|
Red Flag-Green Flag Publications are Making a Difference in a Scary World
Arts in education is an idea enjoying current resurgence among educators in all venues, and ideas for incorporating the experiences of music, dance, art, theater and other cultural forms have become frequent topics for seminars. As early as 1979, there was interest in the possibilities that lay in the arts for assisting in counseling and therapy. For example, Joy Williams, the Sexual Assault Services Coordinator of the Rape and Abuse Crisis Center and her colleagues attended a performance by the Illusion Theatre in Minneapolis to assess the possible implications of drama and dance for their work.
The Illusion Theatre's production was Touch, a play about appropriate and inappropriate touching. The play was developed in 1977 when the Hennepin County Attorney's Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Program and Illusion Theater collaborated to create a play for children about nurturing, confusing and exploitative touch. The result is a theatrical presentation for children that explains the continuum of touches — from good to confusing to bad — and teaches children personal body safety protection and prevention skills. The Illusion Theater states its mission as to "create theater that illuminates the human condition by addressing the illusions, myths and realities of our times and to use the power of theater to be a catalyst for personal and social change."
Joy and her colleagues thought, "Wouldn't it be great if we took the concepts presented on stage and put them into a coloring book format? We could share this coloring book with children and teach them how to distinguish appropriate touching from touching that is inappropriate." None of the people present that day could have predicted the far-reaching results of the drama they witnessed. Red Flag Green Flag? Resources materials were an outgrowth of that initial exploratory trip, and today they are distributed in all 50 states, 12 Canadian provinces and 63 other countries.
Joy took pictures from a child's coloring book and put in writing concepts from Touch. Inspired by a National Safety Board film entitled, Red Light Green Light, Joy used the traffic signal analogy applied to touching in order to convey the idea that green means, "Okay to proceed," while red means, "Stop! Not okay to proceed." To make sure that none of the meaning was wasted on the children, she added specific ideas such as, "Green Flag touches make us feel good, happy or loved," and "Red Flag touches make us feel scared, mixed up or unhappy." Furthermore, she knew that a specific skill sequence would help children to remember what they should do in a scary situation, so she laid out this plan:
Say No! if someone tries to give you a Red Flag touch.
Get Away! when someone tries to give you a Red Flag touch. Run someplace safe where there are other people.
Tell a Helper! When someone tries to give you a Red Flag touch. Tell someone you trust right away.
True to her "get it done" nature, Joy went to work in earnest to develop the coloring book that she and her colleagues had envisioned. Illusion Theatre graciously granted permission for Joy to use their original concepts in the coloring book, and Kecia Softing-Freed, a Fargo artist, agreed to provide original illustrations for the first Red Flag Green Flag® People coloring book later that same year.
In 1980, Joy Williams completed work on the first Red Flag Green Flag® People coloring book. Using this coloring book as the primary resource, she and the coordinator of public education for the Center for Parents and Children and the youth intervention officer for the Moorhead Police Department, Dave Anderson, created the Red Flag Green Flag® People Personal Safety Program. Piloted in third grade classrooms, first in Dilworth, Minnesota, followed by other cities, the program was actually inspired by statistics. The Clay County, Minnesota Child Protection Team and Cass County, North Dakota Social Services gathered information showing that incidence of child abuse and neglect had increased from 106 reports in 1976 to 437 in 1980. Its success is verified by the subsequent translation into Spanish and growing numbers of requests from schools and organizations for presentations. Today, the program is taught primarily at the second grade level although some schools still use it in third grade.
The third grade Moorhead, Minnesota presentation spurred the Illusion Theatre to begin distributing the coloring books as well. Shortly, the program expanded into second-grade classrooms in Fargo and West Fargo schools. Even the local Associated Press interviewed Carol Grimm, volunteer public education coordinator at the Rape and Abuse Crisis Center, about the program, resulting in national coverage in about 200 newspapers, including the New York Times. The producers of Good Morning America saw the article, called, and invited Carol to appear on the show.
Miggs Anderson, a counselor at the Rape and Abuse Crisis Center, wrote Sometimes, a workbook for children living in violent homes, and it was added to the materials available to facilitators. Right on the heels of Sometimes, came the Red Flag Green Flag® People facilitator's guide and Annie, a storybook used for sexual abuse prevention and treatment. By 1984, Beth Haseltine, current executive director of the Rape and Abuse Crisis Center, developed and piloted the Woodrow Project, a sexual abuse prevention curriculum for persons with developmental disabilities. Its research was featured in The American Journal On Mental Retardation in 1991.
Soon, T Is For Touching, a sexual abuse prevention program for kindergarten-age children, was produced, followed by Sue Patterson's I Wish The Hitting Would Stop, a workbook for children living in violent homes. As the direct service coordinator at the Rape and Abuse Crisis Center, Sue worked with the issues of sexual assault and domestic violence for over 20 years. The next releases were Woodrow Project and New Beginnings, a treatment manual for implementing a female adolescent and young adult sexual assault victims support group.
In 1990, the revised I Wish the Hitting Would Stop workbook and facilitator's guide, underwritten and funded by The American Legion Welfare Foundation was released. This funding also allowed a copy of the material to be sent to each domestic violence shelter in the United States. In 1996, Oprah Winfrey wanted to produce a show on the effects of domestic violence on children, leading to featuring this book.
Many mothers who are battered women are so overwhelmed with their situation that they don't realize the impact the violence has on their children. Perhaps they are dealing with so much shame themselves that to admit that the violence affected their kids causes more guilt and shame. Therefore, they minimize and deny the effect. I Wish the Hitting Would Stop helps these mothers to understand that the children are hurting too and how they might be affected in the future. It also helps the mothers to understand that they are not to blame and gives them a resource to use in discussing this issue with their kids.
Many shelters for victims of various kinds of abuse use the Red Flag Green Flag publications with individual children or in groups as the basis for ongoing therapy. New developments in effective literature include the Red Flag Green Flag® ABC's of Personal Safety workbook for preschool and kindergarten age children and the Red Flag Green Flag® People II sexual abuse prevention program for older elementary age children workbook and facilitator guide. Several publications are now in Spanish, and Red Flag Green Flag® Resources are carrying the It's Your Move therapeutic board game for survivors of domestic abuse developed by Carol Tonner of Libby, Montana. In addition, the revised Annie for girls and the new Andy for boys are available.
Success stories of the program abound, and the agency shares these to illustrate the powerful influence of the collection of materials. For example, in 1989 the agency received a letter from a girl in Texas, saying, "I cannot call, but I can write. I am being abused of (sic) my stepfather. Please help." The workers determined the child's location from the postmark, called county child protection officials, and the child was found and helped.
In 1997, a 7-year-old Grand Rapids, Michigan, girl, waiting for her school bus, was approached by a man who tried to lure her into his car. She dropped her backpack and ran screaming to safety. Her parents and school principal attributed her actions to the skill training she had recently received through a Red Flag Green Flag® ABC's of Personal Safety program presentation in her classroom.
Recently a phone call from a counselor in Ohio provided another story. The counselor had been treating a 9-year-old boy for a few years, and while there was suspicion of child abuse, the child never talked about it. The counselor heard of the Red Flag Green Flag® People workbook, ordered it and worked through it with his client. The child revealed he had been molested by a man who lived in his neighborhood. Upon further investigation, nine other young boys from the same neighborhood came forward to say that they had also been molested. The perpetrator was arrested and is now serving time in prison.
Not content to simply retell these stories, the organization has set goals for developing older elementary classroom curriculum with I Wish the Hitting Would Stop, educating all children about family violence. They want to develop a sexual abuse treatment manual and book for male victims of sexual assault, and to get all materials translated into Spanish. Officials feel that they have filled a small portion of the need for children to receive help and protection from those who would prey upon them, and they promise to continue their efforts to make it possible for children to verbalize their cries for help.
Greg Diehl is the director of marketing for Red Flag Green Flag Resources. He has been with the company for 12 years. For additional information call 1-800-627-3675 or e-mail at: rfgf@corpcomm.net.
|
