By Theresia Titus
The Archdiocesan Safeguarding Office is presenting a new initiative called ‘Stories for Kids’, a 10-week online story time for children aged four to ten.
The Safeguarding Office will choose a story that complements each of the ten Basket Fillers included in the resource for parents launched in 2017 titled ‘Protecting God’s Children’ every week.
Speaking to The Record, Safeguarding Office Director Andrea Musulin believed that while it is suitable to start the initiative any time of the year, it cannot be more appropriate to start now as coronavirus-led measures and restrictions have led parents to look for activities to do with their children while also teaching them about safety.
“In the ‘Protecting God’s Children’ resource, we have recommended storybooks for each of the Basket Fillers,” Mrs Musulin said.
“However, we understand that not all parents have access to the book we have prescribed for them, so the initiative acts as another tool that parents can access and use instead of buying the books.
“They can stream our storytime video each week and that way they have one of the books prescribed for a complimentary reading on each basket filler,” she continued.
Mrs Musulin explained that the parent resource includes 10 teaching topics called “basket fillers” that teach children age-appropriate information on sex education and personal safety.
“It is important that parents teach their children about such matters as they have little to no knowledge on these subjects,” Mrs Musulin said.
“Children have many different baskets of knowledge on a range of subjects in their brain, however often the basket of knowledge for sex and personal safety is empty
“In order to work towards keeping children safe education is a major tool,” she continued.
Ms Musulin also said that the Safeguarding Office is planning to record more storybooks going into the future and make those recordings available online.
“By reading the children storybooks, it will extend their knowledge that they may already have and it’s a way of making [the learning process] interactive and fun,” she expressed.
“What we aim to do is to create teachable moments for parents with their children through the characters and the story in the book.
“Reading stories creates what we call a ‘one-step removed strategy’ which may assist in empowering children to speak and it creates flexibility and confidence in children to talk about somebody else rather than themselves.
“Furthermore, it provides an age-appropriate opportunity for parents to discuss such sensitive issues with their children,” she continued.
Ms Musulin explained further that teaching personal safety to children through storybooks is an effective way for them to learn and for the parents to teach as parents may not have the knowledge to do so.
“We find that teaching children personal safety with storybooks has a prominent role within the age group of four to 10,” she said.
“That is one of the strategies of teaching preventive education or child personal safety materials to children,” she continued.