Imaginif

Five is an important number to the BITSS model of Protective Behaviours. Not only are there five bitss to remember to keep kids safe but five is the number of support people we all need to keep us connected, functional and accountable.

Hands, feet and fans are symbols educators use with children to help them to remember five people they can go to: to talk to about anything on the child’s mind. When I am assessing families for risk of harm to children, I look for at least five other external people that the family is securely connected to.

The children who are most at risk of abuse are those who have no support networks - those who do not have a range of trusted adults they can talk to. Whereas once we lived in extended family groups, often surrounded by grandparents and aunts and uncles, nowadays we tend to be isolated from our family, friends, and other emotional supports. We tend to live busy lives with little time for just chatting with our children or friends. Instead, we often find virtual friends on the internet. These virtual friends can be vitally important.

Support networks are important for all of us: yes, even virtual supports. Predators zero in on children without supports. Worse still, predators will groom a child’s supports and trick them into believing that the child is lying about, say, sexual abuse or cyber bullying. They isolate us from our supports in case we raise suspicions or hear other’s suspicions. The best way to counteract this is to remain in contact with our friends, to talk, to listen, to share and to believe.  If we do this as adults, we are modeling good relationships to our children, teaching them it’s okay to talk to others we consider safe and to have lives outside the family home.

It’s all about Meme Bitss is an active encourager of naming your five major virtual supports. It’s a way to keep you safer online. These supports may be blog authors, forums, message boards, etc.

It’s all about Meme Bitss guidelines:

1) Write a new post. Within it, link to this article so that all can see the importance of support networks and get these guidelines for the It’s all about Meme Bitss.

2) List and link to your five most important virtual supports. At least one support must be different to the support list supplied by the person who has tagged you as one of their supports.

3) Leave a comment for (or email) your virtual supports so that they know they’ve been tagged with the It’s all about Meme Bitss and so they can keep the support happening throughout the virtual ether of modern day supports.

4) Spend some time reflecting upon the physical supports that you and your children have. If something bad happened in your life, who is there to physically help you? Is there something you can do today to increase your physical support network? Do your virtual supports know you well enough to offer meaningful words of support? What can you do to ensure that you create a virtual relationship that remains safe but also creates a reliable and meaningful support for you and your family?

Stay safe. Thanks for joining this meme and thereby helping to create a safer online world for our children. If you want to copy the BITSS circle to include with your It’s all about Meme post, you are more than welcome. The circle graphic nicely shows everybody the five bitss required to keep our kids safe.