gone wrong in that scenario. But it was just so that was that was so normal for that family to have friends over, to go out on a date as parents, to have older siblings babysitting. Like that wasn’t out of the ordinary for these people. And again, as I said, nothing happened, but it’s sometimes things like that variables that are, you don’t even think about, or maybe are outside of, you know, your control that you’re necessarily thinking. You’re thinking I’m just sending my kid over a sleepover. I know who the parents are. I know who the siblings are. I trust them, but you’re not always gonna be aware of or in control of all the variables that could happen in that scenario. You don’t always know who’s gonna be in that house. You don’t always know what the situation is gonna be. And so I think it’s really important to consider that too. And I’m not saying what parents should do. I’m just saying that there’s so many things out there that can change that maybe you’re not necessarily made aware of.
As we end, is there anything that you want to leave with parents is just like, I really, really wish parents knew this and I could talk about this all day. But let’s just end with like your final message to parents who are just trying to do the best that they can and empower their kids in the best way, but maybe as we’ve talked about this whole time, might not have had that growing up and modeled to them. And it’s very uncommon in our society to empower kids. It’s very uncommon to give them a lot of tools and advocacy tools because our society kind of runs on kids being obedient and kids listening without question and recognizing authority and not getting to stand up for themselves. So it is really revolutionary and breaking all those generational cycles with this kind of education and this kind of empowerment, which to me is going to change the world.

Rosalia Rivera (59:10)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I agree with you there for sure about changing the world with this because we can prevent the next wave of Me Too. You know, I think we we think, know, Me Too happened and it really opened up this conversation. And while a lot of it was really focused on workplace harassment, if we kind of reverse engineer how that happened, it’s because we don’t teach kids about body safety and boundaries and consent.
And so when I just want to leave parents with the knowledge that we’re not only helping kids learn how to be safe and be safer in the world, but we’re teaching kids how to be safe to others. So this is such a powerful model for creating a more equitable world because we’re teaching kids how to respect the rights of others, including their own rights. So this work is doubly impactful. I’m a mother of three boys and to me, I see that as a huge responsibility to make sure that I’m raising humans who are going to respect the rights of others, not just learn how to advocate for themselves and seek help when needed and know that they have me in their corner, but that they are being actively safe towards others as well. So just bear that in mind that we are not just breaking cycles, but we’re empowering generations to come with this understanding that everybody has rights and respecting those rights can actually change the world. Like literally, I mean, we can have peace by teaching these things and all of the actions that we take can work towards that.

The last thing that I also want to focus on is that we tend to think of all of these prevention practices, of like where it comes to safety and policy within organizations and teaching our kids about autonomy and all those things. One of the most powerful prevention practices that we can do is connection with our kids. Because when we are connected with them, when we show them that we are a safe space, that we want to listen, not just talk to them, but to listen to them. When we show them that we are making time for them, that they are special to us, when we’re not on our phones, you know, being distracted by everything else going on in the world, we highlight to them that they are important and that they matter. And they will not seek that external validation from others, which makes them less vulnerable to grooming and to abuse.

So being connected is one of the most powerful prevention strategies that we can have as parents. And that’s something that we can practice every single day.

Adrienne (1:01:50)
Mm Oh, thank you so much. This is just such a good conversation. I love it. I love that we touched on healing and childhood trauma and reparenting ourselves and so many things just beyond the normal conversation of sexual abuse, right? And sex ed, because I think we get so focused on maybe the how to’s and the nitty gritties of it or the statistics, but in fact, it goes so, so much deeper. And as you were saying, right, if we learn and if kids learn from a very early age, not to exploit others, not to take advantage of those in vulnerable positions and marginalized identities, because we all have a voice, they also have a voice, we’re empowered, they’re empowered. As we were saying, that just raises an entire generation of adults who then understand not to not do that to all these communities. I mean, that’s all the world’s problems around us are from exploiting marginalized communities or taking away their rights or mistreating people, right? Not with respect. So you’re absolutely right. So I’ll just echo that. But thank you so much for being here.

Rosalia Rivera (1:03:00)
Thanks for having me.

Adrienne (1:03:05)

Yeah, I really appreciate all your knowledge and wisdom and being able to pass down all of that helpful advice to parents. Okay, thank you so much.

Rosalia Rivera (1:03:15)
Absolutely.

Thank you.