Parents want to protect their child and want them to grow happily. But growing up, becoming independent, also means discovering the world, leaving home, and taking risks. And of all the risks a child runs, the one of being sexually abused is the one that terrifies parents the most.

What can we do this in this context? How can we assess risk situations to avoid them?

Talking about sexual violence with your child is a real challenge. We dread it, so we keep quiet about it, or just touch upon it. And every year, thousands of children suffer from sexual abuse. To protect them as effectively as possible, we need to be aware of the danger and the forms it can take, but we also need to teach them about their rights, including consent.

Joanna Smith aims to help parents answer crucial questions such as “How come nobody noticed

anything?”, “How can we help them to not accept the law of the biggest man and learn to say no?”, “How to teach your child about consent?”, etc.

What’s more, most parents have no idea how traumatic memory works. Recent advances in our knowledge of the brain have provided some answers to these questions.

A useful book that delivers information that is still not widely known about the profile of perpetrators of sexual violence and the real risk situations.

It provides ways of talking to children about sexual abuse committed against them, without panicking them and striking the right balance between trivialisation and dramatisation.