Teaching Your Child Persuasive Speech

TEACHING YOUR CHILD TO BE SAFE – PART TWO

Instilling safety without creating fear

As we previously discussed in PART ONE, becoming a parent is a wonderful experience but it can be fraught with fears, and none more so than fear for the safety of our beloved children. However, our fears can transfer to our offspring and make them even more nervous than necessary.

However much we feel the need to protect them from every possible form of danger, we need to teach them to take care of themselves; by recognising risks and potentially harmful situations, without creating fearful and anxious children.

Here are a few Do’s and Don’ts to help you to turn your child into a well informed and streetwise kid without putting the fear of god into them:

DO

• Teach your child its own name and both parents names (plus address and telephone

DON’T

• Create a culture of fear - it can be frightening enough to be out in public without being scared of every single person on the street.

• Talk about strangers as though everyone is dangerous - crimes against children are as likely to be perpetrated by someone the child knows: o Making your child fearful of all strangers might mean that they are afraid to seek help from adults when necessary – such as a lost child who is too frightened to approach a security guard to help them to find their parents, or a lost child who evades rescuers because they are strangers to him/her.

• Allow your child to believe that people will look inherently wicked – in reality the majority of people who harm children are usually normal looking, if not good looking: o If they looked odd then they wouldn’t seem quite so appealing or charming to their victims. o Talking about “strange” or “dangerous” looking people or even people who look “different” to us, could lead your child to feel prejudice simply based on how a person