Effective advocacy and self-advocacy skills empower individuals to ask for what they need – and to persist in the face of resistance – in order to support safety and well being for themselves and their loved ones. Confidence and competence using self-advocacy skills can enhance the feelings of mastery, control, and autonomy central to mental and behavioral health.

Kidpower’s success-based, strengths-based approach emphasizes the power of the individual – and builds upon what they CAN do using examples that are important and relevant to them.

Our skills and strategies are practical tools for fostering feelings of worthiness as well as self-confidence in assessing options, pursuing goals, addressing concerns, and taking calm, confident action.

For decades, parents and educators have used Kidpower to support the growth of healthy, lifelong coping behaviors as early as the first years of life. This can prevent harmful coping behaviors from taking root.

If harmful coping behaviors do take root, replacing them with healthy coping strategies requires more than a commitment to change – it requires an opportunity to practice, not just discuss, replacement behaviors. Kidpower skills and strategies support individuals in this process – and serve as tools for mental health practitioners guiding others.

Kidpower has decades of experience translating emotional safety strategies into teachable, coachable practices using speech and movement. Our methods help participants acknowledge and honor emotions while also building strategies to stop their emotions from ruling their behavior.

Plus, our trauma-informed, strengths-based, success-based approach allows for easy adaptation based on individual needs related to trauma and recovery as well as to mobility, speech, cognition, sensory processing, and health.

Becoming self-aware of habits, ending those that are harmful, and building healthful habits requires more than a desire to change – it requires new skills. Kidpower makes the social-emotional safety skill-building process more accessible by making it easier to practice behaviors, break them into smaller pieces, make them relevant, celebrate growth, and incorporate mistakes and setbacks as part of the learning process.

Kidpower combines the social-emotional safety skills central to communication, advocacy, and healthy connection together with a success-based, step-by-step way to practice them instead of just talking about them. Whether building new habits to stop overcommitting, or to end cycles of violence, or to avoid addiction relapse triggers, or to foster progress toward wellness in other ways, Kidpower strategies help translate intention into action.

Throughout the process of healing from trauma and harm, Kidpower skills ranging from boundary setting to self-advocacy and emotional safety empower people to create the conditions for the self-care, support, exercise, rest, and time they might need to regain a sense of control, balance, and well-being.

Conflict can arise when someone’s healing process does not match their friends’ or loved ones’ timelines and expectations. Practicing Kidpower boundary setting, emotional safety, and assertive advocacy skills can prepare people to manage these conflicts while creating the conditions they need for their own healing.

Kidpower offers practical, teachable skills that can enhance resilience by helping people take charge of emotional and physical safety and well-being for themselves and their loved ones in the face of adversity, trauma, and other major life challenges.

The goals of building healthy coping strategies, strengthening relationships, prioritizing self-care and wellness, and building confidence are easier to achieve with the boundary setting, advocacy, and emotional safety strategies Kidpower teaches. Professionals commonly integrate the Kidpower Positive Practice Method into their standard practices because it makes the skills easier for people to learn and apply in their own lives.

Kidpower’s goal is to teach skills for people to be safe with people – including with themselves. So, self-care, self-compassion, kindness to oneself, and putting one’s own safety ahead of anyone’s embarrassment, inconvenience, or offense has always been central in our work.

Self-awareness, boundary setting, self-advocacy, and emotional safety strategies are crucial for the self-care necessary for mental and behavioral health for people of all ages and abilities.

Starting Strong Safety Lessons

These 12 cartoon-illustrated social safety stories are tools for parents, teachers, and other caring adults to empower younger children with skills that can help prevent and solve problems with people. Skills include boundary setting, stranger safety, getting help from busy adults, strategies for stopping bullying, and more!

Starting Strong Safety Teacher’s Guide

This Teacher’s Guide for the Kidpower Starting Strong Safety Lessons book provides recommendations for coaching the skills in daily life; using crafts and activities to revisit the skills; at-home lessons for families; and adaptations for learning differences.

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Educators and parents committed to protecting people with disabilities or special needs from bullying, abuse, and other maltreatment will find a wide range of resources for coaching, sharing, learning, and adapting safety skills for all ages and abilities in this volume of social stories and coaching guides.
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Book 1: How To Avoid Trouble, Protect Your Heart’s Safety, And Set Boundaries. For Children From Ages 3 to 10.

Book 1 focuses on how to be and act aware, be safe with touch, set boundaries, be safe with words, move away from trouble, and check first with adults before doing something new.

Book 2: How To Get Help, Stay Safe In Public, And Protect Yourself From Safety Problems Like Bullying. For Children From 3 to 10

Book 2 focuses on how to get help, stay safe with private areas, stay safe with strangers and in public, be powerful with your voice and body, and stop bullying by taking charge of safety.

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The six new books in our Kidpower Teaching Book series make it easy and fun for educators, parents, and other adult leaders to use our “People Safety” curriculum with children and youth in their classrooms, youth programs, and families.
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