Strangers aren’t the only ones who may want to hurt our kids

Local news sto­ries have recently focused on the events in Delaware and Mar­ion where a man has report­edly tried to lure chil­dren into his vehi­cle. The local media has done a won­der­ful job assist­ing law enforce­ment with pro­vid­ing impor­tant infor­ma­tion and warn­ings to par­ents. Although the warn­ings are nec­es­sary, the mes­sage that some­times comes across to chil­dren is that there is a “stranger dan­ger” alert.

“Stranger dan­ger” is a term that has been used for many years to teach chil­dren to be care­ful around peo­ple they do not know. As a child, I was taught to “never talk to strangers” or accept gifts from a stranger. This was and is still good advice, how­ever, par­ents need to teach their chil­dren that strangers are not always the only peo­ple who may want to hurt them. Sta­tis­tics show that chil­dren are more likely to be harmed by some­one they know as we have seen in recent local news sto­ries of a church leader and a well-known neigh­bor­hood res­i­dent who are fac­ing crim­i­nal charges involv­ing children.

When I ask chil­dren to describe a stranger, I get answers like: “he wears all black clothes,” “he wears a mask,” “he car­ries a gun,” all things asso­ci­ated with “bad guys” por­trayed in books, movies and tele­vi­sion shows. I will also ask them to pre­tend they are walk­ing down the street alone and walk­ing toward them are two men walk­ing side by side. One man has dirty cloth­ing, long unwashed hair, a long beard and has not show­ered for sev­eral days. The other man is wear­ing a busi­ness suit, has short hair, is clean shaven and has recently show­ered. I ask them which man they would walk past and the answer I always get is the man in the busi­ness suit. When I ask why they would walk past that man the answer is “he looks nice.”

It would be great to be able to tell if a per­son was bad or nice just by look­ing at them. But, we all know that is not pos­si­ble. Chil­dren need to be taught that there are good peo­ple and bad peo­ple — deter­mined by how the per­son acts and not by the person’s appear­ance. Chil­dren need to under­stand that no adult, whether a stranger or some­one they know, should ever ask them to do any­thing with­out their par­ents’ permission.

Par­ents should teach chil­dren that most peo­ple would never hurt them but there are some that would. Chil­dren should be taught that if any­body tries to hurt them phys­i­cally, touch them in an uncom­fort­able man­ner, kid­nap them, or keep them some­where when they do not have the right to keep them there; that is a bad per­son who is try­ing to hurt them and they need to tell a trusted adult imme­di­ately. Let your chil­dren know they are spe­cial and absolutely no one has a right to hurt them and help keep our kids safe.

Keep­ing Our Kids Safe is brought to you by the Delaware Police Depart­ment and School Resource Offi­cer Rod Glazer.

Posted by Rod Glazer on Oct 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.