Skills for Safe & Strong Relationships at All Ages
Skills for Safe & Strong Relationships
at All Ages
Kidpower social-emotional safety skills are also skills for building happier, healthier, safer relationships at all ages! For example, in addition to keeping people safe from harm…
- Setting clear, respectful boundaries can strengthen communication with peers, family members, colleagues, and teammates
- Acting aware, calm, and confident can can make difficult conversations go more smoothly
- Managing emotional triggers to stay in charge of our words and actions can stop us from harming those we love
- Applying safety principles about touch and attention in healthy relationships – including clearly expressing, respecting, and withdrawing consent – can deepen trust and strengthen connection with friends, partners, and other loved ones
- Advocating persistently to get help can get us the support we need when our caring friends, family, and colleagues do not know that we are scared, hurt, or suffering
- Protecting ourselves emotionally can help us think clearly and make wiser choices about how to respond when people we care about do or say things that feel hurtful or disrespectful
Like all other kinds of skills, these skills get stronger the more they get used! Adults, teens, and children say that their Kidpower skills grow stronger from everyday use – helping them feel more confident about using them in safety situations.
Use our resources and workshops to help yourself and your loved ones have joyful, happy relationships – and you will end up strengthening skills that can prevent bullying, abuse, assault, intimate partner violence, and other harm.
Kidpower social-emotional safety skills are also skills for building happier, healthier, safer relationships at all ages! For example, in addition to keeping people safe from harm…
- Setting clear, respectful boundaries can strengthen communication with peers, family members, colleagues, and teammates
- Acting aware, calm, and confident can can make difficult conversations go more smoothly
- Managing emotional triggers to stay in charge of our words and actions can stop us from harming those we love
- Applying safety principles about touch and attention in healthy relationships – including clearly expressing, respecting, and withdrawing consent – can deepen trust and strengthen connection with friends, partners, and other loved ones
- Advocating persistently to get help can get us the support we need when our caring friends, family, and colleagues do not know that we are scared, hurt, or suffering
- Protecting ourselves emotionally can help us think clearly and make wiser choices about how to respond when people we care about do or say things that feel hurtful or disrespectful
Like all other kinds of skills, these skills get stronger the more they get used! Adults, teens, and children say that their Kidpower skills grow stronger from everyday use – helping them feel more confident about using them in safety situations.
Use our resources and workshops to help yourself and your loved ones have joyful, happy relationships – and you will end up strengthening skills that can prevent bullying, abuse, assault, intimate partner violence, and other harm.

Articles
- Advocating for Your Kids with Adult family Members and Friends
- Assertive Advocacy Communication skills
- Boundaries Personal Practice
- Conscious Apologies
- Conflict Resolution by Backing Up to Go Forward
- Don’t Wait: 5 Messages for Everyone We Love
- Five Communication Strategies I Already Know – But Forget to Use
- Fullpower Consent and Boundary Skills for Adults
- Grandparenting: Supporting Strong Family Relationships
- Holiday Boundaries
- Holiday Power
- How the Boundary Bridge Helps Avoid a Communication Breakdown
- How to Make Family Gatherings Great Instead of Awful
- How Can I Help My Child with Moving Anxiety
- Integrity In Communication
- Keeping Playdates Fun and Safe
- Little Books for Literal People
- Teen Consent and Boundary Skills
- Making A Safety Plan for Bathroom Accidents
- Managing Wandering for People with Autism
- Most Teachers are Heroes!
- Preparing Kids for Good Digital Citizenship
- Protecting Sexual Safety
- Seven Positive Strategies for Managing Aggressive Behavior in Young Children
- Triggers, Emotional Attacks, and Emotional Safety Techniques
- Touch and Consent in Healthy Relationships
See more articles: Bullying Prevention, Teen Safety, Workplace Communication Safety

Videos
Tips for Inviting Open Communication with Our Kids
MJ Hayes, Kidpower of Colorado’s Visiting Instructor and Center Director Kidpower North Carolina, gives tips to parents to teach kids that it is okay to say set a boundary if someone does something unsafe or breaks our safety rules. She also helps parents have specific language tools to open up lines of communication so that our kids come to us with both the small and big things that may be bothering them.
Kiona Presents Kidpower's Calm Down Power
Kiona Medina presents Calm Down Power from the Kidpower Safety Signals.
Busy Adults: When to Wait and When to Interrupt
Do your kids interrupt when you are trying to work at home? It’s difficult for our littlest ones to understand when to wait and when to interrupt. Remember that everyone being at home so much is new for us and for them! In this “Kidpower Safety Snippet”, our Program Director Angela Hamilton gives a Kidpower lesson in less than 4 minutes that may help!
Marylaine Presents Heart Power for Kids
Marylaine Léger, Montreal, Quebec Center Director and Kidpower Trainer, presents Kidpower Safety Minutes™ about Heart Power for kids of all ages. This power helps us to remember to take in kind words into our hearts, to protect our hearts, as well use to use our heart to be kind to others.
Kidpower Shorts Episode 2: Digital Citizenship
The second installment of the Kidpower Shorts series focuses on an increasingly important topic — digital citizenship. Most of us are spending a lot more time online working, learning, and socializing, and practicing good digital citizenship can help everyone have a better time on the internet!
Kidpower Shorts Episode 4: Emotional Safety
The fourth episode of the Kidpower Shorts series addresses emotional safety. This video aims to provide skills for recognizing and managing triggers, keeping your heart protected from other people’s upset, and managing your own upset feelings in a safe and respectful way.
Boundary Setting Skills Webinar for Adults
In two separate Webinars, Irene van der Zande, Executive Director and Founder of Kidpower Teenpower Fullpower International, shares stories, skills, and strategies about how to use boundary-setting skills to stay safe with ourselves and each other emotionally and physically during this intense and challenging time. She shares how to use a boundary bridge to improve communication and how to persist in the face of common negative reactions to boundaries – and how to teach these skills to young people and others you want to support. She Also demonstrates how to coach the use of these skills to address problems in live practices with Kidpower team members about common problems that people are having while living and working together, often while parenting and educating children or supporting vulnerable family members.
(Original Broadcast Date: March 24, 2020 & April 16, 2020)
Conflict Resolution Skills Webinar for Adults
Master Conflict Resolution Trainer Maryse Postlewaite joins with Kidpower Founder Irene van der Zande to share fun and effective ways of reducing stress, preventing problems, and creating compassionate relationships during this challenging time when many of us are struggling with home all day together or with being far apart. These skills can make life better for everyone – now and into the future.
(Original Broadcast Date: March 31, 2020)
Setting Boundaries with Family and Friends
Setting boundaries with family and friends – Recap & Recording of the “Healthy Boundaries” Coaching Conference Call
This recording focuses on healthy boundaries and the positive communication and self-advocacy skills that we, and our kids, can use to build healthy relationships. The purpose of this kind of coaching call is to take real situations that the callers give us and turn the problem into a practice using Kidpower skills and strategies that you can use to help yourself and your children to be safer, and have fun, and deal with the problems that come up in life.
Books
The Kidpower Book for Caring Adults
This inspiring, comprehensive guide puts Kidpower’s nearly 30 years of experience at the fingertips of parents, educators, and all adults who care about protecting children and teens.
Learn More | Buy on Amazon
Your Amazon purchases help Kidpower!
Relationship Safety Skills Handbook
This empowering handbook is for victims of, or people at risk of, interpersonal, dating or domestic violence, and the support people in their lives, to learn ‘People Safety’ concepts and skills to help them prevent or stop future violence.
Learn More | Buy on Amazon
Your Amazon purchases help Kidpower!

Doing Right by Our Kids
The #1 best-selling guide to Child Safety in the #MeToo era. Practical tools for adults to take charge of the safety and well being of the young people in their care, and to address the obstacles that often get in the way.
Learn More | Buy on Amazon
Your Amazon purchases help Kidpower!
“Doing Right by Our Kids is a field guide for practicing courage. It will arm you with the knowledge and skills you need to know when, why, and how to act to protect your kids.”
— Dan Heath, New York Times Bestselling Author
Workshops
All workshops are online until in-person services can resume safely. Then, online and in-person options will both be available!
Community Workshops are organized by Kidpower and open for public enrollment. They make up about 1% of our programs and are listed on our Workshops page.
Private Workshops are organized by groups for their own community members. They make up about 99% of our programs and are not listed on our site unless a group opens their workshop to others. We list these unique opportunities in the “Special Opportunities” section of our Workshops page.
All kinds of groups organize workshops including businesses, nonprofits, schools, and informal groups of friends, family, and neighbors. Each workshops is adapted to the ages, abilities, and life situations of the students and tailored to address the group’s priorities. Contact us to talk about options for your group!
Arrange training, consulting, and coaching
Kidpower offers a wide range of online and – once it is safe to resume – in-person programs for parents, professionals, children, teens, adults, and people with difficult life challenges based on the specific needs of their families, schools, organizations, or businesses. Learn more about Online Programs you can take or organize for your group.
In addition to working with adults interested in Training with Kidpower, we provide long-distance seminars, consulting, and personal coaching sessions that can be conducted anywhere by video-conferencing, email, or telephone. Services also include keynote speakers for conferences, tailored sessions for board and staff retreats, and – once in-person service is safe to resume – traveling instructors.
Our Kidpower Online Child Protection Institute provides an in-depth training in how to use our intervention, advocacy, and personal safety skills to protect and empower children and teens. Executive Membership includes a Skype coaching meeting on how to use Kidpower resources to meet your specific needs.

We’re here to answer your questions, suggest resources, and give you more information about how to take or plan a class. Contact us today!