Personal Safety Course To Include Younger Kids

Consider Sally’s problem: “A friend of her mother’s touched her bottom under her panties and made her promise not to tell! He said he was teaching her about being grown up!”

Mead elementary students will be reading about Sally’s problem in class next year, as they get grown-up lessons in sexual abuse, incest and protecting their private parts.

The district school board last week expanded its Personal Safety curriculum to kindergartners, first- and second-graders as a way to augment its current instruction in first and fourth grades. The Sally scenario will be presented to third graders.

For 40 minutes a day for one week in the school year, students will be taught to recognize inappropriate touching, that it happens within families and what to do if it happens to them.

The lessons get more sophisticated with age. Kindergartners learn what to do when bullies demand, “Give me your lunch money.” First-graders are taught the definition of private parts. Third-graders are given the phone numbers for Child Protective Services and warned that their aunt or uncle may be a pedophile. Videos with scenarios and anecdotes supplement teachers’ instruction.

“I’d want my child to know something about this if I hadn’t told them,” said Joan Kingrey, assistant superintendent for curriculum.

“One hundred fifty minutes a year is a drop in the bucket in terms of other things we teach… but kids are not very good at learning if they are stressed about other things,” she added.

The district begins sex education in the fifth grade, but Kingrey says the Personal Safety curriculum has a different emphasis. There is no mention of genitalia; students are taught that private parts are those covered by a bathing suit.

The new lessons are the result of a growing need, not in response to an incident, said Kingrey. And according to national statistics, they need it.

One in four girls and one in 10 boys nationally are victims of sexual abuse, according to Lutheran Social Services of Spokane. About 80 percent of sexual abuse occurs with an adult that children know or love.

“What psychologically damages them is to be abused, not to be told about (abuse),” said Christine Larsen, social worker at Farwell Elementary.

A committee of teachers, social workers and nurses compiled the new lessons, relying on material from Spokane School District and Lutheran Social Services. No parents were on the committee, which is a departure from the district’s usual practice.

Parents will be notified before the lessons and curriculum is available for inspection. No parents have complained about the curriculum, according to Kingrey.

Letters will be sent home during the week of instruction, asking for parents’ help with instruction. They’re asked, for example, to tell their children what to do if their third-grader hears an obscene caller or a stranger offers them a ride.

The lessons emphasize a child’s right to say no. If someone asks them to keep a secret about a “special game,” children are told to be assertive, say no and tell a trusted adult.

“What’s new in these lessons is (telling children) to listen to their own judgement,” Kingrey told the school board last week.

At the end of the week of instruction, students will be encouraged to report incidents that have troubled them. In previous years, fourth and first graders who have received similar lessons have mostly reported playground bullies, Kingrey said.

If a school employee learns of or suspects sexual abuse, they are legally obligated to report it to state authorities.

, DataTimes