Aroha in action hui: Responding to sexualised behaviour

[Animated graphic: Aroha in Action Family Start Hui 2023 graphic]

[Text on screen: Responding to sexualised behaviour between children and when to be worried? Aroha Lee & Lyn Jansen]

[Text on screen: Aroha Lee]

Aroha Lee:

Kia ora whānau, kia ora e te whānau. Ko wai au? Ko Tapuwae-o-Uenuku te maunga, ko Waiau Toa te awa, ko Takitimu te waka. Ko Takahanga te marae, ko Ngāti Kurī te hapū, ko Ngāi Tahu te iwi, ko Stevens tōku ingoa whānau, ko Aroha au.

My name is Aroha, I’m a Stop facilitator. Prior to my experience with Stop, I was a primary school teacher for 15 years, and I’m also the māmā of five beautiful kōtiro ranging from the ages of 9 to 22 years old.

Thank you for having us here today, hopefully we can help empower you and equip you in these conversations that you’ll be having with tamariki around sexualised play and behaviour.

[Text on screen: Lyn Jansen]

Lyn Jansen:

Tēnā koutou katoa. Ko Pukekiwi te maunga, ko Puherehere te moana, nō Tāmaki-makarau ahau. I tipu ake ki Papakura, engari, e noho ana au ki Ōtautahi ināianei. Ko Lyn Jansen tōku ingoa. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

Thank you very much for the opportunity for Aroha and I to come and share in your hui today. I believe we’ve got roughly less than 60 minutes to, I guess, have a kōrero to present a little bit about the mahi that we are doing, and an area that we’re pretty passionate about, which is around equipping kaimahi, like yourselves, to really sit alongside whānau, sit alongside family when conversations arise around sexualised play and behaviour that might happen between children. So that is going to be our focus for today, looking at that age group under 12.

My name’s Lyn, I’m the Prevention Education Lead with the Stop services based here in Ōtautahi. And originally hail from Auckland. I grew up in Papakura and I, too, are a mum of three, of my children. I’ve been in Christchurch for a little over 23 years and have been in the harmful sexual behaviour space for a little over 20 years, and have the great privilege, I guess, to be able to be in this prevention education space because we haven’t always been in there. It’s always, I mean, like the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff and I just want to acknowledge the Stop services and all the colleagues that we sit alongside so closely who are doing the clinical work, the hard trauma work, when children come across our path, and extending our mahi into this prevention space so that all adults in positions of responsibility and duty of care, like yourself as Family Start kaimahi, educators, teachers, pre-school teachers, have a little bit more understanding of how to approach sexualised play and behaviour between children.

The Stop services have been around since the eighties and over the last 13 years our mahi has specialised in working with children and adolescents and adults who have, kind of got it wrong, have made the mistakes, who have caused harm.

We’re based in the South Island; we have got offices, as you can see, across Te Waipounamu. And our mission and our vision it is ‘Hei hapori wātea ka Taitōkai.’ So, to work towards a community free of sexual harm. And I just want to acknowledge, also, the other services in Aotearoa who are also in the sector, which there’s WellStop based in Wellington, and Safe based in Auckland, who are also doing some similar mahi.

So, what Aroha and I are hoping to do today is just cover some key things around some reflections for yourself in this space, and the working that you’re doing alongside whānau, so looking at values and differing perspectives in this space. 

There’s a whole lot of normal and a whole lot of difference, you know, more families that you will be well aware of and what you also bring into this space as well, your life experiences, your learning, your lens.

Talking a little bit about language because language is so important, how do we talk about a really big topic and keep it as simple as we can? And what is developmentally age-expected behaviour? Where would we be concerned, when will we be worried when it crosses that line to becoming not just kind of curious, inquisitive, innocent, kids will be kids’ kind of play and behaviour. 

Aroha Lee:

Just before we launch into these kind of platforms, I want to, so usually in our face-to-face workshops we would offer people the opportunity to check in with themselves knowing that concerning sexualised behaviour can be quite a sensitive topic, so just for you to allow yourself those strategies and remind yourself of how you keep yourself tau, keep your nervous system calm. If you are triggered for whatever reason, just take care. Usually, we go much more gently. I feel like this hui is a little bit more, kind of like our training on steroids so there may be some things that make you go, oh, I wasn’t quite ready for that, or I didn’t realise they were going to talk about that today. So, just be kind to yourself, go gently, and I’m sure that you’ll have supports within your organisation to help you unpack if you need to. If you don’t, you can call us, and we can help you unpack as well.

[Slide on screen: Boundaries & building foundations of safety]

So, the types of things that we’re encouraging for whānau, caregiver, anybody that’s working with children, is that promotion of safe boundaries and we do it all the time. We do it physical context, constantly I would say, as parents and caregivers, but what we want people to do is think more broadly in the sense of touch. Touch in the way that we play and what that looks like in regards to safety. There’s lots of rules and guidelines for most of the things that we do so if we, just once again, think beyond the traditional rules and concepts of, i.e., you know, you’re not allowed to play here I’d like you to play over here. Also be quite clear about the way that you’d like children to play, so giving them guidance in regards to, actually, we’re not going to touch each other on the bottom today, we’ve worked out that our friends don’t like that, that’s not a nice way to play. Let’s just remember that when we play tag, we’re going to touch each other’s arms and each other’s legs. Something along those lines.

Lyn Jansen:

I think that’s the beauty of just keeping it really simple when we’re talking to children. You know, sometimes I think, what are the messages that we want to give our babes, our three, our four, our five, our six-year-olds at kindy, at pre-school, at school. Because you know what, the messages don’t change much actually. It really is about that respect, personal space, keeping our pants on, that our bodies are…

Aroha Lee:

We went right there didn’t we Lyn? Oh, we went right there, keep your pants on.

[Laughing]

Lyn Jansen:

The messages don’t actually, really, change up into our rangatahi space, with our 13-year-olds and our 16-year-olds. It’s all around respect and just being mindful of, when you enter into people’s personal space and, if they’re down-trowing and if you’re touching parts of the bodies, actually, that people don’t want to have touched, then there’s just an awareness isn’t there?

Aroha Lee:

Definitely, and as the adult, sometimes we need to help shape up those guidelines, we need to be the people that come in and say, you know, hey actually, when we’re playing touch or tag we’re not going to sack tap.

Lyn Jansen:

We’re going to keep it simple today and we’re going to keep it light, but I also want to acknowledge, in our country, the statistics for people, for our tamariki whom are being impacted by sexual harm is not okay. We’ve still got one in three of our girls and, I believe, one in seven of our boys, although they say that that’s potentially under-reported. And it’s very exciting to be part of a much bigger picture here for Aotearoa with the government who has put in a national strategy, Te Aorerekura, to be able to eliminate family violence and sexual violence over the next 25 years and, so, what a great thing to be involved with. We’ve got a long way to go and, I guess, for the Stop services and people that are doing this mahi, we need to start somewhere, education, education, education, to find a language to be able to open these doors of a big topic that sometimes has been slammed shut or swept under the carpet because so many parents come across our path and they’re just like, well, when do I begin these conversations with my kids and, heck, how do I start? My parents never talked to me about this. And then there’s other parents and families that are just doing a stunning job of those conversations that it’s not the big chat anymore it starts early and lots of opportunities when those questions come, bath time, getting changed at the swimming pools, learning opportunities all the time to just enforce those 101 messages about what’s okay, what’s not okay.

Aroha Lee:

When we respond to sexualised play and behaviour, a lot of the time, though we say we like to address these types of play and behaviours with very little judgement, that’s not actually always the case and we do have a certain amount of bias that we carry with us, it’s just part of being human. So, when we talk about values and difference, what we’re really trying to do is unpack some of our own bias and judgement. So, when we are having these conversations, we are going in the most mana enhancing way possible.

So, for some people obviously, values and difference is really, really vast.

[Slide on screen: Values and Difference]

As you can see up on the screen there there’s lots of things related to sexual concepts, and even when we’re talking about personal boundaries. Lyn and I, even here together on different days have really different types of boundaries. Sometimes we’re okay with people really close, other times you’d want people far, far away, and that’s just two people sitting in the room, I wonder what it looks like in a room of a hundred.

In regards to all the other concepts up there, I could imagine that you’d have these continuums of people that, sometimes nudity is acceptable in their home and then other times you are fully clothed in front of other people all of the time. Lyn, did you want to add to anything there?

Lyn Jansen:

You’ll be very aware of the different families and whānau that you work with. I’ve worked with mums where kissing their children on the lips is perfectly normal to send them off to school and to say goodnight, to go to bed. And then I’ve worked with other mums where actually kissing their kids on the lips would be not okay, that feels yucky or feels too intrusive. I’ve worked with bathing and showering at home is perfectly normal and so the children in the family see adults and other siblings just freely naked and getting changed, and I’ve worked with other families where, actually, it would never happen and the children would never see the adults, particularly, naked or with no clothes on.

I’ve worked with families where the boundaries are very loose at home. Children sometimes walk in on intimate moments for adults accidently, and then there’s other adults that I’ve worked with where their boundaries around adult sexual behaviour at home is fairly loose, and children are seeing and hearing a whole lot of behaviours that, perhaps, aren’t all that helpful for them. I’ve walked into homes where… I remember doing a home visit one time. I was working with a wee eight-year-old boy, who was engaging and initiating in some sexualised behaviour at home with some younger siblings and a cousin, and engaging with this family, did a home visit and walked into the lounge to find a number of quite explicit pornographic posters, just on display within the lounge at home.

Yeah, so coming back to your experiences of going into homes with the families that you work with, you will be seeing and hearing a whole lot. And there was conversation to have with that family, in terms of just, perhaps, the confusion that that might be having given that they’ve got an eight-year old boy who’s got some, who’s needing some support around his own play and behaviour, and that was the mahi that we did with parents that had no concept that that wouldn’t be okay. Same with, adults can do whatever they want in the privacy of their own home, they can watch whatever movies, whatever explicit material they want to.

But as soon as you’ve got a little person looking over your shoulder or being exposed to that, it does have an impact and when those images and that material is explicit and adult and R-rated, that’s causing harm and our little ones’ brains are not prepared to be exposed to that. Hence, it trickles over into, sometimes, children playing to process some of the stuff that they’ve been exposed to or seen. Not always, but just one.

[Slide on screen: Manaakitanga]

Aroha Lee:

When we’re addressing these types of plays, the play and behaviour that you might see with young tamariki whether it’s kissing someone on the lips without permission or whether it’s pulling somebody else’s trousers down, we are always trying to uphold the mana of all the children involved. We try to leave them with guidance moving forward, but zero shame. We always like to consider Dame Whina Cooper’s kaupapa about ensuring that we’re really, really careful about the way that children feel, because we know that when shame is felt that’s when the head goes down, and then sometimes the behaviour will go elsewhere, it doesn’t always stop, but it becomes more secretive. So, we just want to keep things really open and really honest, go really kindly and be really brave as adults to continue to enhance our tamarikis mana.

[Slide on screen: Language & terminology]

When we talk about language, we are quite specific in this space about what we support, so from our perspective, we do encourage whānau to use the medical language for genitalia. Primarily there’s a few reasons. The fact that there are lots of different, can I say ‘pet’ names, is it pet names for genitalia? Yeah, slang, slang yeah. And so, all those other names that are not within that medical category can, and do, promote this concept of shame about those parts of our bodies. So, we don’t call these our grabbers. I don’t say I’m going to go get a cup of tea with my grabbers, or that I’m actually going to, you know, smell this beautiful flower with my sniffer. They’re quite…  these are my hands, these are my fingers, and this is my nose, and it very rarely gets called anything else. For some reason or another there are lots and lots of words for genitalia that are not breasts, vulva, penis, etc. Which does create that space of shame and we’re really trying to work against that, because we want our children to be able to tell us anything, they need to tell us whenever they need to tell us.

Lyn Jansen:

How many times, sometimes, do we hear adults saying to kids, ‘Don’t touch your willy’, ‘it’ll drop off’ or ‘you’ll go blind.’ I mean there’s been a lot of messages, I think, growing up that have created a sense of yuckiness or dirtiness for our kids. Our ECE and our kōhanga reo and our pre-school teachers do this so well, they do use the proper names and the rationale is that then the children do have the language or if anyone is touching their penis or their vulva or vagina, then they’ve got the words to be able to tell a safe adult. But I guess, there needs to be not one size fits all, either. Work with families that actually talking about boobies and willies and titties. We’re not saying that that’s still not okay, it’s just that we want the children to also know what the proper names are so that they have that language.

And one of the key takeaways for today, I think, is just that awareness of, in your own practice, that understanding of looking through a child’s lens and their language versus, perhaps, an adolescent or an adult lens so we kind of then start moving into the language that we describe or observe when kids are engaging in behaviours together.

[Slide on screen: Terminology for body parts]

And you’ll notice the list on the left on the screen, that kids have all sorts of names, don’t they? Playing a bum-bum game.

Aroha Lee:

Tell me about this game.

[Laughter]

Lyn Jansen:

Kit in by the bum-bum game.

Many examples, I guess if we can just kind of explain where, sometimes professionals will talk with us to explain, perhaps there’s been an incident of behaviour that’s happened between two children that’s involved engaging in oral sex. So, that’s a very adult terminology to be explaining behaviour, especially when the kids might be four or even six. So, then we start to have a little bit of a think around context and the intent and why might the children be engaging in this level of behaviour, which is not really age-expected, we’re not wanting, we’re needing some safe support and some scaffolding around that. But I guess, the message is to not get fancy with your language, we’re talking about children and that goes, also, with just being awareness of our own language in our professional space.

Aroha Lee:

[Slide on screen: Labels are for Jars – Not People]

Yeah, so obviously, up here it just says labels are for jars and not for people, a hundred percent support that whakaaro. Like when we label people with this type of kōrero, i.e., predator, deviant, molester, a creep, offender, predator, or perpetrator, or perp, that’s out there, it’s definitely not helpful. It doesn’t help find solutions, it creates more shame, generally a fair amount of harm, and if you look at the quote there “I’d like to refer for a five-year-old paedophile”, which has been heard over the telephone, it’s not even rational. So, we’d really like for people just to even consider your inner dialogue. When we’re talking about that, this type of play, this is somebody’s child, it could be your child, and I’m pretty sure the last thing we want is other whānau standing around and going, ‘Oh, not really, no, that’s  a wee creep,’ really don’t want that wee perpetrator coming to play again today because, actually, our homie just got it wrong.

He saw something that he may have been trying to make sense of, and played it out with his friends and, therefore, is labelled and stigmatised in this really negative way, which doesn’t help us grow or move forward. If we talk about the behaviour in a really accurate manner, then we can help find solutions and find a way forward and, my friend, doesn’t get left behind and doesn’t get left with this really massive, heavy weight of something that is far outside of their neurological thinking space.

Lyn Jansen:

But here’s the balance, because sexual offending and sexual harm and sexual abuse over the centuries is not welcomed and we still have a lot of people who, you know, just want to lock these people up and throw away the key. And I also want to acknowledge the people that have been harmed here, if you’re a mum or a dad or a nanny and it’s your child that’s been impacted by a seven-year-old at school who’s actually really not being a safe friend and really being invasive, and sometimes initiating some quite intrusive, penetrative behaviour then, absolutely, that is incredibly distressing and not okay.

So, it’s this balance with children of really putting some supports in place but not…, just being aware, I guess, and reflective of the language that we use. So, the language that you use when you’re working with family also. You will be hearing, perhaps parents and caregivers, talk quite in adult language around their own children or around others’ children and just, just to be mindful of keeping that into a language that best fits for the kids.

[Slide on screen: What is healthy, developmentally age-expected sexualised play & behaviour?]

So, what is healthy, developmentally age-expected sexualised play and behaviour? Well, we all know that children meet milestones, you think of our babies as they’re growing through their first couple of months, they’re rolling over, they’re lifting their head up, they’re crawling, they start to walk. And look, sexualised play and behaviour, and curiosity, and intimacy and all of that, is just part of the natural part of the little person developing and growing and we all know that kids sometimes will be kids. We all know that sometimes the cousins will be playing in the wardrobe, and they’ll be playing, ‘show me yours and I’ll show you mine.’ They’ll be playing doctors and nurses, they’ll be playing kiss and catch, you know, they’ll be playing families, they’ll be playing getting married, they’ll be playing breast feeding.

There’s a whole lot of normal and I think that we need to be reminded that there is a whole lot of normal age-expected behaviour. We used to call it normal sexualised behaviour, we used to talk about it as appropriate sexualised behaviour but, you know, sometimes when you’re telling rude jokes with your mates, when you’re ten, it might be appropriate and age-expected, when you’re out on the field at school telling the jokes but actually, when you’re at taua’s house

Aroha Lee:

It’s not okay to tell the rude jokes at taua’s house. 

Lyn Jansen:

Understanding the context of what’s okay, what’s not okay. So, there’s no manual for this. On our website we do have this booklet which kind of creates a good guide of what to expect throughout the ages even from zero to two, from three to five. It’s not unusual for our three and four-year-olds to be fascinated about their orifices, that’s why peas go up noses and things get inserted in different places. That’s why sometimes mum might walk into the bathroom when our little one might be in the bath and using the bath toy and putting inside her vagina or her bottom. Now, there’s a fantastic learning moment, I’ve had many times where adults might respond quite over the top and freak out about that, like, “what the heck are you doing?”

Aroha Lee: 

And that could be mild, let’s be honest. It can be a much bigger reaction, which is really, quite damaging for our babes.

Lyn Jansen:

Especially if you add a cousin or a stepsibling, or a brother or a sister in that scenario, or two families coming together and the kids are bathing together and then you get the scenario of what’s okay, what’s not okay. So, it doesn’t mean that we want our little ones to be doing that level of behaviour but there’s the safe adult conversation to say, “you know what, our bottoms, our vaginas for poos and wees to come out of” or whatever the explanation is, not fancy, just actually, we don’t put things into our bottoms.

Aroha Lee:

Really similar to the “we don’t put things up our nostrils or inside our ears.” Yeah, orifice. Very, very similar.

Lyn Jansen:

I remember a lovely story from a pre-school that came through, where two children were suckling on each other’s nipples. They were little and it would perhaps be an opportunity to say, ‘they’re four, they’re just breast feeding.’ But actually, this particular manager shared that she, in her 20 years of experience in working with the pre-school, had not seen that behaviour before and when I thought about it, it’s just like, well I hadn’t either. I’ve seen children engage in breast feeding the dolls. And so, her question was, in the phone call, ‘how worried should I be?’ That starts the conversation about the, ‘well I wonder what they were playing, and I wonder how come’, and having a little bit more context of what might be happening at home. And this is where it’s hard because some of you will have gone, oh, there must be a new baby in the family. Which, in this case, it was. It was innocent and this wee four-year-old had observed aunty breast feeding a new baby in the family which he had never experienced or seen before, and so he was playing to process something that perhaps hadn’t been discussed with his mum.

[Text on screen: Lyn Jansen]

However, it doesn’t always necessarily… it’s not always that innocent, and he equally may have seen this by adults at home engaging in sexualised behaviour or maybe, have seen some stuff online. And so, this is where, in your role, when you’re hearing these stories, we’re just really wanting you to be prepared. If it hasn’t come across your mahi already with conversations with families, to be prepared that mums and dads and nanas and grandads might want to have these conversations to just check out with you. And you don’t need to have the answers but sometimes you are that safe person to just unpack, perhaps what’s been observed and then to be able to put some things in place in terms of, let’s call someone who kind of specialises in this area to just run it past them and have a bit of a chat to see how we can respond effectively for the best interests of the kids.

[Image on screen: Photo of children play-fighting]

Got a picture up here of, this could be a typical Kiwi scene] kids play-fighting in the lounge. Play-fighting is a good example, actually, of thinking about sexualised play and behaviour as well. So, if this was a play-fighting situation that was in the green, if you think of our traffic light, with green being age-expected, developmentally expected behaviour through to orange which is kind of crossing that line into being a little bit more concerning, not what we’d be expecting, through to the red which is, you know, harmful. I don’t know what would be some of the things that if this was healthy now.

Aroha Lee:

So, when I see this, initially in my whare I’d be like, ‘Get outside and play that game.’ But if they were allowed to stay and play inside, I would expect that they would be laughing and there’d be lots of giggling and that everybody would be playing in a, what I would see is a fair manner, so everybody’s contributing to the play. But yeah, definitely lots of giggling, lots of laughing, all the happy sounds. 

Lyn Jansen:

Yes. And neutral, everyone’s in on this.

Aroha Lee: 

Yeah.

Lyn Jansen: 

I mean, personal space has been broken where there’s no private parts being touched. There’s no fingers into bottoms, it’s healthy and everyone’s having fun. But if we were to look at it through more of an orange lens.

Aroha Lee:

Yeah, definitely, when we would be getting a bit concerned. Probably when somebody down the bottom maybe, is no longer laughing or there’s no longer happy sounds coming from that space, or possibly that, louder… lots of whining happens at my house, so there might be some whining going on by that stage. Physically, where would I see, I might not be able to see all the limbs and that would probably make me go, ‘Hm, where are your hands? Where did your foot end up,’ kind of thing. 

Lyn Jansen:

To sometimes they’re lying on top of each other, might then kind of, extend to perhaps humping someone that they’re lying on.

Aroha Lee:

Hands up. Hands up shirts. 

Lyn Jansen:

And I know that this is, kind of, quite a simple example with play-fighting, but this does crossover into our rangatahi as well, you know, sexualised behaviour often starts healthy and mutual, and there’s fine line of it crossing the line to being not mutual.

Aroha Lee:

Yeah, that ‘No, get off I don’t want to play anymore.’ 

Lyn Jansen: 

Or angry, ‘Stop it, get off me,’ or sometimes silence. You know sometimes …

Aroha Lee:

Yeah, that quiet stuff. 

Lyn Jansen:

If they’re boys, do they actually be able to say, ‘Actually, I’m not comfortable with this anymore it needs to stop.’ And that’s what I think that we need to keep equipping our tamariki with, sorry.

And then, I guess if we were moving into more of a harmful lens, in the red, we would be seeing a bit more force and aggression, holding kids down, someone else pulling down their pants.

Aroha Lee:

Yeah, distress.

Lyn Jansen:

Interest of penetrative, fingers in bottoms, vaginas, you know, not okay stuff. So, it’s just a wee bit of a… what we’re really encouraging all of our parents and caregivers and adults in positions of care, is to step in early, because we all know that play-fighting ends in tears often, no difference with sexualised behaviour and boundaries. Stepping in, being able to name it, put boundaries in place to prevent and minimise further escalation of sexualised behaviour.

[Slide on screen: Indicators of developmentally age-expected sexualised behaviour]

A few indicators of what to be looking out for when sexualised behaviour is in the green, when it moves over into the orange. In the orange, it’s a bit more sneaky and a bit more secretive, you know, you might have wee girl who says, ‘Come into the toilet,’ and pull down their pants and ‘Show me your fanny but don’t you tell anyone and’…

Aroha Lee:

‘Or you’re not coming to my birthday party.’

[Text on screen: Aroha Lee, Lyn Jansen]

Lyn Jansen:

So, again, you can cross that over into an adult saying this, the messages that we’re giving today seem quite, a little bit more simple or because we’re talking about children, but can you see how it, kind of just, can crossover and developmentally into adolescence and adults. When they’re secrets, don’t tell anyone, you’ll get into trouble, I won’t be your friend. And then moving into the harmful indicators of sexualised behaviour.

[Slide on screen: Inequalities]

So this is just a guideline as inequalities, when you’ve got a ten-year-old with a five-year-old you’re going to be a little bit more concerned about what’s going on, as opposed to two ten-year-olds but not always, because sometimes if you’ve got two ten-year-olds, one’s knowledge and life experience might be far more advanced than the other ten-year-old. Or you might have a 12-year-old who’s engaging in, wanting to play in sexualised behaviour with a six-year-old, but, you know that 12-year-old might come with some Global Developmental Delay of some sort. It might be, have lower cognitive functioning and sometimes that quirky kid, you know, the kid that doesn’t have friends with his own or her own age group. Feels much more comfortable with playing with the younger children.

Aroha Lee:

So, that kind of intention, I feel like you’re sharing that intention of that play there, aren’t you? So, for a lot of our babes when they’re trying to communicate with other tamariki, whether their own age or not, most of the time it’s about connection, yeah, so wanting friendship, wanting connection, and they’re not always going about it in the right way, sadly. So that’s where we need to step in, put some good safe boundaries in place, as Lyn said. If we start really early on and we get those foundations really solid, they carry them right through their life yeah, in regards to, actually, if I’m going to touch somebody I need to ask for their permission. We have that kōrero in our whare all the time. I was always a big old hugger, like, just get in there and hug everybody flat out because I love that, but it turns out not everybody else loves that, so we’ve had to adapt and change our practice in regards to that, that respect that we give for other people in their space and we definitely honour adults, I noticed in my whānau. But for me and my children, it’s really important that we show that with children as well, we need to definitely maintain their mana, set those boundaries and help them get it right.

Lyn Jansen:

And using those opportunities to, when you stand too close or when you poke Ziggy in the bum, actually, your friend doesn’t like that, and that’s the name it, stop it, move on, telling our kids what we do want them to do to minimise it from escalating because we do know sexualised behaviour can be contagious. You’ve got, you know, two cousins or two friends playing a particular game. It can soon kind of eventuate to having four or six kids playing that game. That’s what we have seen, also at schools as well.

[Slide on screen: Pay attention when:]

So just paying attention and being aware where you’re having conversations with the family and whānau that you’re involved with, that they are just tuning in and being aware of when kids are complaining about stuff. You know, actually I don’t want that friend to come over anymore or I don’t want to go and stay over at someone’s place, or I don’t feel comfortable getting changed, swimming at school. And I’m like…. Most kids will respond to safe adult guidance around boundaries and safe touch, and we don’t pull our pants down, we don’t show our bottoms, we don’t play bottom games.

Most kids will respond, but there’s also a lot of our tamariki who, for all sorts of reasons, don’t get it the first time and need a lot more scaffolding and support, and reminders from safe adults in their lives how close to sit to people, that you just don’t just rush on up and give people a kiss on the lips, you know. So, this is where I think it’s simple, but those conversations are where we need to start.

Aroha Lee:

Yeah, it’s definitely that’s sort of, a lot like, how you’ve got that child in your whare that always prepares them well, prepares themselves well before they go and ride their bicycle and do all the safety things that they need to and yet there’s that other child that you’ve got to say 15 times, do you have footwear, do you have your helmet? Do you have footwear, do you have your helmet? Same kind of thing with sexualised play and behaviour. Some children need lots of scaffolding and lots of reminders, where other babes, tika.

[Slide on screen: Looking at sexualised behaviour through a child’s lens]

Lyn Jansen:

So just moving on, just looking at sexualised behaviour through a child’s lens. If I can use an example of, again, two little four-year-olds. They’re mates, they’re at kindy together, one, they’re out in the bushes, one boy’s got his trackpants and his undies down by his ankles and he’s bending over, and his mate is very, very close, looking very intently into his mate’s anus, into his bottom.

So, again, age expected? Well, what’s going on here? Is this mutual? Was it okay for both of you? No.

Aroha Lee: 

Everybody seems happy, don’t they? Everybody seems happy and calm.

Lyn Jansen: 

The one that’s looking or the one that’s got his undies down. So, here we start thinking about looking at the context and this is where you and us, as parents, caregivers, kaimahi, adults, teachers, just need to, when we come across these situations to, firstly, be prepared as best as possible, but to be curious.

Aroha Lee: 

Kia tau whānau, kia tau, take a big deep breath.

Lyn Jansen:

Safety always, a bit like first responders. Hey, actually, I see that you’ve got your pants down, at kindy we keep our pants up. I’m just wondering what’s happening, what are you doing, what are you playing?

So, we don’t know why. It could be something that, again, this little person has seen on the internet and be quite yucky and wanting, leading up to something else that might be more intrusive, a finger into a bottom, kissing bottoms, kissing penises, whatever it might be. But if I was to tell you that in this context, the boy looking into his mate’s bottom had worms and his mum had been checking his bottom for the last couple of days. And when you’re four, when an adult talks about having worms in your bottom, and the adult hasn’t explained that these worms might not be the garden worms that you’re thinking of, you know, there’s some curiosity about checking out with your mate whether he may have worms in his bottom. 

Aroha Lee:

And there’s a good chance you don’t think worms are healthy, trying to awhi your friend, helping a homie out.

Lyn Jansen:

So, situations that sometimes can be fairly innocent need us, as safe adults, to slow down, have a cuppa and keep calm. Ask the questions to get the context and no difference really for our adolescents as well and to get a sense of how mutual this was, what’s happening to then be able to put some safe boundaries in place.

[Slide on screen: Understanding why children may engage in CSB]

Aroha Lee:

So, when we’re trying to peel back those layers to gather the context, obviously we want to ask some really open-ended questions. We don’t want to start loading up their answers when we go, ‘Hey, tell me about this. Oh, I’m wondering why Henry’s got his pants down. Actually, we’re going to pull them up babe, because we keep our pants up at school.’

[Slide on screen: Context, context, context]

So, as you unpack the context, it’s so much easier to understand the intention. Obviously, this guy was playing to process, yeah. He was really curious; he was playing to process. For me, I’d be thinking that he’s trying to awhi his friend to make sure he’s in good health also.

Lyn Jansen:

But I guess in terms of some takeaways, we were wanting to really give you a little bit of confidence and understanding in terms of your own reflective practice, to just slow down enough with the families that you’re working with when sexualised behaviour does come across your path to understand the context. There may be trauma, kids may have experienced some really tough stuff, kids are on the autism spectrum.

There’s a whole lot of reasons, or it just might be simply curiosity and to really slow down to understand the context of the behaviour, and to be reminded that you’re not the police, you’re not the evidential interviewer.

Yay.

You’re not the Oranga Tamariki social worker or the Stop specialist clinician.

But please don’t under-estimate the very important role that you have, to just sit alongside the family and whānau that you connect with as a safe adult, and when you feel that this would be worth following through to get some support from a specialist agency, you know that you can contact the Stop services. We have anything from five to 25 phone calls a week of all sorts of people ringing up to just check out whether we need to be more concerned about this or not, and we’ll navigate and help guide you, as will our other agencies in the sector, WellStop based in Wellington and Safe based in Tāmaki-makarau.

[Text on screen: Crystal Pekepo]

Crystal Pekepo: 

Tēnā kōrua, whānau mā. I do have a pātai that did come through. And the question that was put forward was, “how can we ensure that our responses to sexualised behaviour align with culturally sensitive practices?” So, I guess when we’re talking about a mana enhancing, how do we articulate mana and mana enhancing?

Lyn Jansen:

I think families and kaimahi can bring all of themselves into this conversation and space. There’s not one size that fits all. And all of you will bring your own selves and you will have the connection with the family and families and whānau that you’re working with. I mean, I think that so much of it comes back to safety and trust and connection and however we give these messages in an appropriate way for all the families that we work with.

Aroha Lee:

And that looks different, yeah, for each whānau, so all the kaimahi that sit in front of us today will go, actually, for this whānau this is the way that I would share this message. So, the message still has the same value, but it’s going to be offered in a different way, yeah, and that’s about you knowing your whānau really, really well and the kaimahi have the key to that. And, culturally, yeah, it is really interesting. At my house, we don’t say words like ‘fanny’ and ‘foo foo’. It’s not logical to us. I find it ridiculous. I’m just like, ‘Please don’t talk to my children like that we actually speak really medical terms whether it’s in te reo Māori or in te reo English’. Either way, it’s kei te pai koe. But yet other people struggle with the word vagina, they’re squirming all over the floor, as I say vulva today. It’s about knowing your whānau but still sharing the same safety messages. We can’t, as Lyn said, with our statistics, we can’t avoid this kōrero. Too many of our tamariki are being harmed in this space, and the way that we’re going to eliminate harm is by being brave and proactive in this very preventative space, i.e., equipping our tamariki with reo that they can accurately describe to adults when they need assistance.

Lyn Jansen:

I think, too, it’s really important to go back to your agencies that you’ve connected with to just make sure that you get that cultural guidance, that supervision. Policy’s one thing, but actually process, it is the doing. And there’ll be many ethnicities across Aotearoa that one size does not fit all. For example, if I’m working with the family where actually it is really just not okay for me to be having this conversation alone with the dad, for whatever reason. Then we need to put our professional hat on and our empathy and our cultural understanding to make that a really safe space, and how we can make that work, does there need to be a support person, can I bring someone else alongside me to make this more effective?

Aroha Lee:

Yeah, but the conversation still needs to be had, yeah.

Crystal Pekepo:

What self-care strategies can kaimahi employ when dealing with challenging cases of sexualised behaviour between tamariki?

Lyn Jansen:

Another beautiful question, and a very key question for us all working in this very big space. The work that we do with family and whānau is not easy, we often say, we’re not selling insurance, but I don’t mean to be… Like, we’re dealing with people, aren’t we? And we all know what we need to do to be able to bring our best selves into this space. Sometimes that is just acknowledging what we need to do: sleep, eat, walking on the beach, slowing down, taking five minutes before we go and meet with a family, to just be in that calm space, which we have in the duty of care to do for our families, and recognising when the big stuff really comes across our paths. For people who have experienced sexual harm, which is going to be a lot of parents and adults that we work with, as well as a lot of professionals who come with the journey of hard, tough stuff and trauma that get triggered, that perhaps, feels it’s too big. I think just an awareness. An awareness of that, and to not under-estimate the empathy that perhaps you might bring into that space because perhaps you haven’t walked that journey, but you kind of have an understanding and you can be with that person without having to really give a whole lot, apart from just the treasure of what it is to hear other people’s stories. So, using your supervision, using your self-care, to be aware of how regulated you are, how triggered you might be, what supports you might need to have in place to be able to have these conversations. And I think, also, understanding what your limits are. I think sometimes, it’s a very safe thing to be able to say, wow, this is really big and I thank you so much for sharing with me, and you know what, I’m going to go away and I’m going to seek some support and some advice and some guidance to come back and help navigate this together.

Aroha Lee:

I think that’s quite important that you can be able to acknowledge that you are not the person that needs to fix everything right here, right now. That there are lots of supports in place, depending on what the play and behaviour looks like. Sometimes you’re actually going to come into a space and you’re like, actually bub, you might uncover something that, maybe, let’s just say there’s somebody with their hands down their pants frequently. It may look like some type of sexualised motion; the reality is is that you might uncover that somebody has a hefty case of eczema in and around their genitalia. Like, how cool is it that you were brave enough to go, ‘Oh, bub, I’ve noticed you’ve had your hands down your pants a lot, is there something going on there?’ And if you give them the opportunity to speak sometimes, they’ll let you know, they’re like, ‘Whaea, I’m really itchy and I’m not…’ ‘Oh, pai ana, I’ll talk to your parents.’ You know, like, let’s try and work this out for you. Where some people will just be like, ‘Oh, that dirty hua has got his hands down his pants all the time.’

You know, if you are lucky enough to roll into one of these scenarios where you can navigate it effectively and quickly, give yourself a big old pat on the back. I think that’s a really important part of self-care too, is actually going, ‘I was brave enough to have that conversation with that tamariki when nobody else wanted to.’ ‘Yay me!’ Like, ‘Kia ora e hoa mā. You did a great job and then obviously you’ve also assisted in another health space as well. So, acknowledging that you don’t have to do all of the things, fix it right now, by yourself, and actually giving yourself a bit of a clap when you do the courageous mahi.

Crystal Pekepo:

Tēnā kōrua. I just had one more question that’s just come through in regards to labelling. Is this also for adults, not labelling the offending? I think there was a question in there in regards to the difference between adults and adolescents. How do we…?

Lyn Jansen:

Yeah, great questions. The labelling and the language has been something that us, as a sector, have thrown around for the last 30 years really, and different countries use different languaging as well. I think Australia talks about problematic sexualised behaviour. Look, we’ve moved from sexual abuse, although sexual abuse is still used to describe sexual harm. The police have moved into also using family violence, sexual violence and we, I think, over the last few years have moved into that kind of languaging as well.

I think, sexual harm is sexual harm. I guess the kōrero today is to just keep us reflecting on the language, and how productive that is and how effective that is. For people that have been harmed, sometimes they’re referring to themselves as being a victim of sexual abuse is part of their healing journey and that’s really important to them. Sometimes people don’t want to be, talk about being a victim or a survivor of sexual harm. That doesn’t work for them and so it kind of comes back to that one size not fits all.

So, our message today is when we’re talking about 12 and unders, yeah, let’s just be cautious that we don’t put that adolescent and that adult language onto our little ones. And just remember that that wee four-year old, or that wee eight-year-old will eventually become that 16 year-old and that 25 year-old. And sometimes, they also bring their own stories of trauma and harm and sexual harm and have been victims of, not always, and I guess it’s just that understanding of it’s not okay for anyone to hurt anyone else, and no matter what age they are, they need to take responsibility and get some support for that.

Sorry, that was a bit of a roundabout way to answer the question. I think, there’s not one size fits all.

Aroha Lee:

Yeah, once again it feels like a big, long continuum. For me, personally, I kind of liken labels to name calling and, in our whare, in our whānau, collectively as a rōpū we’re not big fans of name calling. We just talk about behaviour, whether you’re a child or an adult, because we’re still learning, adults make mistakes all the time. That’s something that we’ve created in our space for our whānau. Labels, i.e., names can sometimes provide a space for children to grow into or even adults to develop into and, actually, if it’s a negative label, then why on earth would we want to offer that to them. We don’t want to see any of these kind of self-fulfilling prophesies, we want to keep upholding people’s mana and helping them grow in a positive direction.

Crystal Pekepo:

I was going to leave this pātai and have the whānau that are wanting to ask more pātai to make contact with you. But I think this is probably quite a relevant pātai that we can close off with is, how can we differentiate between age-appropriate exploration and sexualised behaviour in tamariki?

Lyn Jansen:

There’s a couple of things. When it becomes an explicit behaviour, explicit language, explicit adult terminology, gestures, that’s a good indicator. I think when there’s an age difference, that becomes an issue. I think when the frequency continues, so when tamariki aren’t responding to safe adult guidance that it’s not okay to be engaging in those behaviours, but children continue to still do that.

Aroha Lee:

Can I just quickly go back to, the kind of, developmentally age-expected thing?

[Slide on screen: Indicators of developmentally age-expected sexualised behaviour]

So, I think if we focus here and then things fall outside of that, you know, when you need to be concerning you go and get guidance, so, i.e., is the play mutual, is it innocent, is it curious? Obviously, there’s age expected being there, that’s a little bit confusing, isn’t it? But there is the wee booklet that we do have available for you online and it just gives you some guidelines. And when you read through the list you go, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s right. Three- and four-year-olds are super fascinated at looking at other people’s bodies. They’re not being perverts or predators, they’re watching other people maybe use the bathroom or getting changed because they’re completely fascinated. Yeah, so there’s those wee lists there, you might want to use that.

Is it open, is it in an open safe space where other adults can see, other children can see, and people can actually say, ‘Hey, bub, we don’t play like that here.’ That’s all within that age-expected space. It’s respectful and the word safe down there as well. So what we would do is, even though there’s age-expected behaviours with the mutual, innocence, curiosity, they’re still teaching moments, because most of the time they’ll be happening in a space that you’re like, ‘Actually darling, you’re not supposed to rub penis when you’re on the mat, that’s something that you’re supposed to do in your private space.’

But if it doesn’t fit within this kind of vibe, because it is a vibe and we’re allowed to trust our instincts, that’s when we would seek support from a colleague, and just say, ‘Hey, can I run this by you? How do you feel about this? Do you think that this is moving into that kind of concerning space?’ And we definitely know when things are harmful, eh, we definitely know, we just know as human beings when things are not right.

Yeah, if we focus on this stuff and it kind of comes outside of the boundaries of this kōrero, then yeah, go bounce it off someone.

[Text on screen: Lyn Jansen]

Lyn Jansen:

Then Crystal, just to finish I guess is, and we haven’t had time in our webinar today to go into any depth, but as adults, living a very technological world, being educated and to have a really awareness and understanding of the massive impact that pornography, that explicit images, are having for our tamariki also. That’s another whole webinar and that’s enough.

[Text on screen: Crystal Pekepo]

Crystal Pekepo:

Āe, e hika mā, as we’ve come to the end of this enlightening workshop on addressing sexualised behaviour. I want to take a moment to reflect on the valuable insights and discussions that have unfolded over the course of this paku wānanga. Our understanding has deepened with a renewed commitment to creating safe and respectable spaces for everyone, especially for our tamariki mokopuna. Kei te whakatau, te whakamihi ake o mātou kaiwhakapau kaha, me kī, kua whai mana a Lyn rāua a kōrua ko Aroha mō te whakawhiti kōrero i ō rātou mātauranga me ō rātou kōrero ki a mātou. A very thoughtful presentation that sheds light on the complexities of this topic and provided us with actionable strategies for addressing and responding to sexualised behaviour in various contexts.

As we conclude this workshop, let’s carry forward the knowledge gained and the connections made, and let’s continue to be champions for safe and respectful communities, especially for our tamariki mokopuna. E mihi ana ki a koutou katoa mō ō koutou wā ngākau hihiko me te aroha ki te whakatutuki i te reketanga.

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