The people I can tell

The sheet

Your child draws round their hand and puts a grown-up they could tell on each finger. On the second page, how to choose them together, and what to do if your child tells you something.

To make together · A4, two pages · Two pages · PDF, 57 KB

Open the PDF →

It goes with The Conversations Parents Avoid.

How it helps

Child protection charities advise helping children work out, in advance, which grown-ups they could go to. Naming five, in different places and not all in the family, gives your child people to go to, and their page reminds them that a secret that makes them feel sad, worried or frightened, or a secret about their body, is one they can always tell.

How to use it

1. Print the two pages on one side each: the first is your child’s to keep, and the second is yours. On a calm day, let them draw round their hand, put one person on each finger, and write the names on the lines.
2. Let your child choose. Help them think of people in different places, with at least one outside the family, and don’t fill in names for them.
3. Read the box on their page together: good secrets are surprises and get told in the end; a secret that makes them feel sad, worried or frightened, or a secret about their body, is one they can always tell; no grown-up should ask them to keep a secret from their people, unless it’s a surprise; and if the first person doesn’t listen, your child tells the next.
4. Let them keep it somewhere that is theirs, not the fridge, and look at it again each term. If your child tells you something that worries you, stay calm, thank them, don’t promise to keep it secret, and act that day, as your page says.

How to print it

Print it at home on A4, at actual size (100%) in the print settings. Print each page on one side of the paper. It reads as well in black and white as in colour.