We can’t just tell kids to go out and play anymore; there aren’t too many safe havens for them. It’s important to talk to children about violent things as they happen, like a kidnapping they’ve heard about on TV, and to emphasize that the probability of its happening to them is very small. Children need a sense that somebody cares enough to protect them. To provide that sense, we must become adults to our kids. We have to set limits, rules, standards that are good for kids. So many parents are afraid of their kids–afraid they won’t like them. We have to assert our adulthood.
We can teach prevention. For little kids, the best protection is that they should not be alone in public places. All children should be conscious of strangers, and be discriminating and wary of them. This won’t make them grow up suspicious as long as they have adults around whom they know and can trust: relatives, friends of their parents, parents of friends.
We can teach communication. Ask your children to keep in touch with you when you’re apart, and be sure that you keep in touch with them as well. Let them know where they can reach you by phone, and when you’re traveling, give them an itinerary. We can teach kids to call us to come and get them–or get someone else to bring them home–if they find, for example, that they have to walk in the dark unexpectedly. We can teach them to travel in pairs.
This used to be a problem of poor children, but now middle-class kids are home alone, too, and the suburbs have some of the same social ills as cities. While it’s sometimes necessary for an 8- or 9-year-old to be home alone, the data show that it’s a frightening experience for them. Be sure the child knows how to lock and unlock the doors and what to do if a stranger calls or knocks on the door. Give them phone numbers of people to call if there’s any problem, and give them strategies to cope, rather than just saying, “This is good practice for you.” Sometimes parents throw up their hands, thinking that because they can’t do everything to protect their children completely, they can’t do anything, but that’s not true.
One thing about contemporary society is that we’ve lost control of the information flow our children get. In the past, parents could monitor the movies kids saw, the magazines and newspapers that came into the house. Now with TV, children get information they never would have had before. So we have to do more both to prepare them and to help them deal with what they’ve seen, like a body being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu on the TV, or a homeless person on the street where they walk. We should give children a healthy respect for the world out there, but focus on the good things as well as the negative ones. It’s not a jungle out there; there’s not someone dangerous lurking around every corner. There are lots of decent people who will help them.
Youths, ages 9 through 17, worry about the following happening in their future:
42% contracting the AIDS virus
32% being injured in an auto accident
28% being beaten up or attacked
24% having to fight in a war
17% having a marriage end in divorce
14% becoming homeless
61% not being able to find a good job
49% not having enough money
43% not being able to get into college
23% having their parents lose their jobs
YANKELOVICH YOUTH MONITOR
