The Right Touch: A Read-Aloud Story to Help Prevent Child Sexual Abuse

Rating:
Summary: A valuable and timely book for children and parents
Review: The Right Touch is a beautiful, sensitive, and invaluable book about safety and boundaries. The story gives parents a loving and gentle way to encourage discussion of a difficult issue. By teaching children to trust their instincts, it will empower them to protect themselves from unwanted intrusion; and because the book reminds us that children do in fact have trustworthy instincts, it may help relieve a great deal of parental anxiety, as well.

Rating:
Summary: This book for parents is also a book for clinicians.
Review: The Right Touch was written for parents, to offer both language and style appropriate for discussing this tough/sad subject with children. It is an effective tool, as demonstrated to us by reports from parents --- and from the many grandparents who buy the book 2 - 4 copies at a time. But The Right Touch is also a wonderful tool in therapy with children who have experienced sexual abuse. Young children are comforted by the emphasis on the fact that abuse is not a child's fault and that sometimes it's hard for children to "tell" when an adult has forced silence. I have found in my own therapeutic practice that older children and teens benefit from the content, too. I will introduce it as a children's book, acknowledging that it may seem "young" for them, but I stress the fact that the message of the story is an important one for them, too. The back cover is a reproduction of Jody Bergsma's famous poster "A Garden of Children." Here, about 40 little faces shine, each labelled with a feeling. Coming at the end of the story, this helps the children and teens I work with to sort out and identify their feelings. I appreciate all comments about our new book and especially value accounts of experiences with the book - both from family members and from therapists.

Rating:
Summary: Eye opening to adults as well as children
Review: While sharing this book with several adult friends (male and female) Who had been victims of child sexual abuse. The main comment,"Where was a book like this when I was a child? As parents it is our responsibility to equipt our children with as much knowledge and awareness as we can. The Right Touch is the right book for all Loving Parents to share with there children