Last Wednesday was a fairly normal evening at my house. My wife was at work so I was solely in charge of my daughters’ (ages 5 & 3) bedtime routines. After baths, a rousing game of Wii Super Mario Bros., and bedtime stories, I had them both tucked soundly into their beds when the phone rang. It was a recorded message from my town’s police department, and it would be followed up shortly by an e-mail conveying the same alert: 
“We are calling for the Westborough Police Department to inform you of a suspicious incident that occurred at approximately 5:45 PM at the corner of Adams Street and Mountain View Drive. A fourteen year old girl, who was walking her dog, was approached by a black midsized sedan with tinted windows. The operator of the vehicle was described as being approximately 30 years old, bald, with a goatee, wearing a white tee shirt. He pulled up to the girl, told her that he was lost and needed directions. He asked for her name and then asked her to get in his vehicle to help him locate his friend’s house. She backed away from the vehicle. At the same time, another vehicle approached the area, the driver of the black sedan turned around and left the area on Adams Street towards Ruggles Street.
If you have any information regarding this incident or if you are aware of similar incidents please contact the Westborough Police Department at 508-366-3060.”
These events stopped me in my tracks, and my first instinct was to head straight back up the stairs to check on my girls. The location of this incident was less than two miles from my house. Stories like this one are scary enough when they happen in another part of the country, but imagining this predator in my own town put my senses on high alert. By the time I climbed the stairs I was ready to launch an impromptu seminar to teach my girls how to protect themselves if something like this were to happen to them. But common sense prevailed, and I realized the risk of giving them nightmares outweighed the benefit of teaching these lessons at 8pm on a school night.
The next day I found that my worries and fears hadn’t diminished. In fact, it was quite the opposite. As I discussed these events with my wife and several neighborhood friends, I kept coming back to the same questions: how soon is too soon to teach your kids that not everyone has their best interests in mind? Once that bridge is crossed, what guidelines can I give them to help make judgments on who is “good” and who is “bad”? How can I teach them all the tricks these creeps could try to use in order to take advantage of them? The protective dad in me wants quick, easily understandable, black-and-white answers to all these questions. The realist in me knows it’s not that simple. As adults we build and continually refine our character judgment skills based mostly on our own experiences. Our kids tend to be less cynical and more willing to trust. Unfortunately it’s this trusting nature that creeps like the suspect in the alert try to take advantage of.
Fortunately there are some subtle ways to teach young children some valuable street smarts. This incident reminded me of the lessons from one of my favorite children’s books, Mabela the Clever. My kids brought this book home from the library several weeks ago, and I ended up ordering it online the same night I read it to them for the first time. I knew this book was a keeper because it had a unique way of teaching kids how to tell when a situation just doesn’t feel right, and how to act when they reach this conclusion.
To give you a quick plot summary- Mabela is a little mouse whose dad gives her some advice on how to be clever. He tells her the following:
- “Mabela, when you are out and about, keep your ears open and LISTEN.”
- “Mabela, when you are out and about, keep your eyes open and LOOK AROUND YOU.”
- “Mabela, when you are speaking, PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU ARE SAYING.”
- “Mablea, if you have to move, MOVE FAST.”
Heeding this advice, Mabela is able to triumph over a sneaky cat who is attempting to make a meal of her entire village.
With any luck, your kids and my kids will never be faced with a situation where the stakes are as high as the one the girl from my town faced last Thursday night. How did she know to back away from that vehicle? I can’t say for certain, but I’d like to think it was a combination of lessons taught to her by parents, teachers, law enforcement professionals, and yes… perhaps even a book she read when she was younger. There will come a day when we can’t be there to physically protect our children, so our only hope is to arm them with the physical and mental skills they need to look out for themselves.
What are you doing to educate your children about these dangers? How do you walk the fine line of teaching them when it’s acceptable to question the authority of an adult? Please share your thoughts and advice in the comments!
wonderful blog. Using age appropriate instruction is so key… and I'm sure walking that line of wanting your kids to be informed, but not walking around in fear is challenging.
Thanks for the book suggestion, too. Looks like a fun AND helpful one.
Good post Chad. Important to remind parents of these lessons and basically embed stuff like this in our kids' head.
Although scary stories like this one make us feel like tethering our kids to our bodies until they are 30, we all know that we cannot protect our children from everything in their lives. I think you are right Chad, that certainly arming them with the right information, and precautions is never done too soon; My feeling is that if our children are raised to advocate for themselves in any circumstance, and to be confident in what they feel, that they will develop strong instincts that will lead them to react in the way the teenage girl did to this potential predator. The book recommendation is excellent too…Instinct is everything, even more than we know. I recently read Malcolm Gladwell's “Blink” and it explains a lot of this, and how without this, we would not survived as a species as long as we have. As parents, paying attention is also key. Thank you for another excellent blog Chad!
I don't think its ever to early to start to talk to your kids about danger. See the bad people project at http://www.isecom.org/bpp/ Kids draw pictures of what they perceive bad people look like. Humorous yes.. but informative. I did it my kids and apparently my kids think think mustache is evil.. good thing I shave everyday!