★Response to a global emergency: addresses the universal issue of child abuse and digital safety with tools adaptable to any cultural context.
★Prevention without fear: innovative methodology that teaches protection of physical and emotional boundaries, educating children without traumatizing or alarming them.
★Operational toolkit + scientific foundations: practical tools immediately usable (activities, rhymes, stories) for parents, educators, and children, supported by solid academic foundations.

How to talk to pre-school and school-age children about body, boundaries, and safety without creating fear

For children, the body represents their very essence. They are their body and their body is them. They do not yet know its boundaries and will have to learn them through two processes that will accompany them in their early years of life: the explanations and education that the adult world will make available to them around the theme of the body and corporeality, and the experiences they will live directly and indirectly through their body and thanks to it. This book was created to give appropriate words and answers to preschool and school-age children regarding everything that concerns their body and the body boundaries they must learn to establish and that must also be respected by others.

ALBERTO PELLAI is an internationally recognized physician, psychotherapist and researcher at the University of Milan. His books have been translated into more than 15 languages and he is the author of over 30 books for parents, educators, children and teenagers. In 2004 he received the silver merit medal for Public Health by the Ministry of Health. He is recognized as one of the most authoritative voices in Italy on education and child development.

In these pages, I want to help adults find the words that children need to hear. Simple words, yet words that are almost always missing from the day-to-day conversations between parents and their children. My main goal is to provide families with a practical guide to the early prevention of child sexual abuse. Working as a specialist in child development, I know all too well how uncomfortable and distressing this topic feels for most adults. It is a subject that so often provokes anxiety—so much so that there’s an instinct to lock it out entirely from family life, never to mention it with your child. Many mothers and fathers ask themselves: “Why should we talk to children about something that could frighten them or make them feel bad?” On the surface, that sounds like a perfectly reasonable question. Why disturb a child’s peace of mind? Isn’t it better to just leave them alone and let them enjoy their childhood without worries?

But prevention does not mean sowing fear or introducing the child to threatening events that might turn them into a victim or, worse, an unwilling participant. Instead, prevention is about giving the child the tools to understand that a risk exists, to grasp the possible negative implications it might have for their life—and, most importantly, to know how to put strategies in place to contain it, avoid it, or at least lessen the harm.