Your Safety Conversations Should Start Younger Than You Think and Here's How to Begin Body Safety With a Toddler, with Kristi McVee [Ep 89]

What do we actually know about the people our children spend time with? And would our kids come to us if one of those people asked them to keep a secret?

Some conversations are uncomfortable to start, and they're the ones our children carry with them the longest.

In this episode, I'm joined by Kristi McVee, a child safety and prevention educator who spent 10 years as a police officer, specialist child interviewer, and child abuse detective in Western Australia.

Kristi and I talk about the signs of grooming she saw over and over in her interview room, and why parents kept telling her they would have acted sooner if they had known what to watch for. She walks through the body safety lessons she taught her own daughter starting at age two, and how those same lessons carry over as soon as a child goes online, where online grooming starts inside a group and then pulls the child somewhere private. She also shares the dinner table test she applies before she posts a single photo of her daughter. My son is nine and has never been to a sleepover, so hearing Kristi lay out the risk factors gave me language I didn't have before.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What she asks other parents before her child sleeps at their house
• Why more than 90% of child sexual abuse in Australia involves someone the child already knows
• How to tell a surprise apart from a secret that hides harm
• Why proper names for private parts change what a child can report later
• What predatory behavior looks like in an adult who keeps finding time alone with kids
• How grooming tactics work on parents at the same time they work on children
• Why tickling can become a testing ground for consent and bodily autonomy
• What the dinner table test says about photo sharing our kids online
• How Kristi handled online safety while her daughter gamed, headphones off and all
• Why offenders in one Australian study walked away from children who pushed back
• Why abuse prevention starts at home instead of at the school gate
• How to open safety conversations with a child who's already older than two
• What surfaced for Kristi when her own childhood trauma returned as her daughter grew

This is the conversation most of us never had as kids, and the one Kristi shows us how to give ours.

Hit play and let's grow together,

Kimberly

Connect with me:

Website: https://www.kimberlyhand.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kimberlyhand_

Shop The Cinnamon Effect Journal here: https://thecinnamoneffect.com/journal

Connect with Kristi McVee:

Website - www.cape-au.com

Instagram - @kristimcvee Tiktok - @tiktokcop81

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