A Curly Life: Keeping our kids safe

Taeen Yoo Illustration

Yesterday 'H' headed off to school in a red t-shirt rather than his usual school uniform. The 31st October, apart from being Halloween, is "Day for Daniel" a national awareness day run by the Daniel Morcombe Foundation to promote child safety. This Year was the 10th Day for Daniel held across Australia, since it's inaugural event in 2005. The day is essentially about raising community awareness about child safety and educating children on personal safety.

"It is about educating children and adults on keeping kids safe through child safety and protection initiatives. It aims to help empower our children to ‘Recognise, React and Report’ if they feel something is not right. Wear Red and Educate is the theme of for Day for Daniel as we strive to have schools, kindergartens, businesses and communities across Australia take action and conduct child safety activities in their local communities to help in ‘Keeping Kids Safe’."

My son's primary school was holding a special assembly to discuss personal safety and the theme 'Recognise, React, Report.' They were also going to create a giant red letter "D" on the school oval and have some photographs. It is interesting in my opinion to hear the different perspectives of parents on the schools participation in this event. Some are strong and vocal advocates of such initiatives, some passive supporters, some passive dissenters and some vocal dissenters. As always people tend to fall into one of these groups. I'd have to categorise myself in the first group. As a professional having worked a number of years in clinical and forensic settings, I can only advocate for these types of community awareness and child education programs.

I've always held the 'mantra' people do the best they can with the resources they have available. In this instance; what makes children vulnerable is not having the personal resources to recognise potential threats to their safety, to be able to react effectively or feel empowered to report incidents to a trusted adult. It is our responsibility as parents and caretakers of the community to support initiatives which provide these resources to our children, to families, and members of the community.

The objectives of Day for Daniel are:

To raise awareness about child safety and protection and to promote a safer community for children.
To educate children regarding their personal safety and empower them to ‘Recognise, React and Report’.
To provide FREE safety and educational material.
To honour the memory of Daniel Morcombe.
To have over 1 million people Australia Wide to participate in Day for Daniel.

Day for Daniel is also an opportunity for Australians to make a statement that crimes against children are not acceptable in modern Australia.

"It aims to help empower our children to ‘Recognise, React and Report’ if they feel something is not right."

Where is the dissent? Understandably, as parents there is a tension between educating and empowering our children to protect them and protecting their innocence for as long as possible. I absolutely understand this point of view. I can only validate the concerns of parents who worry about the 'pandoras box' of questions which discussions such as this open for some children. "Who was Daniel?, What happened to him?" " Why did someone take him?" " Why did they hurt him" "How did they kill him?" These are difficult questions. I spent almost a decade at University studying human psychology, did a PhD on understanding the experience and perpetration of homicide and worked in offender treatment for another 5 years, yet even I don't feel fully equipped to answer some of these questions when posed by an 8 year old. Nevertheless, it is our very desire to protect them from harm which must also motivate us to teach them safety smarts.

Luckily organisations such as the Daniel Morcombe Foundation provide some wonderful resources to assist us. Check out the link below. There are some wonderful resources including age appropriate activities, games and multimedia presentations.

http://www.danielmorcombe.com.au/educational_resources.html

Yes, children will ask questions. Yes, they will probably learn that the world is a little more threatening than perhaps they were led to believe as younger children. But just as we teach them to wear a seatbelt in the car, to look both ways before crossing the street, to swim between the flags or wear a hat when outside, we have a duty to teach them safety rules about risky people, the internet, social media and personal space. Yes I get nervous too. Sometimes you may go too far. My world view became much more threatening after working in some of these settings with offenders and those effected by serious crimes against children. I knew it was time for a break when I scared "H" more than necessary by explaining to him as a 3 year old (after some panic stricken minutes in a department store when he did a runner and hid under a clothes rack), that "bad people steal children and they never see their families again." Not my finest parenting moment. Would I do it differently now? Absolutely. Now I'd explain that "as mum it's my job to keep you safe and to do that I need you to help me. I need to you to stay where I can see you. ok?" and so on. It has taken the last 5 years to swing my internal pendulum back to a more realistic threat assessment of the general society.

What can you do?

Clear explanations of simple, age appropriate rules should be your goal. Rules such as, always let a trusted adult know where you are going, what time you will be back, who you are with or if plans have changed. As with all these curly topics, you are laying an important foundation which will help them to be more resilient and emotionally aware as tweens, teens, young adults and adults. Check out the resources on the Day for Daniel webpage http://www.dayfordaniel.com.au. You'll also see some other great links to excellent resources. The resources tab on Life is Curly http://itsacurlyone.blogspot.com.au/p/resources.html will also point you in the right direction.

Bec :)