Children tell with the words they have.
Adults must listen for what they mean. That second sentence is the whole discipline — and it is also where adults most often go wrong in the opposite direction.
A child has no reference point for what happened to them
To describe sexual abuse accurately, a person needs several things at once: names for body parts, a concept of sexual behaviour, an understanding that an adult can be wrong, a sense that what happened was not normal, and the vocabulary of coercion and secrecy. A young child may have none of these.
So they reach for what they do have. The available vocabulary is usually drawn from a small number of familiar domains:
| What the child has words for | How it can come out |
|---|---|
| Pain and the body | Something hurts, in a place or at a time that does not match an obvious cause |
| Games and play | A description of a game, or of a game they do not like |
| Secrets | That there is a secret, or that they are not allowed to say |
| Sleep and bedtime | Fear of a room, a bedtime, a nap, a sleepover |
| Being good or bad | That they are bad now, or dirty, or that they did something wrong |
| Avoidance | Not wanting to go somewhere, or be with someone, without a reason they can give |
| Someone else | The thing described as happening to a friend, a doll, or a character |
The words shown here are hypothetical composites written for teaching. They are not quotations from a real child, and none of them is evidence of anything. A child saying any of these things is far more likely to be describing something ordinary. That is exactly why the correct response is attention rather than alarm.
The adult error is a category error
The adult listens to the child's sentence and evaluates it as testimony. Does it hold together? Is it consistent? Does it name a person and an act? Does it sound like the kind of thing that would be said by someone telling the truth?
But the child is not giving testimony. The child is doing something much harder: trying to point at an experience using a vocabulary that does not contain it. Judged as testimony, that attempt fails. Judged as an attempt, it may be the best the child can do.
The question
What if the child is telling you exactly as well as the child is capable of telling?
Noticing is not interpreting
Here is where this idea can go badly wrong, so we will be blunt about it.
What we are asking adults to do
- Notice communication that does not fit.
- Stay attentive instead of relaxing because the words were confusing.
- Invite the child to say more, in their own words.
- Write down what was actually said.
- Follow the safeguarding and reporting duties that apply to you.
- Hand it to someone trained.
What we are not asking adults to do
- Decide what happened.
- Decide who did it.
- Fill in the parts the child did not say.
- Treat a phrase as a diagnostic symptom.
- Question a child repeatedly until an account emerges.
- Confront anyone.
‘Listen for meaning’ does not mean ‘fill in the meaning.’ An adult who supplies the missing details is not helping the child. They are contaminating the only account that exists.
Why disbelief compounds the harm
A child who tries to tell and is not believed learns several things very quickly: that telling does not work, that the adult world is not reliable, and — often — that the fault must lie with them. The abuse is one injury. Being disbelieved, dismissed, blamed or silenced is a second one, and it is the one the survivor often carries longest.
The second injury is also the one that is entirely within an adult's control. That is the whole reason this project exists.
The required statement
No single phrase or behaviour proves sexual abuse. Concerning communication should prompt calm attention, protection and appropriate professional guidance — not amateur conclusions.
We repeat this on every page that shows child language, and we will keep repeating it, because the failure mode of a campaign like this one is an adult who becomes convinced by a phrase. The point of the line is not to give you a list of red flags. It is to stop you dismissing a child whose words are confusing.