Confidence and competence: Tips on talking to kids about personal safety

Want to help your child stay safe but don't know how?

Noni Classen, director of educationat the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, said a good place for parents to start is having conversations with kids on a regular basis around personal safety.

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"What that means is that we're giving them safety strategies to be including in everyday life wherever they go, and doing some safety planning with them," Classen said.

"We want them to feel comfortable knowing how to respond if they get into an uncomfortable situation," she added.

Classen said you should be teaching your kids about tricks such as using the buddy system and consistently touching base with parents about where they are and how they're doing "monitoring opportunities" for adolescents as they get older and have more independence.

Parents should also be making it clear to kids they don't have to wait until a situation is dangerous or scary before they talk to somebody about it, Classensaid.

"I think it's important they know that they don't have to wait until something is super serious, or they see it as super serious, to go to an adult for help and let them know," she said."It can just be something that's odd or unusual, that's enough to let an adult in the facility that they're in."

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When kids choose not to come forward, they do it for a variety of reasons, Classen said. In some cases, behaviour an adult might perceive as serious might be laughed off as funny or weird.In others, youth choose to withhold information if they're worried disclosing it will cause them to lose independence.

For that reason, Classen said it's important to tell kids coming forward is the right thing to do and make it clear they won't get in trouble for doing so.

'Fear-based approach' harmful, not helpful

Any conversation with kids about safety should avoid using what Classen called a "fear-based approach," which she said serves to create more vulnerability and anxiety in kids.

Instead, the goal is to create confidence and competence about personal safety, she said, focusing on what they should do in uncomfortable situations, and how to accesshelp from adults.

"I think fear-based approaches would be, again, focusing on the harm, or that a child's going to be hurt or that people are out there to harm them, and that wherever they go they're going to be running into people who potentially are going to be a risk to them," she said.

"I think that that's scary for kids to hear those kind of messages."