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Expert Q&A

	By Diana Jones Safety Expert

My daughter told me that on her way home from school, a car pulled up nextto her, and a man asked her for directions. She told him she didn't know the answer to his question (although she did), but she wasn't sure if that was the right thing to do. Where do we draw the line between not talking to strangers and helping our neighbors?

This situation, which is not unusual, raises many interesting and extremely important points and questions about safety and strangers.

Although I do not know how old this child is, ask yourself a simple question: "Why is this man asking a child for directions?" Except for a few very specific locations around a town or community, why would anyone expect a child to know where things are or how to get to them from a given location?

When I teach children about adults asking them for directions, I often joke with them and ask them "Do you have your driver's license" or "What kind of car do you drive?" This helps to get the point home to them that it would be unusual for a child to know the answer to a question about directions,and that another adult would be a much more appropriate choice to ask for help.

As adults, when we hear of this situation, we might recognize and label itas suspicious; to children I merely teach my rule that adults should be asking other adults for help and not children. That means that whether or not an adult's intentions are legitimate, children have been taught to respond in such a way that preserves their safety no matter what. Thus if they find themselves in a situation like this that is not innocent, they have a simple, non-frightening way to avoid it. Rules about safety must be black and white.

This brings me to a second point, how can we successfully draw a "safety line" between helping neighbors and talking to strangers. There are nohard and fast rules about crimes involving abduction and abuse, there arejust mind-baffling realities. Most people that abduct and molest children are not strangers. Many children are violated by neighbors, friends andf amily members. With these harsh and horrible facts and with our inability to consistently distinguish people with harmful intentions toward children from other people, how can we expect children to make this judgement call?

We can't. So I have found through years of providing safety instruction for children and their families that the only way to play these odds is to only give children the choice that errs on the side of caution. I havealways felt that it is better to insult a neighbor or family friend then to have a child gamble on safety. Consider the alternative if they make the wrong choice.

This brings me to the final point. Instinctually, the child in this situation did exactly the right thing. When you are not 100 percent sure that something is safe, you always opt not to do it and seek adult assistance even if that assistance is merely to report the incident and discuss yourf eelings. This child felt that something just didn't seem right. Something inside told her not to stop and converse with this man. t is a documentedf act that children become significantly more vulnerable the longer they are engaged in conversation with a harmful person. It is also documented that children's instincts about safety and safety threatening situations are100 percent correct over 85 percent of the time. Children should always be encouraged to trust and listen to their instincts.

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