What do you do if your child goes missing? Missing children are every parent's worst nightmare, but is the fear of it really rational and what is the affect on our children? Teaching stranger awareness in a positive and proactive way is a big step forward and there are different ways to approach this...
As parents we don't want to scare our children, while at the same time we cannot ignore the news. However there is a danger that our drive to protect our children may actually be harming them. Experts have begun to suggest that by restricting their experience of the world, and denying children the independence to make mistakes and learn from them, we are leaving them ill-prepared for the trials they will face as adults. The charity Missing People even suspects that some children may run away in order to experience the kind of independence they are denied at home.
It is hard to know what's best for our kids, but we shouldn't let our fear dictate the way we let our children play.
Stranger Danger
One reason we fear stranger abduction for our own children is that when cases do occur they are often high profile and extensively covered in the media. Shannon Matthews, Madelaine McCann, Jamie Bulger, are all names we know because their stories were widely publicised. But we need remain grounded, these cases are rare and the statistics in the box on the right show this.
Keeping children safe
With safety concerns affecting the freedom of modern childhood, Lady Catherine Meyer, the founder and president of PACT (Parents and Abducted Children Together) says ‘Children should be able to run around and fall down and learn,' she says. But she advises we need to teach children stranger awareness. ‘It seems as though we do live in a more dangerous world and there is a natural reaction of parents to protect.'
As a result of these concerns comes the launch of the Safer Strangers, Safer Buildings campaign. The campaign looks at child safety from a positive perspective, equipping children with the skills they need to stay safe whilst learning about the world and living their lives to the full. The campaign will help children specifically aged three to eight years-old to identify adults who are safe to approach if they are lost, and the kinds of buildings where they can get help. This campaign gives children the confidence to use their commonsense and be responsible when seeking help.
Liam McGurin from the Children's Safety Education Foundation which supports the campaign says ‘it will re-educate children... It will become an instinctive reaction to the threat of danger and will make their world a better place.'
He continues, ‘the campaign presents an alternative message to more dominant ‘stranger danger' messages which can make children over anxious about the perceived risk from all strangers.'
Reaching children through education and looking at the ways in which we can help them learn about their personal safety, will lead to safer, happier children, and ultimately restore confidence to parents to unravel their child from the cotton wool and allow them to experience the joys of childhood.
