Repair for Kids: A Children's Program for Recovery from Incest and Childhood Sexual Abuse

by Margie McKinnon, Marjorie McKinnon, Tom W McKinnon

Overview

R.E.P.A.I.R is Recognition, Entry, Process, Awareness, Insight, and Rhythm

Enter a Six-Stage Program with your child to cross the Bridge of Recovery and make available a whole new world of hope:

Uncover and acknowledge feelings by discovering emotion

Build self-esteem and optimism with the "Magic Mirror"

Discern healthy and unhealthy messages

Learn self-soothing skills with "Dear Diary" letters to the inner-child

Reveal inner states with picture drawing

Break free from the confines of false shame

Cultivate self-care skills and practices

Learn about boundaries and bodies

Return to the natural rhythm and flow of life

Therapists' Acclaim for REPAIR for Kids

"REPAIR for Kids provides a comprehensive, honest and passionate approach for children recovering from sexual abuse. Children will benefit from this book, and be encouraged to continue on their recovery journey." -Jill Osborne, Ed.S, author of Sam Feels Better Now

"I wish I had had something like this a long time ago for my sad and shamed 'little girl' within. I can't think of anything I'd change. You have covered it all and with wonderful sensitivity, perfect timing and terrific repair exercises. I love the cartoons and the colorfulness of your book as well." -Marcelle Taylor, MFT

"I found this book to be well thought out and written, and one that would be helpful for any child who has known the pain of sexual abuse. I wish a caring adult had shared this book with my siblings and myself, it would have helped ease our pain and sorrow." -Michael Skinner, musician and child mental health advocate

Please visit the survivors peer-support group at www.TheLamplighters.org

from Loving Healing Press www.Lovinghealing.com

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781932690576
Publisher:	Loving Healing Press
Publication date:	06/13/2008
Pages:	90
Sales rank:	1,122,428
Product dimensions:	8.49(w) x 11.07(h) x 0.31(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Marjorie McKinnon has been writing since the age of thirteen, when she wrote poetry to hide her pain. Despite her father's confession in her mid-thirties about an incestuous relationship he'd had with her that began when she was thirteen, she had buried all memories of the childhood trauma. She had run away from home when she was eighteen and spent the next 27 years going from one abuser to another. During that time she was hospitalized twice for suicide attempts, spent time in a women's shelter and raised four children as a single mother. During recovery she wrote about her experience and what it was like to emerge on the other side of "the Bridge of Recovery." It is a chronicle of growing up in small Midwestern towns in a Catholic family and of hiding her anguish behind words, poetry that she termed her inner voices. It is also a detailed account of the journey one takes in going from a place of despair to one of joy. That book, titled "I Never Heard A Robin Sing" became her first attempt to publish. When Marjorie was half way through recovery she found out that her two older daughters had been sexually abused by her second husband. Her youngest daughter had been raped at gunpoint while working at a fast food place when she was 17. This so totally accents the reality that child sexual abuse is a multi-generational problem. Children of an untreated incest victim stand a five times greater chance of being sexually abused themselves. Unable to sell her memoir, she spent several years writing other books: a fiction trilogy, two other novels, four volumes of poetry, and two non-fiction works; all are currently available as Kindles on amazon.com and will be available in paperback in 2017. Marjorie re-read her own first person account to re-walk the path she had taken. She never realized at the time how blessed she was, for that path, though rugged, was straight, and in retrospect provided her with invaluable help to spend three years creating the REPAIR program. Loving Healing Press has published six of her recovery books: REPAIR Your Life: A Program for Recovery from Incest & Childhood Sexual Abuse, REPAIR For Kids, REPAIR For Toddlers, REPAIR For Teens, REPAIR Your Life Workbook and a post recovery book, It's Your Choice! Decisions That Will Change Your Life. She met her current husband, Tom McKinnon, on the Internet while doing genealogy research on McKinnons (her name was also McKinnon). They were married in 2000 at Melrose, Scotland. Tom illustrated the two children's versions of her REPAIR books. They now live in the Sedona, AZ area. Marjorie is also the founder of The Lamplighter Movement, a rapidly growing international movement for recovery from child sexual abuse that emphasizes the importance of REPAIRing the damage. Most of her chapters are using her REPAIR program as a model for recovery. Currently there are 76 Lamplighter Movement chapters in ten countries including 18 in Africa. Marjorie is trying to get Lamplighter chapters in all of the women's prisons. So far they have one in Chino, CA. She is also trying to get chapters started in women's shelters and domestic violence centers. The Lamplighter's website is at www.thelamplighters.org

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

RECOGNITION ENTRY PROCESS AWARENESS INSIGHT RHYTHM

REPAIR

Means

Recognition Telling the truth about what has happened to us

Entry Making a commitment to work on the program regularly (We'll tell you what this big word means later.)

Process Learning tools and exercises to make us feel better

Awareness Finding the puzzle pieces

Insight Putting the picture together so we see that it was not our fault

Rhythm Becoming our own person, special & whole

DO WE WANT TO BE REPAIRED!!!!!!!!!

The Dictionary says ...

"Repair means to restore by replacing a part or putting together what is torn or broke, to restore to a sound or healthy state."

Isn't that what we want to do? A part of us has been torn. It has been broken. We want to fix it! If something in your house breaks it has to be repaired, doesn't it? Our house (meaning us) has been broken and we want it fixed!

Yes, we want to be REPAIRed!!

The Path Of The Wounded Child

At birth we were given a promise

Then came the ...

Bad stuff ... and Lions and tigers and bears, lions and tigers and bears, ... ...

We were sad and fearful. We didn't know which direction to turn.

*
Which way, which way ... ...

Like in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the Lion had to find their way to the Wizard, there has to be a better path for a wounded child. We need to find our own Yellow Brick Road.

Maybe if we look in this book ... ...

Are you a wounded child?

A wounded child is sad. Bad things have happened to them and they don't understand why. Did they do something to cause it? They feel that they must have, but what was it? They don't remember doing anything bad. What can they do to feel better? What can they do to make the bad things go away?

How would you like to join us on a magical journey across

The Bridge of Recovery

Here is a map to help you get to the other side of the bridge.

It is called a REPAIR map.

It is a MAGIC map!!

Map to find your way across The Bridge of Recovery REPAIR

The end of your journey is being REPAIRed

How do you get there from here?????????

You must cross

The Bridge of Recovery

The Bridge of Recovery

It is a magical bridge. It will take you away from the lions and tigers and bears that sleep under your bed. You will be able to tell your story, to talk about the bad things people did to you that hurt. You won't have to keep secrets anymore. Going across the bridge will take you from sadness to joy, from fear to safety, from loneliness to love, from confusion to understanding. It will take you from being a wounded child to being a happy child.

Do you want to go across the magical bridge of recovery?

Remember, we have a map!

By crossing the bridge, you will get REPAIRed.

Repair means to fix what is torn or broken, to return to a sound or healthy state. That's us! We want to be fixed so that we are.....

Happy not sad Filled with joy ... ... ... ... playful Free to be ourselves.

Before we do that, let's talk about

Shame

Wounded children feel shame, that hot rush to our body that makes us feel we are not okay. It is as if we were dealt a physical blow that became a wound, one that needs to be lanced, needs medication and needs time to heal. It is a shameful wound. We may be wounded children but we can lance our own wound, we can put ointment on it and we can wait for it to heal. We can even put a band aid on it while it is healing.

That is what this Repair program is all about. It's like going to the doctor to get well,except we are going to be our own doctor. Then ...

Someday we will no longer be a sad face. We will be A happy face Shame is a painful emotion caused by guilt. Guilt is our conscience talking to us, telling us we did something wrong. Sometimes this guilt is deserved and sometimes it isn't. When we forget to feed our dog and Mom gives us a lecture we feel pain. We feel that we are a lesser person in Mom's eyes. Do we deserve that? If we truly did forget to feed the dog and that's our job, we probably deserve the lecture. That is deserved guilt. Everyone has this. There is no person in the world that hasn't done something they were sorry for. In this case shame helps us do better next time. It is part of the learning experience in life.

From Birth on ... ... ...........

Our bodies are our own!

They belong to us!

If someone hurts our body in a shameful manner by touching our private parts when we don't want them to, the shame that we feel crawls over us like a giant monster. Our private parts are in that part of our body that we keep covered when we go swimming. In boys, it is called a penis and the penis and anal area. In girls, it is called a vagina and the vagina and anal area. In girls, there is also the breast area. These are called private parts because they belong to us alone.

When someone touches our private parts we feel that it must be our fault. But no one has the right ever to touch any part of our body that we don't want them to. When this happens the shame is so great that we are too terrified to tell anyone, mostly because we think it must be our fault.

Sometimes the very person who touched our private parts is someone in our family. This makes the shame even greater. No one, I repeat, no onehas the right to do this. You have the right to say no and to phone someone you trust for protection. If you don't know anyone, you can dial 911 on the telephone and the police will help you.

This is not about anything you did or you are. It is only about who the person who did it is. They are bad people and must go to jail for doing this. You must be strong in protecting your own body. In this book you are going to learn how to be strong, how to REPAIR the damage that bad people did to you.

You are a wonderful child of love, you are a gift to the world and in this book we will help you see your own wonderfulness. Lots of people are waiting to protect you if you need them.

Now, it's time to start crossing that bridge.

Are you ready?

Take a deep breath and keep remembering what's on the other side.

You're not alone.

Let's start with the R:

It stands for Recognition. It means telling the truth. It means talking about anything someone has done to hurt you that you were uncomfortable with, that you didn't like, especially something done to your private parts. Can you find a safe person to tell the truth to? You must not be afraid, for anything done to you was not your fault. It was the fault of the person who did it to you. Sometimes it's easier to do this first step if we concentrate on what we are feeling. A happy person has not had anything bad happen to them. A sad person, one who is sad most of the time, not just once in awhile when they don't get their way, has had something bad done to them.

If you had a plant growing in your garden and someone stomped on it, it would not look like a healthy plant. It would have flattened leaves and maybe small flowers trampled on it. But it could still live. If you watered it, and fertilized it, and talked to it, it would come back to life.

You are like that tiny plant. Someone has trampled on you and now you are going to come back to life. The program REPAIR is going to do that for you. But first you must talk about anything bad that was done to you. That is the first step, Recognition, telling the truth. Telling the truth will make you feel stronger, more powerful. It doesn't matter if someone told you not to tell. They were wrong and now you are going to talk about it. First, let's do an exercise called What am I Feeling?

What am I feeling?

Feelings just are. They are not right or wrong, good or bad. It is what we do with our feelings that get us in trouble. What are you feeling? Write down as many feelings as you can think of. If you need to, write some down for each day of the week. For example: Monday I was angry, Tuesday I was mostly happy except when I had a fight with my sister. And so on.

___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________

Checklist to find out if we are a wounded child

We have trouble sleeping. _________
Next is: REPAIR

The E in Entry.

It means we are going to make a promise to ourselves to read this book every day.

It means we will do all the exercises on a daily basis.

It means we will not keep secrets when something bad happens to us. Whenever someone asks us to do something, even if it's a family member and we get that "yucky" feeling, we will tell someone we trust.

It means we are going to bond with healthy behavior.

It means we are going to learn to set healthy boundaries.

It means we are going to learn to say no when it needs to be said.

It means we are going to learn the C word, Commitment

Commitment means a pledge,

Now, raise your right hand and repeat after me ... ...

"I give my word that I will work hard to get to the other side of the bridge."

That was easy, wasn't it?

REPAIR

Now comes the hard part ... ... ... ... But we are going to put on our big people pants and wade right into it because we have a magic map.

The hard part is the P in Repair that stands for, PROCESS Process means ... ... ... ... ...

Gradual changes that lead towards ... ... ... ...

Getting to the other side of the bridge!!!

And in order to get there we are going to picture our bridge and what lies on the other side of it. We are also going to do some fun exercises.

Let's start with a question ... ... ... ...

What lies on this side of the bridge, where you are now???

Sadness Tears Loneliness Fear No one will like me Feeling I'm ugly Feeling stupid Feeling I've done something wrong Fear of abandonment Feeling ashamed Do you want these things in your life?
This is what waits for you on the other side of the bridge.

Happiness Joy Acceptance Feeling good about myself No more fear Now I'm beautiful Knowing I haven't done anything wrong Everyone will like me I'm smart, smart, smart I can do anything I want Do you want these things in your life?
Let's start our journey with My Magic Mirror

Doing the Magic Mirror exercise is going to be fun. We need fun. It helps us to feel better. It means that we will tape happy words onto our mirror and read them every day while we are looking in the mirror. I have given you three pages of them but if you find some on your own or think of any, write them down and tape them on your mirror as well. But you must promise to say them every day, all of them. Remember ... ... you promised.

There is a child inside all of us that knows the truth of what happened. That child is waiting with a sad face for us to set her free, to tell our story, to lance our wound, to heal.

My Magic Mirror

Mirror Mirror on the wall, Who's the fairest of them all?

I am!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Paste a picture of yourself in the center of your Magic Mirror.

Suggestions for my Magic Mirror

I'm a wonderful person.

When other people hurt me, it's about them, not about me.

I can be whatever I want when I grow up.

I am stronger than I think I am.

I am smart.

I know how to say no to bad things.

I know how to ask for help when I need to.

I deserve to have the best life anyone could have.

Many people love me because I'm so lovable.

I am a winner.

I am considerate and kind.

I am never alone, because I have God with me.

My Guardian Angel watches out for me.

I am special.

It's okay to cry when I feel sad.

I have many different feelings and know how to say what I'm feeling.

Sometimes I'm afraid, but it's okay.

Today, I will smile, because my world is going to be all right.

When I make a mistake, I can forgive myself.

When I get angry, it's okay to talk about it.

I can say I'm sorry and still feel okay about me.

It's okay to feel angry, but not okay to hurt others with it.

I need love and I'm not afraid to say that.

There may be lions and tigers and bears under my bed, but I am brave enough to laugh at them.

God watches over me.

There is nothing I can't do with God in my life.

When I grow up, I'm going to be everything I want to be.

I will learn to move through my pain and heal.

I have people who care about me in my life.

I can ask for help when I need it.

Sometimes bad things happen, but I can heal from it.

I can watch my Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired to take care of myself.

Healthy and Unhealthy Messages

One of the things that people do to each other is to say ugly things. It is not right and it would be wonderful if no one ever did this. But sometimes we are Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired (HALT) and we do these things anyway. But if someone says ugly things to us on a regular basis, things that we know are not true, it makes us feel shame.

We are going to help you get rid of these ugly messages.

In the following exercise write the unhealthy message that someone said to you and write to yourself a healthy replacement message. I will do the first one for you as an example so you will know what I am talking about.

Unhealthy Message Healthy Replacement Message

You're so stupid, you I am very smart and I never do anything right. do a lot of things right.

Now do some of your own.

Unhealthy Message Healthy Replacement Message
Write a letter to your Inner Child.

Big People call this a Journal. We'll call it our Diary, the Diary to our Inner Child. We all have an Inner Child.

They are that secret, private part of ourselves that knows everything, that loves us completely, that is there for us when we need them. Write a letter to your Inner Child telling her everything that is in your heart, whether you are sad and why or happy and why, what is troubling you and so on. You can keep these letters in a secret place where no one can find them because they are just between you and your Inner Child. Putting words on paper can take you away from a world of pain. For example, if your teacher hollered at you this morning for something that you didn't do and you are feeling bad about it you can write, "Dear Susan, I am very angry at my teacher because she hollered at me. I hate it when people holler at me, especially if I didn't do anything wrong. I am sad and feel like I don't like her because she is unfair. Maybe she's having a bad day because someone hollered at her. I'll try to remember that it's a statement about her, not about me." By the time you've finished writing the letter you'll feel much better.

(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "Repair for Kids"
by .
Copyright © 2008 Marjorie McKinnon and Tom W. McKinnon.
Excerpted by permission of Loving Healing Press, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 -- What is REPAIR?,
Chapter 2 -- The Bridge of Recovery,
Chapter 3 -- Shame,
Chapter 4 -- Recognition,
Chapter 5 -- The Magic Mirror,
Chapter 6 -- Healthy and Unhealthy Messages,
Chapter 7 -- Tips to help you in the midst of your journey,
Chapter 8 -- Learning How to Set Boundaries,
Chapter 9 -- Awareness,
Chapter 10 -- Who Am I?,