Safety and wellbeing lessons for children ages 5–17. Covers body safety, online safety, cyberbullying, trusting instincts, consent, and knowing your rights.
19 lessons · Ages 5–17 · Evidence-based · Free
Ages 5–8 · All
Your body belongs to you
Your body is yours. No one — not a friend, not a grown-up, not anyone — is allowed to touch you in a way that feels uncomfortable or wrong. If that ever happens, it is never your f…
📌 Children who have open, calm conversations about body safety with parents are significantly more likely to disclose if something happens — and recover better if it does.
Ages 5–9 · All
Your body belongs to you
Your body is yours. Nobody is allowed to touch your body in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable or unsafe — not friends, not adults, not even family members. If someone does, o…
📌 The NSPCC PANTS rule: Privates are yours. Always remember no means no. Never keep secrets that make you feel sad. Talk to a trusted adult. Speak up. Children who know this rule are…
Ages 5–17 · All
There are always trusted adults
No matter how bad something feels, there is always someone who can help. A trusted adult is someone who listens without judgment, keeps you safe, and takes what you say seriously. …
📌 Children who have at least one safe, trusted adult relationship — outside their immediate family if necessary — show dramatically better outcomes in every measure of wellbeing and …
Ages 5–17 · All
Secrets vs surprises
Surprises are temporary secrets that end in happiness — a birthday present, a party. Unsafe secrets are ones that make you feel bad, that an adult tells you to keep from your paren…
📌 Children who can identify the difference between surprises and unsafe secrets are significantly better protected. Most abuse situations involve secrets — teaching this distinction …
Ages 5–17 · All
Consent in everyday life
Consent isn't only about physical or sexual situations. It applies every day: borrowing something, sharing information, taking a photo, tagging someone online. Consent means gettin…
📌 NSPCC research on consent education; Brook (2019) evaluation data. Research by Wolak et al. on child online safety shows that children who understand consent concepts are better eq…
Ages 5–17 · All
Trusting your instincts
Your body often knows something is wrong before your mind has words for it — a tightness in the chest, a voice saying 'this doesn't feel right'. That feeling is worth listening to.…
📌 de Becker (1997) The Gift of Fear documents case studies of ignored intuitive fear signals. Van der Kolk (2014) The Body Keeps the Score describes the neuroscience of somatic threa…
Ages 5–17 · All
Knowing your rights
You have rights — as a child, as a person, as a citizen. The right to be safe, the right to education, the right not to be discriminated against, the right to privacy. Rights you d…
📌 UNICEF Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) establishes 54 articles of children's rights. Research by Alderson (2000) on children's rights knowledge shows awareness of righ…
Ages 6–10 · All
Surprises vs unsafe secrets
A surprise is a secret that gets shared eventually — like a birthday present. An unsafe secret is one an adult or older child asks you to keep forever, especially if it makes you f…
📌 The NSPCC's PANTS programme (Underwear Rule) explicitly teaches the surprise vs unsafe secret distinction and is endorsed as evidence-based by the UK government. Evaluations show i…
Ages 7–12 · All
Online safety: what to share and what to protect
Online you can be kind, curious, and creative. You can also be safer by knowing the rules: never share your address, school, phone number, or real full name with people you don't k…
📌 Children who discuss online safety regularly with parents are twice as likely to report concerning online interactions.
Ages 8–13 · All
Road and traffic safety for walkers
Being hit by a car is one of the most common serious injuries for children — and almost all are preventable. The rules: look right, left, right again before crossing; make eye cont…
📌 Road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death in children aged 5–14 in high-income countries. The majority involve pedestrians, not passengers.
Ages 8–14 · All
What to do in an emergency
Emergencies feel chaotic but having a plan makes a real difference. Emergency number (911), your address, your parent's phone number — these should be memorised. If someone is unre…
📌 Children as young as 8 can effectively perform CPR under phone guidance from emergency services. Knowing what to do in the first 60 seconds of an emergency significantly improves o…
Ages 8–13 · All
Your online self vs your real self
Online, you can choose what to show. Most people show their best — edited, filtered, curated. The person others see online is real, but it's a highlight reel. The gap between your …
📌 Research on social comparison and social media: the curated nature of online profiles — showing only positives — creates systematic upward comparison that is linked to lower self-e…
Ages 9–14 · All
What to do in an emergency
Three things that save lives: know how to call emergency services (know your address, speak clearly, stay on the line), know basic wound care (firm pressure on cuts, don't move som…
📌 British Heart Foundation and Resuscitation Council UK data: for every minute without CPR following cardiac arrest, survival chances fall by around 10%. Bystander CPR roughly double…
Ages 9–14 · All
Stumbling across harmful content
Online, you can accidentally find things that disturb, upset, or confuse you — graphic images, extreme views, content designed to shock. If you see something that makes you feel ba…
📌 Children who feel safe telling a parent about disturbing online content are significantly more protected than those who fear punishment for encountering it. The reaction to disclos…
Ages 9–15 · All
Cyberbullying — what it is and what to do
Cyberbullying — being deliberately and repeatedly targeted online to cause harm — is bullying. It doesn't stop at the school gate, which is what makes it exhausting. The key differ…
📌 Cyberbullying affects approximately 1 in 5 children. Unlike face-to-face bullying, it is associated with higher rates of anxiety and depression because the victim has no safe space…
Ages 10–14 · All
When something online makes you feel bad
Not everything online is designed to make you feel good. Some content makes people feel ugly, stupid, left out, or scared. If something upsets you, you're allowed to stop. You're a…
📌 Mitchell et al. (2007) in Journal of Adolescent Health: youth who felt they could disclose online problems to a parent were more likely to seek help. Parental reaction quality pred…
Ages 11–15 · All
Alcohol and drugs — what you actually need to know
The teenage brain isn't fully developed until around 25 — specifically the part that governs judgment and impulse control. Alcohol and drugs affect this developing brain more sever…
📌 Teens who drink before age 15 are 4x more likely to develop alcohol dependency than those who wait until 21. The risk rises with every year earlier the drinking begins.
Ages 12–16 · All
Consent: what it is and why it matters
Consent means someone freely and enthusiastically agrees to something — not because they feel pressured, not because they're scared to say no, not because they're too drunk to deci…
📌 Young people who receive clear consent education are more confident setting boundaries and more respectful of others' boundaries in relationships.
Ages 13–17 · All
When someone you care about is in danger
If a friend tells you something that suggests they might hurt themselves, or you suspect they're being hurt — you are not betraying them by telling an adult. You are helping them. …
📌 Adults are significantly more likely to intervene helpfully when a peer discloses a friend's safety concern than when the young person tries to manage it alone.
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