Stranger Safety--A Familiar Topic in Our House

My oldest child will be starting Kindergarten this fall, and as weepy as I get when I think about her being gone for five full days of the week, I know she’s more than ready.  She loves to experience new things; she has been trying her hand at reading for months now, and she adores being around people.  She, like her mom, has a tendency to be a people pleaser, which is fantastic for building relationships with her new teachers and administrators, but it can be dangerous when it comes to safety. 

So a few weeks ago, I walked us all—my 5, 4, and even my 2-year old who was along for the ride—through one of the most difficult rites of passage that I’ve had to experience in my whole five years of parenting: a lesson on Stranger Safety.

Like many parents, my biggest fear is that something unthinkable will happen to one of my children.  I remember watching in horror as Elizabeth Smart’s family recounted her abduction, and then I felt the joy of her safe return nine months later.  I wondered, with the rest of America, why some children do not run from their abductors, even after months of being held captive, like Ben Ownby and Shawn Hornbeck in 2007.  Every time I see clips of little Madeleine McCann, my heart breaks for the void, frustration, and sorrow that her parents must feel every single day. 

And although I know that it’s ridiculous to live in fear, I also know it’s silly to pretend that there’s absolutely nothing we can do as parents—because we can do something.  We can talk about stranger safety with our own children, we can research and find the best products on the market to help us convey strong messages to our kids about being aware, and we can revisit the topic with them on a regular basis. 

So when my good friend told me last summer that she found a great Stranger Safety DVD, I borrowed it.  Sure—it took a few good months for my husband and I to muster the emotional energy to view it one night, but we did.  And as I watched it, tears welled in my eyes, my stomach twisted in knots, and I seriously felt like I could vomit, not at the quality of the program but at the fact that we had to view it in the first place.

Finally, two weeks ago—only two weeks before we send off our oldest to the wilds of elementary school--I told my children that we were going to have a different kind of movie night.  Unlike our usual movie nights, complete with popcorn blankets, and some Disney or Pixar film, we would watch this movie a little bit each night for the whole week. 

And that’s what we did; we watched about fifteen minutes each night, and although the program has built-in spots for parents to stop and talk with their children, I found that I stopped more frequently to clarify points, answer questions, and add some information.  Since my kiddos are so young, I wanted to give them smaller, easier-to-digest doses, and I think I needed it, too.

My plan is to show our Stranger Safety DVD a few more times in the next few weeks, not to scare my kids but rather to make it a normal topic, an easy, familiar one for them. I know that there's a fine line between knowledge as power and too much information as overkill, so I am definitely going to keep a balance here.

I want them to memorize the names of those people who will always keep them safe, and I want them to be always be aware of their surroundings.  My hope is that they remember to keep that  imaginary circle surrounding their body sacred.  I want them to learn to differentiate between those adults whom they don't know at all and the ones they only know a little--and I want them to know how to interact with each.  But most of all, I want them to know that their parents love them more than they will ever comprehend--and that's exactly why we walked them through this important message so early.

It's a rite of passage for our little ones to gain the understanding that not everyone out there is to be trusted and the world is not as safe as they think, and it's a rite of passage for parents to hand over that information. For us, handing over this important package may be difficult, but it's also absolutely, positively, and completely necessary.

This is an original DC Metro Moms post.

Amy M. can always be found at teachmama where she not only shares with her three kiddos important information about stranger safety but also where she attempts to nurture in each one of them a love of life and learning.