Classes help kids stand up for selves

Public schools in Spokane and North Idaho offer curricula aimed at teaching kids how to recognize sexual abuse and say “no” to abusers.

“Nobody should ever touch your private body parts except to keep you clean and healthy,” Winton Elementary counselor Ronnie Semko told a first-grade class last month.

Coeur d’Alene elementary school counselors talk to each class at their schools about the differences between appropriate and inappropriate touching and what students should do if they think they’ve been abused. In Spokane, classroom teachers handle the lessons.

The lessons are part of the districts’ personal safety curriculum and are tailored to different grade levels. Schools typically see an increase in the number of children who report abuse after the lessons are taught.

“I’ll have kids come and talk to me afterward about that funny feeling,” Semko said.

“Funny feeling” is the term Semko uses to describe to young children how they can tell when hugs, kisses and touching may be inappropriate.

“You feel a funny feeling inside, and that tells you it’s not safe,” she told the first-graders.

Semko said she tries to emphasize that abusers aren’t always strangers.

Of the 20 to 25 sexually abused children she’s known over the 16 years she’s been a counselor, only one was victimized by a stranger.

In her recent talk to first-graders, Semko included a lesson on how to “stand tall” and say “no.”

“Use your strong voice to go, ‘Please stop that,’ ” she said.

The children practiced their stance – their feet apart and firmly on the ground and their faces serious – as Semko walked around and observed.

“You can’t be having your feet together,” she told them. “You’re just a pushover then.”