How To Protect Your Children

Ways to Teach Child Safety

By Ezine Expert Author: Milos Pesic

Nursery rhymes and “ABC’s” are important things to teach a child. However, that shouldn’t be the parents’ only concern. Long before a child learns to speak, parents should have thought of ways to teach child safety.

Keeping children secure is every parent’s primary concern. Thus, it is very crucial that, along with educating the children with the numbers and letters, they be taught about what is safe and what is not.

There are several ways to teach child safety and these could start early on. It is necessary that a child knows his full name, address and telephone number. He should also be taught how to call 911 in case he is in trouble. Children should have an open line of communication with their parents so that they can freely ask their doubts and blurt out their fears.

Parents have the responsibility of looking for effective ways to teach child safety. Their response to troubles and emergency instances would depend on how they were taught to react to these circumstances. Parents should make sure that their kids know their safety is a major issue. It doesn’t mean that they should live in fear. Don’t make an ugly picture of the world, but make them aware that there are indeed bad guys out there. Letting them think that the world is like their fairytale books and that they are safe all the time are not the best way to teach child safety. That would make them put down their guard, making them easy targets of abductor and/or sexual offenders. Let them learn how to listen to their instincts and act on those.

Child safety has actually different levels and these are all based on the situations that the child encounters. The most useful ways to teach child safety is to make them know these different levels. Parents should be able to educate their children on how to use their fears to benefit them. Children who have been taught how to act on emergency situations will be able to handle their fears really well. Teach them to trust their instincts to help them get out of trouble.

One of the most efficient ways to teach child safety is to be consistent and firm in disciplining the children. Parents should give their clear views on things and rules should be firm. Bending these rules will make them think that anything else can be haggled at. This belief will compromise their safety. Children should have a general understanding of the rules and the corresponding punishments, if disobeyed. A firm but gentle reprimand and an explanation will give the child a clear idea that you mean what you say. Mutual respect follows, creating a more conducive atmosphere for ways to teach child safety.

Milos Pesic is a successful webmaster and owner of popular and comprehensive Child Safety information site. For more articles and resources on Child Safety related topics, visit his site at:

=>http://child-safety.need-to-know.net/

Parents Need to Talk With Children About Sexual Abuse

I’m pretty sure that most of you reading this are parents with children in your local school systems, whether it be public or private, unless you home school, you’re in the “system” somewhere.

We all know that the schools depend on, us the parents, to help make some of the activities run smoothly or at all. Whether it is a fundraiser, one of the many holiday parties, school carnival, field trips to the museum or the zoo, they need parents to set up, serve, clean up, or chaperone. We help in the classroom, we make copies, work in the office, wherever our services are needed. The schedules that parents have although, limit the time that each parent has to volunteer. There are those parents who seem to be at the school all the time but for the most part, parents may help only once or twice a year, which means there are many, many parents in and out of the school each year.

Up until recently, as a safety precaution, parents, and visitors only needed to sign in and out at the office so the school knows who is in their building. Schools have already taken the first step by requiring all teachers and other school employees to have background checks and be fingerprinted to be hired. This of course is to keep our children safe from people who have a history of child abuse and child molestation. I’m sure we are all in favor of keeping our children safe so is it enough to only check out the teachers and the staff? What about the other adults who work with our kids on a daily basis, tutor them one on one, drive and escort kids on field trips?

How much do we really need to worry about parents and grandparents in the schools working with the children, your children? They are parents after all; there should be nothing to worry about, right? Some districts in Texas have installed new technology called V-soft. V-soft helps track visitors, students, faculty, contractors and volunteers at the schools, thus providing a safer more monitored environment for the students. V-soft produces uniform badges for all visitors, monitoring volunteer hours, and electronically checking all visitors against registered sexual offender databases.

Many school districts have taken the law one-step farther and because some states now require it, they now require all volunteers, student teachers, and anyone else who may be alone with a child, to have a background check before they can volunteer in the school or attend a field trip.

I wanted to run this by you, the parents of the children in our school systems, to see what YOU think about the new laws in effect and the decisions that some school boards have made regarding the background checks of parent volunteers. Do you think it will help protect our kids, is it worth the cost to the already strained school budget, does it insult you, the parent, or are your kids worth whatever it takes to keep them safe?

Do you feel that performing a background check in the state you are living is enough or should all volunteers be fingerprinted too? Background checks only check for criminal history in that state, they are not shared between states and are not checked against the federal records, so is it worth it knowing that criminals may move from state to state? Here is what the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children have to say:

Other concerns involve the type of database used to check applicants and the frequency of follow-up. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says states should conduct national fingerprint checks on all employees who have contact with children (teachers, volunteers, contractors, and others), regardless of whether a check was done for licensing. "This allows you to get access to the National Crime Information Center records," says Nancy McBride, the center's national safety director.

The center recommends running checks on all new employees, volunteers, and contractors before they start work and rerunning checks on existing employees every year or two thereafter -- in essence, much more frequently than most states now require.

"It's much better to pay [for background checks] up front than to have the liabilities later and damage to the children."

This also brings up another big question and very controversial subject…who should pay for this extra security, should it be State funded, should the school districts pay for it or should the parents, volunteers, contractors, etc. foot the bill? Would you pay for it?

Send in your thoughts on this, I would love to hear how your school district is handling the issue and if you, the parent, feel more secure about sending your children to school.

Tips and resources for parents of small children and teens!

WELCOME AND THANK YOU FOR BEING A PROACTIVE PARENT!