Talk to Your Kids about Strangers

Advice for Concerned Parents

All parents are concerned about the safety of their children.  Unfortunately, parents cannot control everything that happens to their children outside the home.  For example, children will sometimes be confronted by strangers.  How can parents help their children manage this kind of situation? 

Supervise

A child who is supervised is less vulnerable to outside influences.  Children need the supervision of a responsible person.  Assign a contact person when you are not available.  This could be an older brother or sister, some other relative or a family friend.  This supervisor should be aware of where children are, whom they are with, and what they are doing. 

Communication

Communication is a two-way street.  Parents must not only provide children with information and strategies for dealing with strangers, but must listen to their children’s fears, concerns and questions.  This helps the parent deal with issues specific to the individual child.

Avoid exaggeration.  Instilling excessive fear in a child is not productive.  A child who is paralyzed with fear will not respond appropriately in a crisis, no matter how many strategies are provided.  The information you give your child should, of course, be accurate.  If you don’t know why a stranger would want to grab a child, say you don’t know.  It is better to be honest than to make up a scary answer.

Consider all members of your family when communicating about children’s responses to strangers.  Both parents should agree on strategies for dealing with dangers.  If parents learn what a child’s school teaches about coping with strangers, they can reinforce this information. 

Discriminate

Children need help in learning to discriminate in their responses to strangers.  Parents who teach a generalized fear of strangers can’t expect their child to respond well to relatives or family friends with whom the child does not have regular contact.

Teach and Practice

Give children specific strategies for problem situations.  Recognize developmental differences.  Younger children, those under seven, will need to physically rehearse as many strategies as possible.  For example, if you want your child to use an approved safe house, walk with him or her from the school to the designated safe house.  Actually go into the house, so your child will know what it will be like.  Likewise, if you teach your young child that screaming is a way to deter a stranger, have the child practice screaming.  Even older children, if they are particularly quiet or shy, may need to practice good, loud screaming. 

In most cases older children can be helped to remember what to do in a crisis if you ask them to write down the strategies you have taught them.  This can be done periodically to be sure your children remain aware of safety procedures.

Plan

Children need to know how parents will let them know if anything should happen to their parents or to family members.  Planning can prepare a child for those situations in which a stranger might tell the child his or her parent is hurt in order to lure the child away.  Since it may not be possible to designate in advance who exactly will inform the child in such a situation, it may be wise to devise a family code word.  The child can be sure that whoever uses that code word is really carrying a message from a family member.

Avoid

Help your child avoid risky situations.  Leaving children alone in a car, even for only a few minutes, may make them vulnerable to strangers.  Help children avoid being alone by arranging for groups to walk to and from school together.  Also, avoid buying clothing with your child’s name or nickname prominently displayed on it, since a name gives strangers the opportunity to engage your child in conversation. 

Model

Children are very interested in imitating their parents, so it is important to treat this whole issue seriously, but calmly.  A parent who is overwrought and irrational may cause more fear in a child than is caused by the thought of confronting a stranger.  Yet be sure children know this is not a game.  They should not cry wolf or make up stories.  Explain that you love them and want them safe. 

Learn and Organize

Parents should educate themselves about potential dangers to their children.  Parents can use schools, the NDSU Extension Service and other community services as sources of current information.  Parents may wish to organize neighborhood groups to better insure their children’s safety and to support each other.

Seek Professional Help

If the worst happens and your child has had a bad experience with a stranger, both your child and the rest of your family need professional help and support.  Contact your local mental health center for referral.

The specific advice that a parent gives a child will depend on the age and personality of the child, as well as on circumstances in the community.  Here are some safety suggestions that will be appropriate for many children:

            -Never get into a car with a stranger.

-If a stranger calls out your name, hurry immediately to a place of safety and then look back to see who was calling you.

-If someone tells you that your mom or dad is hurt, first check that this is true be telephoning your parents or talking to an adult you know.  Never go with a stranger immediately.

-If grabbed by a stranger, scream, struggle, say “I am being kidnapped!”

-If you escape, keep running and don’t stop or look back until you have reached another adult where you will be safe. 

-When at home alone, never let on to a telephone caller that there is not an adult in the house.

-If you think you are being followed to your house and you know nobody is home, don’t go home.  Go instead to a place where you know there is someone who can help you.

When talking to your children about strangers, realize that children – especially younger children – do not automatically think about sexual molestation and abuse.  They tend to think only about physical violence.  Sexual abuse is a very difficult thing to prepare children for, or even to talk about.  But the fact is that children who are prepared only for a violent encounter with a stranger may be fooled by a person who is very nice to them, and who begins fondling them.

Remember that preparing children for coping with danger should not be a one-shot lesson.  It is something that must be taught from the time the child is a toddler until he or she is an adult. 

Source: Ann Mullis, Child Development Specialist, NDSU Extension Service