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Off Limits: A Parent's Guide to Keeping Kids Safe from Sexual Abuse
Every parent wants to believe their child is safe. But child sexual abuse affects 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 13 boys in the United States — and in the vast majority of cases, the abuser is someone the family already knows and trusts. The question isn't whether you need this information. The question is whether you have it before something happens — or after.
Off Limits: A Parent's Guide to Keeping Kids Safe from Sexual Abuse gives you exactly what you need to protect your child — not someday, but today.
Written by two of the country's most respected child sexual abuse prevention specialists, this is not a book about fear. It is a book about power — yours. Sandy K. Wurtele, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and Professor Emerita whose Body Safety Training program has been validated in published research across four countries. Feather Berkower, LCSW, has personally trained over 150,000 parents and children through Parenting Safe Children workshops. Together, they have distilled decades of clinical expertise and real-world prevention work into a guide every parent can immediately use.
You will learn how to teach your child the "I'm the Boss of My Body" concept — a simple, proven framework that gives children language to recognize and resist unsafe situations. You will learn the crucial difference between surprises and secrets — a distinction so effective that admitted sexual abusers have cited it as a reason they moved on to a different child. You will learn exactly what grooming looks like, how to screen caregivers and authority figures, how to create a no-secrets rule in your home, how to handle cyber safety, what warning signs to watch for, and — critically — how to respond calmly and correctly if your child tells you something has happened.
Off Limits covers children of all ages, from toddlers through teens. It addresses online predators. It explains what makes children vulnerable — and what makes them less so. It gives you scripts, safety tips, and "What If?" games you can use tonight at the dinner table.
This is not a book you read once and set aside. Parents who've read it describe returning to it before starting a new school year, before a child goes to overnight camp, before a new caregiver is introduced. It is a reference, a resource, and a reminder — written with the clarity and warmth of two specialists who have spent their careers in rooms with real parents asking real questions.
Child sexual abuse can be prevented. Parents are the front line. This book puts you there, prepared.
Off Limits: A Parent's Guide to Keeping Kids Safe from Sexual Abuse gives you exactly what you need to protect your child — not someday, but today.
Written by two of the country's most respected child sexual abuse prevention specialists, this is not a book about fear. It is a book about power — yours. Sandy K. Wurtele, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and Professor Emerita whose Body Safety Training program has been validated in published research across four countries. Feather Berkower, LCSW, has personally trained over 150,000 parents and children through Parenting Safe Children workshops. Together, they have distilled decades of clinical expertise and real-world prevention work into a guide every parent can immediately use.
You will learn how to teach your child the "I'm the Boss of My Body" concept — a simple, proven framework that gives children language to recognize and resist unsafe situations. You will learn the crucial difference between surprises and secrets — a distinction so effective that admitted sexual abusers have cited it as a reason they moved on to a different child. You will learn exactly what grooming looks like, how to screen caregivers and authority figures, how to create a no-secrets rule in your home, how to handle cyber safety, what warning signs to watch for, and — critically — how to respond calmly and correctly if your child tells you something has happened.
Off Limits covers children of all ages, from toddlers through teens. It addresses online predators. It explains what makes children vulnerable — and what makes them less so. It gives you scripts, safety tips, and "What If?" games you can use tonight at the dinner table.
This is not a book you read once and set aside. Parents who've read it describe returning to it before starting a new school year, before a child goes to overnight camp, before a new caregiver is introduced. It is a reference, a resource, and a reminder — written with the clarity and warmth of two specialists who have spent their careers in rooms with real parents asking real questions.
Child sexual abuse can be prevented. Parents are the front line. This book puts you there, prepared.
- GenresParentingNonfiction
176 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2010
About the author
Sandy K. Wurtele
6 books There are researchers who study a problem from a distance, and there are those who have spent a career in the room with the families living it.
Sandy K. Wurtele, Ph.D., is the second kind — and one of the field's most cited voices for it. Dr. Wurtele is a clinical psychologist and Professor Emerita in the Department of Psychology at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, where she built a research career almost entirely around a single, urgent question: how do we actually stop child sexual abuse before it happens? Her doctoral work in Alabama in the early 1980s coincided with the first wave of serious academic interest in the subject, and she has been at the center of the field ever since — developing and evaluating some of the earliest classroom-based body-safety programs for young children, first in
Washington State, then for decades in Colorado Springs, where she brought her prevention curriculum directly into local preschools and
Head Start classrooms.
Her Body Safety Training program has since been studied and adapted internationally, with published evaluations spanning the United States, China, Turkey, and Iran — a rare degree of cross-cultural validation for a prevention curriculum originally built for American classrooms. Over four decades of research, she has authored or co-authored roughly 100 articles in scholarly journals, contributed to nearly twenty book chapters, and written three books for parents on abuse prevention in addition to her academic work — all while securing national research funding, including a FIRST Award from the National Institute of Mental Health. She currently holds a top ranking among the world's most-cited scholars in child sexual abuse research.
Dr. Wurtele's expertise reaches well beyond the classroom and the journal page. She has served on the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's task force for developing child-victimization prevention guidelines, acted as child protection consultant for a Catholic diocese and for USA Swimming's Safe Sport Committee, and served as an expert reviewer for Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. She continues to provide expert witness testimony in civil cases involving child sexual abuse within youth-serving organizations — work that keeps her research grounded in the real stakes it was built to address.
Dr. Wurtele is now retired from teaching and lives in Oklahoma, where — in a detail that tends to surprise people who only know her from her academic CV — she raises and shows cutting horses. It is the kind of fact that says something true about her: an internationally published expert who has spent forty years in some of the hardest conversations a parent can have, and who still makes time for the parts of life that have nothing to do with a lecture hall.
Sandy K. Wurtele, Ph.D., is the second kind — and one of the field's most cited voices for it. Dr. Wurtele is a clinical psychologist and Professor Emerita in the Department of Psychology at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, where she built a research career almost entirely around a single, urgent question: how do we actually stop child sexual abuse before it happens? Her doctoral work in Alabama in the early 1980s coincided with the first wave of serious academic interest in the subject, and she has been at the center of the field ever since — developing and evaluating some of the earliest classroom-based body-safety programs for young children, first in
Washington State, then for decades in Colorado Springs, where she brought her prevention curriculum directly into local preschools and
Head Start classrooms.
Her Body Safety Training program has since been studied and adapted internationally, with published evaluations spanning the United States, China, Turkey, and Iran — a rare degree of cross-cultural validation for a prevention curriculum originally built for American classrooms. Over four decades of research, she has authored or co-authored roughly 100 articles in scholarly journals, contributed to nearly twenty book chapters, and written three books for parents on abuse prevention in addition to her academic work — all while securing national research funding, including a FIRST Award from the National Institute of Mental Health. She currently holds a top ranking among the world's most-cited scholars in child sexual abuse research.
Dr. Wurtele's expertise reaches well beyond the classroom and the journal page. She has served on the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's task force for developing child-victimization prevention guidelines, acted as child protection consultant for a Catholic diocese and for USA Swimming's Safe Sport Committee, and served as an expert reviewer for Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. She continues to provide expert witness testimony in civil cases involving child sexual abuse within youth-serving organizations — work that keeps her research grounded in the real stakes it was built to address.
Dr. Wurtele is now retired from teaching and lives in Oklahoma, where — in a detail that tends to surprise people who only know her from her academic CV — she raises and shows cutting horses. It is the kind of fact that says something true about her: an internationally published expert who has spent forty years in some of the hardest conversations a parent can have, and who still makes time for the parts of life that have nothing to do with a lecture hall.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
April 2, 2011
I just got back from Feather's 4 hour seminar and it's currently *the* most important 4 hours I have spent for my daughter. We went through a lot of what is in this book but I will be reading and giving to everyone I know (including Steve). If you are a parent, or caregiver, you must read this book. If Father is doing a seminar near you, do yourself, and your children the service of attending.
June 27, 2017
Such a hard book to read but so important. I'll be implementing some things from this book right away. I don't want to live in fear and want to give my kids the language to talk about their bodies in our family.
September 15, 2024
This was great! very informative and quickly/efficiently shared what it was trying to. The stories from the kids were tough to read. I learned some new things too, despite having prior training. Would be great for community members or parents to read!
May 13, 2011
This book should be required reading for any concerned parent. My naiveté about sexual abuse has made me an ill-prepared to arm my children in this increasingly dangerous world. Off Limits: A Parent’s Guide to Keeping Kids Safe from Sexual Abuse helped bridge this gap for me. It was a superb book.
Topics include identifying traits of those who abuse, learning the process those abusers use to get a child to submit, equipping children with a plan on how to handle a situation if they encounter one, teaching children about body safety and making your home safe, and talking to caregivers about safety, to name a few.
The book is filled with nuggets or “safety tips”. For example, one was making a rule about not keeping secrets in your family. Surprises are okay, but secrets are not. Surprises are fun to keep and are eventually told. Secrets don’t feel good to keep and are not ever meant to be shared. It’s important for kids to learn the differences and to teach them how to respond to a potential abuser. The “my family doesn’t keep secrets from each other” comment has actually dissuaded admitted sexual abusers. They simply found another kid who would keep a secret.
Off Limits also covers on-line predators, an increasing danger with the explosion of media use among older children and teens. The book even goes on discuss how to help a child if he is abused or how to help children/teens who abuse others. There are many resources included in the appendix as well.
So thorough, so researched, so informative, so practical. I strongly recommend Off Limits by Sandy Wurtele and Feather Berkower.
Topics include identifying traits of those who abuse, learning the process those abusers use to get a child to submit, equipping children with a plan on how to handle a situation if they encounter one, teaching children about body safety and making your home safe, and talking to caregivers about safety, to name a few.
The book is filled with nuggets or “safety tips”. For example, one was making a rule about not keeping secrets in your family. Surprises are okay, but secrets are not. Surprises are fun to keep and are eventually told. Secrets don’t feel good to keep and are not ever meant to be shared. It’s important for kids to learn the differences and to teach them how to respond to a potential abuser. The “my family doesn’t keep secrets from each other” comment has actually dissuaded admitted sexual abusers. They simply found another kid who would keep a secret.
Off Limits also covers on-line predators, an increasing danger with the explosion of media use among older children and teens. The book even goes on discuss how to help a child if he is abused or how to help children/teens who abuse others. There are many resources included in the appendix as well.
So thorough, so researched, so informative, so practical. I strongly recommend Off Limits by Sandy Wurtele and Feather Berkower.
May 30, 2015
This is an absolute must read for parents and anyone who works with children. This book teaches common characteristics of sexual abusers, helps the reader to understand the process by which abusers gain "access" to their children, how to respond and intervene when you have suspicions of sexual abuse and tips on how to empower your children and youth with body safety tips to help keep them safe (as well as includes a special section for adolescents about online sexual predators). I highly recommend this book and implementing the body safety rules with your children.
October 4, 2016
This is a good guide. There are basic principals for keeping your kid safe that you can enact in your life how you see fit. The most important part of the book are the 7 body safe rules. Everything else the book recommends flows from those rules.
There is so much in the book that you can beat yourself up trying to remember it all, but if you remember the 7 body safe rules your kid will have a very solid foundation to keep herself safe and by keeping those rules in mind you can build a safe space even if you can't remember every single tip in the book.
There is so much in the book that you can beat yourself up trying to remember it all, but if you remember the 7 body safe rules your kid will have a very solid foundation to keep herself safe and by keeping those rules in mind you can build a safe space even if you can't remember every single tip in the book.
May 4, 2013
A must-read for parents. An excellent resource of current information and a reminder of facts we've heard before. I had no idea that some sexual predators take the time to "groom" our children for their uses. Scary. Some of the warning signs that a child/teen might be the victim of abused were surprising, i.e., obsessed with being the perfect student. One of the authors, Feather Berkower, has presented workshops on "Parenting Safe Children" at my granddaughter's school.
June 23, 2013
EVERY PARENT SHOULD READ THIS. AND THEN READ IT AGAIN. AND GIVE THE BOOK TO EVERY PARENT THEY ENCOUNTER. It is a child self-empowering book that helps keep your kid "off limits" from sexual predators. Learn what you can do to empower your child to stay safe and to make him/her less attractive to a predator. Predators are everywhere and THEY ARE PEOPLE YOU KNOW.
September 13, 2013
A well-written book about protecting your kids from child predators. Very important for all parents and care givers.
March 27, 2014
Not a fun read, but an important one. I've implemented lots that I have learned and really believe my children are safer and I'm less fearful (smart tools so no longer immobilized by fear)
April 14, 2016
I would encourage every parent to read this book. Very informative. Knowledge is power.
June 25, 2016
Wish this book was available in the local libraries, so everyone had access.
April 7, 2017
This book is highly recommended for parents to read by the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center. If you have children, you should read this book. The safety tips throughout the book are informative and easily actionable in educating kids.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews