Parenting Guide - Building Your Child's Ability To Identify Stranger Danger

A good way to train your kid's skill at handling unknown and strange situations is to practice "what if" scenes with them. This will help to prepare your kid when he actually faces a potentially dangerous situation and can identify that he might be in danger. This training session should be accompanied by the proper response and actions so that kids know exactly what to do in order to get them out of trouble. At a young age, basic street smarts can be taught to children and will prove invaluable at that age.

We can't control what our children do every minute. But we can help them think with proper parenting guide, early in their lives, about what is and what is not safe, so we can trust them to take responsibility for their actions and to make safe decisions now and as they mature.

Stranger Danger

It is hard to have kids follow the age of teaching of "don't talk to strangers". It is important to take note that they need to also understand that not all strangers are bad people. If they get lost out in a shopping mall, most of the people they encounter will be able to help them and give them help. The tricky part is how to separate a stranger that is offering help to them against one who has a less than good motive.

What You Can Do

Firstly, you need to teach your kid to go with his instincts. Most kids will have a relatively low level of experience with strangers. In such cases, it is better to play safe and if a stranger is asking him or her to do something which doesn't feel right even in the slightest bit, your child should reject any help from that stranger and be sure to stay in an area with good human traffic where he can call out for help should the stranger persist.

You also need to constantly point out authority figures at a shopping mall or even out in the streets so that your child knows that help from such people are perfectly safe and that he should be looking out for them if he's alone, be it lost at a shopping mall or waiting outside the school. With parenting skill, parents can easily administer appropriate parenting solutions.

You should also role-play some common scenarios that strangers may utilize to trick your child into following him or doing something that will put him in danger. Simple exercises like this will kick in and become very helpful in getting your child prepared for such scenarios. In the event a stranger approaches your kid, at least he's not being confused as to what's happening and he knows exactly how to react.