Talking to strangers or not!

Talking to strangers or not!

Talking to strangers or not!

Talking to strangers or not!

A mother of a toddler asked me the other day, "When do you start teaching your child to not talk to strangers?" There are two very different but equally important issues underlined in this question. The first is a matter of when your child actually recognizes the dangerous intent of a stranger. This is really easy but then not easy. Most parents don't leave their children unattended where a stranger may come out of the woodwork and hurt them. So let's discuss how to deal with strangers talking to your children when you are present.

If you value dignity and courtesy you will guide your child's response to the strangers interaction. To ignore the stranger doesn't reflect dignity or courtesy. The important thing to remember is, what is the intent of the stranger? That will tell you how to respond and to teach your child how to do it for future situations.

To support this skill, you can also teach a child how to respond to an inappropriate person who threatens them in any way. By now your child is usually attending school regularly and demands some independence from you. Now is the time to work through some threatening situations and to teach your child some skills to survive a threatening stranger.

The classic is screaming and running to the nearest home or approaching an adult who can help your child, when s/he is being threatened by an inappropriate person. Take this serious and walk your child through multiple situations where this may occur: public bathroom, walking home from school, shopping in a mall without supervision, and I'm sure you can think of a hundred more. When you do this, your child's brain literally experiences the situation and will not be as shocked when s/he is confronted with an inappropriate person.

The second issue is to understand that 99 out of 100 inappropriate situations are from people you and your child trust and know!! This is where it gets complicated! I have purposefully used the term "person" rather than an adult, because I believe it is important to know that other children, adolescents, and adults can all fall into the category of hurting your child intentionally.

This is where we come back to the original statement of, " If you value dignity and courtesy you will guide your child's response to the strangers interaction." Now how do you teach your child about keeping dignity and being courteous in the face of a known and trusted person intentionally hurting your child?

You need to discuss with your child what you believe to be discourteous and undignified, then, walk through as many inappropriate situations that you can think of defining a dignified and courteous response to the inappropriateness. This empowers your child and gives them life-long skills in dealing with bullying, lying, violence, and emotional violence.

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