For some weeks now, the video of a missing boy has been circulating the various social media platforms. This missing boys case is quite different because he was the one looking for his parents not his parent looking for him.
When missing person cases like this happen, finding the child is usually considered paramount as it is believed that once the child is found, finding the parents wouldn’t take much time. However, looking at the the boy’s video one thing is for sure, finding his parent might be quite difficult, why?
He couldn’t answer properly all the questions he was being asked by the people who saw him. These questions would have made finding his parents easier not being able to answer this questions made locating his parents difficult.
So what were the questions?
His full name, house address, parents name and phone number.
This brings me to you as a parents, can your child answer this questions?
As parents one of responsibilities is to provide safety for our children. We must equip them with basic information they might need to ensure safety, especially for times when we are not with them and there is an emergency just like the case of the lost boy looking for his parents .
The questions the lost boy is being asked in the video is a cue to the type of information we must teach our children.
Though no parent hope that their child gets missing however, things like this happen, and we must be proactive and take action to teach them now so we won’t regret later.
It’s unfair to expect our children to automatically know these things. We must teach them at home, teach them their full name, the home address, you and your partner’s name and phone numbers.
Equipping our children with information like this is called Information Safety. Which is simply providing them with the information they need to ensure they are protected in times of danger or an emergency.
In this article, I shall be highlighting, when to start and how to go about teaching our children this basic information
When to start to teach?
Start as soon as they can talk. It’s not compulsory they get all the information at once however, starting early makes it easier on the child and yourself too.
How to Start?
Pick each of the information one after the other and only move to the next information until they know the one you taught earlier.
You can start from the simple ones like your child’s full name then you move to the parent’s name and go on like that till they can handle more.
Choose a suitable time to teach them, it doesn’t have to be a form of structures learning, choose a time you are both involved in an activity like when you are dressing them up, serving their meal, after their homework and so on.
Start the teaching session in a question format just the way an outsider will ask them, “what is your name?” “where do you leave?” etc. Try not to take it personally when they are not getting it like you expected, this will help you react less and ease the learning process for the child.
Conclusion
As much as these information are important, we must also teach our children to be able to identify the times they need this information, so the information will not serve a different purpose for evil perpetrators.
I pray that our children also find safety wherever they find themselves.
#safety#childsafety#parenting#childrensafety#motherhood
