Rebranding "Stranger Danger"
Stranger Danger is a pretty common term among parents. Whether we’re using it to describe how our child hides behind us when a new person approaches or who we tell our kids to avoid when they are away from us. We all use the same word…STRANGER. However telling our children to avoid strangers simply isn’t realistic. We all need strangers sometimes. Strangers give us directions. Strangers collect our movie tickets. Strangers take our orders at restaurants. And a stranger is who your child must approach when they inevitably wander off or get lost at the grocery store.
I recently read a story about a woman who had an unexpected health scare one day while she was home alone with two of her kids. She drove herself and her children to the neighborhood emergency clinic and when it became clear she needed medical treatment immediately she called her neighbor to come and pick up her kids. She went in for treatment and told her children to wait outside for their neighbor. Although their home was only 5 minutes from the clinic, she didn’t know her neighbor was coming from across town and the kids’ waited outside the clinic for over 40 minutes. During that time a “stranger” approached the boys and told them that his friend was in the bathroom and wouldn’t come out. The man asked the boys for their help. The boys refused. When the neighbor arrived, the boys relayed the story to him and they watched the man’s “friend” casually walk out of the bathroom on his own and jump into a car with the man and a couple of other people.
The boys’ answer, when asked why they didn’t help the man get his friend out of the bathroom, stuck with me and I plan to engrain it into my kids’ brains.
They said, ADULTS DON’T ASK KIDS FOR HELP. Adults ask other adults for help. If an adult is asking a kid for help, they are being “tricky” and need to be avoided.
So let’s stop warning our kids about “strangers” and instead teach them to beware of “tricky” people. Most strangers are harmless. Tricky people will appear harmless but are anything but. Red flags should go up in our children’s minds when they sense someone being tricky. Adults don’t need a kid’s help to find their lost pets. Adults don’t need a kid to help them carry things to a car. Adults don’t give things to kids for free. Empowering our children with this type of knowledge and strategies to keep themselves safe is critical in today’s world.
