Learn how to teach kids to protect themselves

Published 9:00 pm Monday, August 22, 2005

The last Parent Talk column emphasized that teaching children “Don’t talk to strangers” can be both useless and dangerous. That’s not news, but it can be hard for parents to get accurate information about the safety of their children.

The first issue for parents is their fear for their children, and fear makes people want silver-bullet solutions.

Newspaper headlines and TV sound bites bombard families with quick, dramatic descriptions of child abductions and assaults. It can seem that all tragedies happen within 25 miles of home.

The second issue is that parents don’t get full information from the same places that feed their fears.

It is not just that TV and newspapers provide only partial information. It is also that many Americans are conditioned to search for information in headlines and sound bites.

The third issue is one of trust. Parents and other caretakers often don’t have enough trust for the their own intuition, for public agencies or for what their children might tell them. The flip side is that many people trust other people’s good intentions too much.

It is hard for many people to accept and live with some facts. Consider these, for example:

* Some adults’ sexual preferences for children are as strong and permanent as the sexual preferences healthy, heterosexual males have for females and vice versa.

* Sometimes parents and other adults think that they must be nice or polite, that they must give everybody a second chance. That leaves them uncomfortable in setting important protections in even the most obvious cases of danger. The safety issue about sexual offenders is not whether they “have paid for their crimes and deserve a second chance;” the safety issue is their lifelong sexual preferences for children.

The fourth issue for parents is one of closeness. The adults who are most likely to hurt children are already close to them – close physically, emotionally and socially.

David Herget, who was discussed in the last column, is a local example of those last two issues. A convicted sexual abuser of children, he actively seduced the members of his church into the delusion that he was safe. His church endorsed him and opened doors for him into family homes. That gave him ready access to more child victims

That ratio of fear, information, trust and closeness leaves blind spots big enough for offenders to easily hide in and dense enough to stop useful information.

But there is useful information available locally and nationally.

In Snohomish County, Open Door Theatre uses live drama, usually in schools, to teach children three safety rules. It’s managing director, Wendy McClure, described those rules in a letter to The Herald, which ran on Aug. 8. The are, “Say no like you mean it, get away to a safe place, and tell someone until you get some help.”

Open Door’s safety rules are good, clear and simple. They can be learned and strengthened with practice.

For example, parents can help their children practice the safety rule: “Tell someone until you get some help.” Children are practicing when they answer, “Who would you tell if an adult was scaring you or making you uncomfortable?”

Even asking the question helps children practice with the idea that some adults scare children or make them uncomfortable. They practice recognizing their own feelings. They practice knowing there is something they can do if they are uncomfortable or afraid.

They practice the idea that there are adults who they can trust, and that they probably already know who they are. They practice going to the next person on their list if their first choice isn’t available.

In the same way, children practice many safety skills when trusted adults help them learn to “say no like you really mean it” and “get away to a safe place.” Children are more safe when they know it is OK to say no to adults in certain situations. They are more safe after they have been helped to think about safe places they can get to.

Underlying all of the safety rules are the abilities of children and adults to recognize dangerous situations and to know when to use the rules. That ability, which can be called intuition, to recognize subtle dangers is the subject of another column.

Bill France, a father of three, is a child advocate in the criminal justice system and has worked as director of clinical programs at Luther Child Center in Everett. You can send e-mail to bill@billfrance.com.