This episode of PDACast is brought to you by the Center for Family Safety and Healing once again to Pedediacast.

We are a pediatric podcast for moms and dads.

This is Dr. Mike coming to you from the campus of nationwide children's hospital.

We're in Columbus, Ohio.

It's episode 586.

We're calling this one Strategies for talking with kids about body safety and autonomy.

I want to welcome all of you to the program.

So we have a really, really, really important topic for you today, and it's one that concerns

all parents of children.

And in particular, we're going to be talking about young children, but this is an important topic really for all of our kids, regardless of their age.

Because keeping our kids safe, and that includes physical safety and emotional safety, of course, but it also includes sexual safety.

And sometimes we let that slide away a little bit. And we don't necessarily put as much

emphasis on sexual safety with our kids as we do physical and even emotional safety. And some of

that has to do with our own comfort as parents in talking about these things with our children.

But it is an important thing to talk about.

And it starts with open communication at a really young age,

and we're going to explore strategies or talking with kids about uncomfortable things as we move forward,

because this really is the best way that parents can keep their children safe from sexual abuse

is to talk about it and to talk about what's

appropriate and what's not appropriate and not keeping secrets and when and where and who to

disclose these things too. It's all important, but it can also be, as we recognize,

difficult conversations. And so we want to talk about those and to share some strategies for keeping our kids safe as we think about sexual abuse.

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