One bright morning in late March, Kate Rohdenburg, a sexual violence prevention educator, sat cross-legged on the floor of a first-grade classroom. In her arms, she cradled two plastic baby dolls, one brown, one beige, each with its own miniature cloth diaper.
Thirty minutes into her lesson, Rohdenburg had already covered several foundational concepts of child sexual abuse prevention— consent, empathy, body rights, privacy.
"What body parts are the same?" Rohdenburg asked the 22 six-year-olds wiggling around her.
"Face!""Nose!""Belly!""Mouth! ""Toes!" The children called out.
"We all have a heart!" one child shouted.
"They both have penises!" shouted another, eliciting a burst of delighted giggles.
"Do you think?" Rohdenburg asked. "Does everyone have a penis?
"Noooo!" The children laughed in silly-you incredulity.
In the last year, Rohdenburg, who works in New England's Upper Valley, a region that straddles the New Hampshire-Vermont border, has said "penis" and "vagina" in the public school classrooms of more than 500 children, K through 12. She's said "penis" and "vagina" with their teachers and parents, too, some 400 or so in all. As part of the growing movement to implement abuse prevention in schools and other youth-serving organizations, Rohdenburg and other educators believe that teaching what linguists call "standard" dialect for body parts—rather than euphemisms and colloquialisms—is important. Teaching children anatomically correct terms, age-appropriately, says Laura Palumbo, a prevention specialist with the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC), promotes positive body image, self confidence, and parent-child communication; discourages perpetrators; and, in the event of abuse, helps children and adults navigate the disclosure and forensic interview process.