Safety First!

If your child is ever missing, Child Alert Center provides the most efficient way to contact every authority or agency that might help. But there are steps you can take to help ensure you never have to make that call to Child Alert Center.

How to help protect your children

• Know where your children are at all times. If your child is going to play at the home of a friend, contact the friend’s parents and confirm plans beforehand. Call again to make sure your child has arrived safely. If possible, personally accompany your child to play-dates and instruct other parents to notify you when your child leaves their home.

• Have a routine for picking your children up and dropping them off at school, meetings, and lessons. Be on time! Tragedies have happened when parents were late and children tried to walk home alone.

• Give your child’s school a list of the people who are permitted to pick him up. Inform the school clearly, in writing, if there is an ongoing custody dispute. Make sure your letter is not just filed away—talk to school staff and warn playground monitors, teachers, administrators, counselors, and other staff about security problems you have.

• Most schools today have standard health-and-safety forms that parents must fill out. Be sure to list on this form several trusted relatives or friends who can pick your child up from school if you aren’t able to do so.

• Teach your children how to call for help. Even very little children can dial 9-1-1. Caller ID systems often tell police the location from which a call was placed, but it’s helpful to teach your young child his address anyway.

• Security experts recommend that every family establish a “safe room” in the house where family members can go if they feel threatened. The room should contain a telephone and should have a bolt on its door. If you choose to have such a room, show your children how to go into it and secure themselves in it.

• Consider buying an inexpensive, prepaid cell phone so your children can stay in touch with you or call the police, if necessary. An old cell phone can be used to call 9-1-1 even if it is not activated.

• Set clear, firm, age-appropriate limits for the areas your children can be in without your direct supervision.

• Encourage your children to tell you any time a strange adult approaches them.

• Encourage your children to go places in groups. Sexual predators are less likely to target a group of children than one isolated child.

• Using simple language, tell your children about the possibility of abduction. Give them clear, police-approved direction on how to handle possible approaches. Urge them to stay alert. After you’ve reviewed this site, discuss with them some of the ways predators try to gain the trust of children.

• Don’t put a large, visible name tag on your child’s possessions, or embroider his name on his clothing, in a place where a predator might see it. Predators often note such things and win a child’s trust by using his name.

• Agree on a family code word, a word that only family members and the most intimate family friends will know. Tell your children that in the absence of a parent, they must never accompany anyone who does not know this secret word.

Special advice for the parents of older children

Teenagers and pre-teens present a unique set of challenges to parents who want to keep their children safe.

• Learn the names of your kids’ friends, and introduce yourself to the friends’ parents. If a teenager is missing, it’s useful to contact her friends to learn whether she ran away, and if so where she might have gone. If your son or daughter has a computer-based address book or “buddy list,” this is the first place to mine for names and addresses of possible contacts.

• Be aware of your child’s computer use, since there have been numerous cases in which predators have entrapped teenage children through online conversations. You may wish to think about using parental control software to make certain that your child’s online activities are consistent with your family’s values.

• Some girls are abducted when they have car trouble, so if your child drives, make sure her car is in good repair. Keep a prepaid cell phone in every vehicle so that your child can call for help immediately in case of car trouble. Plan her routes in advance so you’ll know where she is going and can ensure that she’ll avoid troubled areas.

• If your child has an after-school job that keeps her out after dark, consider picking her up after work instead of letting her walk through the darkness to a bus stop or car.

• If a teenager runs away from home, don’t assume that the matter is less serious than abduction. Runaways frequently are the subjects of violence or other forms of abuse.

What you can do to help keep your children safe at home

• Use common sense to secure your property at night. Some abductions have taken place when children were at home, sleeping in their beds. A door or window carelessly left unlocked at night can let a kidnapper gain access. Don’t leave ground-floor windows open at night.

• Consider installing a hard-wired or radio-controlled burglar alarm system in your home.

• Consider putting a fence around your property. A six-foot privacy fence or even a five-foot picket fence can discourage intruders.

• Security lights, triggered by a motion detector, can be an inexpensive way of discouraging potential trespassers.

• Use the Internet to check the names and addresses of registered sex offenders in your area.

• Find out if your community has a Neighborhood Watch program. If there is one in place, take part in it; if there isn’t one, local police can give you information to help you start one. Get involved!

• And of course, register your children with the Child Alert Center today.

It’s also wise to have a frank conversation with your children about their safety. Don’t frighten them, but talk to them in a clear, honest, age-appropriate manner about the risks children face today.

Of course you will give your children the usual advice about avoiding strangers. But here are some additional tips you can tell your kids about.

• Never leave with anyone unless he knows your family’s secret code word.

• Don't trust any adult who asks you to keep a secret from your parents. Don’t keep any important secrets from your parents.

• Don’t IM with people on the Internet if you haven’t met them in real life first. Some people on the Internet pretend to be kids when they’re really grown-ups.

• If someone tries to pick you up, scream! Scream “NINE ONE ONE!” as loudly as you can, over and over. This is much better than yelling “Help!” If you see other adults nearby, shout to them, “This isn’t my daddy! Call the police!”

• Fight back! You can bite very hard if you have to. Kick an adult who tries to take you, but don’t hit his face—you’ll just hurt your hand. Scratch his eyes and dig your fingers into them. Don’t worry that you’ll get in trouble for hurting an adult; everyone will think you’re brave and strong for saving yourself.

Those who attack children use a variety of tricks to lure their young victims. Here are some points to discuss with your children.

Some predators pretend to be authority figures, people children are taught to obey or admire--policemen, firemen, religious leaders, teachers, or doctors. Children should be taught that they must not accompany any adult unless that adult knows the family’s secret word.

Sadly, we must instruct our children not to accompany even a neighbor without that password. Online registries of sexual predators show that in many communities, a distressing number of nearby residents have convictions for sexual offenses.
Teach your children that there are some situations in which they must be particularly wary:

1. When a stranger begins paying him excessive or unusual compliments

2. When a stranger suggests playing games

3. When a stranger asks a child not to tell anyone about a conversation or activity

4. When a stranger asks for help, particularly if he asks for help in finding a lost pet

Unfortunately, a brief parental warning may not be enough.

The staff of a major network television news program recently conducted an experiment with young children. Parents clearly warned their children not to accompany any stranger. Yet only a few minutes later an employee of the news program was easily able to approach those children at a playground and persuade each of them to accompany him by asking for help in finding a lost pet. Children who would have refused an offer of candy from a stranger instantly believed the tale of a lost puppy.

So talk to your children, and keep talking to them. Supervise them carefully when they’re at play, and make sure that you check on them if they ever have to walk to school or play-dates unaccompanied.

And help protect them by registering them with the Child Alert Center.