Do Your Kids Know Their Safety Skills?

Do your kids know what to do in a dangerous situation?

Teaching children safety skills isn’t a topic that gets talked about too often. One reason is that we might not be thinking about it. Kids are almost always with an adult or under supervision these days, and so we might not recognize a lack of safety skills. Another reason is that we hope our children are never placed in a situation that could be dangerous! We don’t even want to think that this could happen, and so we avoid it. A final reason is that many of us expect our children to be learning safety skills in school.

And, it's true that kids learn about safety in school. Usually, this looks like an assembly where presenters come in and talk about a topic like “stranger danger” or “how to say no to drugs.” How many of you remember participating in the D.A.R.E. program, or something like this? Do you remember what they taught you? Did it work? Did it help keep you safe or to make better decisions when in risky situations?

Sadly, for most people, the answer to this is “no.”

And here’s why: these programs teach information, not skills.

After learning safety skills in this way, a lot of kids can answer questions about dangerous situations really accurately!

Kid: “Of course I would say “no”, run away, and tell an adult if a stranger asked me to get in their car!”

But in reality, when these situations actually occur, kids don’t typically do what they say they are going to do. Just like us! How many times have you told yourself you’re going to workout more, sleep better, spend less time at work, etc. and then do the opposite?

There is a solution though! Teach the knowledge AND the skills! Here’s how…

Step 1. Teach the knowledge – what are dangerous situations? What are safe situations? What do you do in a dangerous situation?

Step 2. Show them the skills – use videos or show them in real life what you are trying to teach them to do! For many dangerous situations, this is going to be to (1) Say “No”, (2) get away, and (3) tell a trusted adult what happened.

Step 3. Practice the skills – practice them together, practice them with friends, practice in new places, practice with new dangerous situations, practice, practice, practice!

Step 4. Test your kids to see if they use their skills – this is just more practicing, but use pretend strangers, like friends of yours that your kids haven’t met before! Or, if a group of parents wants to teach these skills to their kids, make plans with these other parents to act as the “strangers”. If your kids do the right thing, then you know you’ve taught them well! If they don’t, keep practicing! Show them some more models! Try talking to them about it some more!

If you read our previous blog posts, you would know that this method of teaching is called behavioral skills training (BST) and it is effective for teaching a lot of skills - safety skills is just one example, but a really important one!

Some areas that you might consider teaching your kids about and how to be safe when in these situations include:

• Abduction – from a stranger, or someone familiar to them (the majority of abductions are from family members and family friends)

• Sexual Abuse – from a stranger, or someone familiar to them

• Maltreatment and Neglect

• Bullying and Cyberbullying

• What to do if they find an unattended firearm – gun injuries are very common in some areas of the world

• Emergency response – fires, floods, earthquakes, medical

• Online Predators

• Online Scams

• Peer Pressure – for alcohol, drug use, sexual encounters, and other unlawful situations

• Anything to do with self-advocacy!!!

These can be scary topics to think about, but if your child was ever to end up in one of these situations and knew how to respond effectively, they would be forever grateful to you for teaching them what they needed to know!

Let us know what dangerous situations you teach your children about!And if you have any clever ways of showing them and practicing with them!

You got this!

Nerdy Resources:

Check out Dr. Raymond Miltenberger's work and research in safety skills! He has a TedTalk on using this strategy specifically to teach children in the US how to respond when they find unattended firearms that is highly effective (Link: https://youtu.be/FDOR6SEoelo)