The days of just telling your children about the birds and the bees is well past its seeming simplicity. You need now to talk about their bodies, sex, abuse, and a whole spectrum of issues, and that too at a very young age. Now how do you go about telling your child all this? And not get them worried or scared? Or without getting uncomfortable yourself?
Bengaluru-based Deepa Kumar steps in to help with her website HowToTellYourChild.com accompanied by three books. The site uses animation films, interactive video “to provide fun and non-awkward tools for parents and educators to talk to children about topics like child sexual abuse and puberty”, says Deepa. The books — Lessons on Safety, Guide for Boys, and Guide for Girls — come with a CD featuring the relevant film from the site. Ms. P and Mr. P — dragons — are the common animation characters who talk to the children and are the voices of the books and videos. “While we believe that kids are all grown up, they still have a child inside them, thank god. So they do react positively to animation; it’s a non-threatening mode of communication. I still love animation at my age,” she smiles.
A telecommunications Engineer, Deepa set up her startup Yashram Lifestyle brands in 2007, and has since created a line of period starter packs for girls, maternity wear, and more. So why the website and books? “I’m a hyper-parent, with a broad ‘stranger fear’, like most hyper-parents. Being a mother of two daughters aged six and nine, and with news of child sexual abuse all around us, I spoke to them about it. But I felt we have a fear in our minds and when we speak about it, and we transfer it to the children. So the idea of the books and site came about to make it easier for parents to tell children because talking about it is really not easy,” she shrugs.
The Lessons on Safety book creates an awareness among children, in very simple terms to “alert” parents about five things — see, talk, touch, hold, and being alone. Through a process of elimination, it helps parents tell children who can, or cannot touch them, what their private parts are, helps them create a list of caretakers and people the children trust/are comfortable with or not. “Kids don’t understand shades of grey. You have to tell them things in black and white. Abuse is often viewed as just the physical act. What people don’t realize is that most abusers work up to it, beginning with finding ways to be alone with a child, saying provocative things to them, and performing small tests like asking to see or offering to show, before they finally begin to touch them.” The book has stickers, colouring and drawing activities, and at the end of the book, when the child has got an understanding of what has been talked about, there’s a badge to give away. The accompanying video also clearly illustrates that “bad” people are not what we imagine them to be, and could be people close to us, helping children make distinctions based on situations. The books and video can be shown to children aged three upwards, believes Deepa.
The books on puberty are meant for kids as early as eight, observes Deepa, as kids these days hit the puberty pretty early. “We don’t want to define an age when it’s suitable for kids. It depends on how comfortable the parent is with sharing the book. The book only makes the conversation between parent and child easier. It’s during the formative years that kids need to be confident about their bodies. Many men, I spoke to, said they had no clue what was going on with their bodies as they grew up. Mums sit their daughters down for a talk, but boys are expected to figure it out themselves.”
The puberty books, accompanied by simple illustrations, take children through basic concepts — how body shape changes, what body parts can look like over time, what changes to expect, sweat and body odours, emergence of hair and zits, voice changes, ejaculation, masturbation, wearing bras, mood swings, PMS, using sanitary pads — the works. “We did a survey before we worked on the book and site, and found that nobody wants to talk about sex. It’s not just Indians,” says Deepa, which is why the site is aimed at an international audience as well. Requests are already pouring in to make similar videos in regional languages, as well as German.
The books are priced at Rs. 625 each, and are available on their sites and on other commercial online shopping sites. The videos are also available free online. For information email info@howtotellyourchild. com or call 41650064
