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Saturday, 31 of July of 2010

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Teaching Your Child About Strangers

The danger of strangers and our children is higher than ever before. Now not only can strangers approach our children in person, in local places such as a store or park, but they can also approach them via telephone, cell phone, text message or email, not to mention other “online” ways of communicating.

Stranger-Safety-DVD150The danger of strangers and our children is higher than ever before.  Now not only can strangers approach our children in person, in local places such as a store or park, but they can also approach them via telephone, cell phone, text message or email, not to mention other “online” ways of communicating.

We must be even more prepared and educated these days than ever before about the dangers of strangers and about how to educate our children properly on “stranger danger”.  Teaching your child about strangers is your responsibility and should be a top priority.

First, it is important that you help your child to understand what a stranger is exactly.  By showing them pictures of familiar faces and people you are able to point out that if the person isn’t someone that is in the pictures and that they know well then that person is a stranger.

Next, you will want to talk about what you would and would not do with a stranger.  Set some boundaries and ground rules to help them understand what is considered  “crossing the line” when communicating with a stranger.

You might set rules such as:

Never open the door for a stranger to let them in your home.
Never take food or candy from a stranger.
Never get into a vehicle or go into a home or building alone with a stranger.
There may be more that you want to set but these are a good starting point.

Depending on the age of your child you may also want to talk to them about talking to strangers on the phone or Internet as well.  What is most important is that your child understands “who” a stranger is, what should not be done with a stranger and how they should react. Our Stranger Safety DVD tells that  stranger may be someone they kindof  know or somone they do not know.


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Date: June 12, 2009

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  • Kim Estes

    in June 16th, 2009 @ 06:54

    The most recent research has shown that teaching “Stranger Danger” to children is not effective in keeping children safe from danger. Stranger abduction is rare and most crimes (93%) committed against children are done by someone known to the child and their family and not by a stranger at all. Parents and other safe adults are responsible for the safety of children and teaching them to follow safety rules and to listen to their instincts. Children should always have a safe grown up with them if they do want to talk to someone they do not know and no child should get into a car or accept gifts from someone, even if they know them, without checking with their safe grown up first. Instead of teaching stranger danger, teaching kids about “Tricky People” is a simpler concept that kids embrace and is easy to understand. A “Tricky Person” is ANYONE who tries to get them to break a SAFETY RULE… and a “Tricky Person” can be a someone they know alot, a little or not at all. A “Tricky Person” can also be an adult or another child. A lost child needs to know how to reach out to a safe adult (eg. a safe mom with kids) and ask for help. If we teach children to be afraid of strangers, we are elimimating potential sources for help for our kids and we are also teaching them that only strangers pose potential danger.