What Should Parents Teach Their Children About Stranger Safety?

Discussion Fortunately, when a child goes missing it is usually for short periods of time and is often because of miscommunication or expectations. Familiar examples are a child wandering away, or not returning at the proper time. Unfortunately, child abduction does occur. Data from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention provides the statistics below. Problems with definitions and reporting make these statistics more difficult to gather. ~340,500 children (43%) reported in 1999 as missing, were because of benign causes and no harm occurred to the child. Most were because of communications problems such as failing to come home or coming home later than expected. ~43,700 missing children in 1999 were injured but only 10,200 were reported to authorities to help locate the child. There were ~58,200 child victims of non-family abductions in 2002. ~ 105 children in 2002 were victims of stereotypical kidnapping in 2011. Most of these were teenage, white females and most ended with recovering the child alive. Cellphone, Internet and other technologies helped law enforcement solve ~2/3 of these crimes. A missing child, emergency reference guide is available here. Tips for getting ready to go to Kindergarten can be reviewed here. Learning Point Parents can help their child be safe from strangers by: What is a stranger? Stranger are people that the child or your family doesn’t know or doesn’t know well. Strangers ca...
Source: PediatricEducation.org - Category: Pediatrics Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: news