Anyone know of a book

LisaBell said:

On Tue, 1 Jun 2004 22:18:44 EDT, (Beth Kevles) wrote:

That said, I have to say that when we play-acted what might happen, what
a grown-up might say, the kids believed what they heard most recently
and NOT us, the parents. (THey did this when we play-acted a kidnapping
scene, too.) In both cases we made it non-scary (successfully, I think)
but the real answer is that with young children, you've got to trust
your caregiver. The kids aren't really teachable unless you want to
truly scare them and make them quite wary of the world.

I'm not certain what you mean by "what they heard most recently" but I
do think the play acting is good practice, even if they don't do it
quite as you wanted.

I think that what she means is that kids of that age can
be easily persuaded by any adult who seems friendly, no
matter how carefully you've practiced. Kids that young
may learn to do exactly what you want in practice, but
not make the connection between that practice and a real
world situation.

That point was made pretty clearly by a TV newsmagazine a
few years ago that, as I recall, had parents lecture and
practice what to do if they saw a handgun (run away, tell
an adult), and then left the child alone in a room with a
realistic looking fake gun and a hidden camera. Bang!

First graders should never be unsupervised, and I'll bet
your school agrees and has people watching the kids and
watching for unknown adults all the time. I'm sure the
school would be happy to discuss your concerns.

Please don't teach your kids to be afraid of strangers.
It's much more likely that they'll need help from a
stranger some day than that they'll be attacked by one.

in article , Beth Kevles at
wrote on 6/1/04 10:18 PM:

That said, I have to say that when we play-acted what might happen, what
a grown-up might say, the kids believed what they heard most recently
and NOT us, the parents. (THey did this when we play-acted a kidnapping
scene, too.)

We also did a lot of playacting. One of the things we stressed was that
they should yell, "you're not my daddy! I want my daddy!!" (or mommy for a
female). It's so common for an over-tired child to be carried away from a
park or mall screaming, that we feared onlookers would just misread their
protests.

We also stressed the value of biting Also, we were careful not to have
their name obvious on anything--backpack or t-shirt--which would enable the
stranger to call them by name.

Just a few days ago, we were at Disney, and we had to leave Lorissa (age 11)
alone for a few minutes before her fastpass for Space Mountain, because the
rest of us had to be elsewhere. She had a walkie talkie, but we still
reviewed "the drill" as they call it--never believe it if someone says your
mom wants you to come, bite them and scream that you want your mommy.
They'd been drilled in that since age 4.

The thing is, that kind of preparedness and practice was just one kind of
preparedness and practice that they were exposed to during childhood. We
also had early-morning fire drills once a year or so. And we talked about
what to do if there was a hurricane or tornado.

I think those helped put the danger of abduction/molestation in perspective
as just one of many possible dangers.

Colleen Kay Porter