One of the big challenges as a parent or caregiver is giving children personal safety advice without scaring or possibly traumatizing them. Necessary advice that keeps them safe but terrifies them about the world is not particularly productive. Children and teenagers need to safely learn about how the world works, and if they are fearful to go out and engage with it then they will miss out on developing skills that they might need in the future. I’m also a big believer in adults learning how to stay safe and recognize threats/dangers, as children observe and take so much information away from watching how parents act, behave and interact with others e.g., if a parent doesn’t know how to detect deception during an interaction with a stranger, and a child observes this, they may take away from this, that it is right to believe someone when they talk in a certain way. I’m not suggesting that after any interaction or incident a parent needs to sit down with their child, pull out a whiteboard and debrief with them etc., but as parents/caregivers we are sometimes guilty of sending conflicting messages e.g., we will tell children not to talk to strangers, and then when a stranger who is talking to a caregiver, asks the child what there name is, we instruct them to tell them. So, we need to make sure we are consistent. In this article I want to look at what age-appropriate advice looks like for children in different age groups from three to thirteen. Obviously, every child is different, but from a psychological development perspective, these groupings represent when a child is generally ready and can process this information without it scaring them.

                Around ages 3 to 5, children can begin learning very basic safety ideas, such as knowing their name and being  able to identify trusted adults, such as kindergarten staff, family members and family friends etc. When talking about “strangers” it’s usually better to do this by framing behaviors rather than by labelling people as being “bad” or “good”. This is one of the problems with using terms like “stranger danger” i.e., not all strangers are dangerous, and children shouldn’t learn to be fearful of everyone they don’t know. It is usually good to give advice that is actionable e.g., “If someone asks you to go somewhere without checking with me, you come tell me.” A piece of advice like this is applicable to both strangers and people they know and gives them a response to action. At this age they are also able to understand body boundaries and that they are allowed to say “no” to unwanted touching, and that unwanted touching extends to children and teenagers as well as adults. The explanations for why this is necessary don’t need to be given. The easiest way to introduce these body boundaries is to explain that they are the areas which a bathing suit covers. The “Good Touch, Bad Touch” model fell out of favor many years ago as sometimes it was difficult for children to identify a bad touch, as a bad touch may be physically pleasing but emotionally distressing. They should also be introduced to the idea that they shouldn’t share secrets with adults, this is perhaps one of the most powerful tools that those who engage in Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) have. It might seem fun to share what present a sibling is getting for their birthday however it doesn’t create a consistent message.

                Between the ages of 6 and 9 children are able to understand and be introduced to more nuanced personal safety ideas. One of these is helping them to understand manipulation. Manipulation can be subtle and emotionally confusing at this age. It could involve an older child or friend trying to encourage a younger child to engage in shoplifting by saying things like, “You’re too scared to do it” and then calling them names or threatening them with social exclusion if they don’t do it e.g., “If you don’t do it, we won’t play with you anymore.” Manipulation can also involve using emotional guilt e.g., “You want me to be happy, don’t you? Well, this would make me very happy.” This manipulates a child’s empathy and desire to please others. This is also a good age to introduce the idea that unsafe people don’t always look “scary” or “different”. When talking with children about personal safety I prefer to use words like unsafe rather than dangerous, as “unsafe” contains both negative and positive aspects i.e., the state we want to be in (safe) and the state that we don’t want to be in (unsafe). The word dangerous to kids around this age can often be interpreted as referring to something extreme and apparent, rather than a seemingly nice person asking them to do something that might be unsafe but not being seen as dangerous. This is an age when children are able to understand what uncomfortable feelings are and to take them seriously. You don’t need to explain the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system and adrenaline etc. but simple instructions such as “Our bodies sometimes recognize situations that are unsafe without us recognizing that they are. If you ever feel scared, it’s okay to listen to what your body is telling you.” etc.

                     Children in the ten to thirteen age range can engage in personal safety conversations that are more direct, realistic and collaborative. With children in the previous two age ranges, a good way to help them digest and remember the information is through role-play. For children ages three to five it is often best to do this using scenarios that don’t have any serious consequences. For those in the six-to-nine age group you are not trying to use “scare them straight” tactics but children around this age should be able to understand that if they did engage in shoplifting it is a criminal offense with consequences. By ages ten to thirteen children are usually developing a bit more independence (or pushing to), greater exposure to social media, and unsupervised movement etc.

                    Two subjects that should be brought up and discussed in some ways are coercion and grooming. An example of coercion might involve an older teenager pressuring a younger one into sending them inappropriate photographs from their phone. They might use lines like, “If you really trust me, like you say you do, you’d do it”, and/or, “If you don’t, I’ll stop talking to you” etc. The child involved may not truly want to comply, but feels trapped by a fear of humiliation, rejection, or social isolation. Psychologically, coercion involves pressure that limits a person’s sense of free choice without having to threaten or use any physical force. It is worth letting children at this age understand that anything they post or share will be on the internet forever, i.e., your opportunities to take something back, or down, are almost non-existent. Grooming is usually more gradual and subtle than coercion and is often relationship-based. It involves the process of building trust, creating emotional dependence, and the normalization of inappropriate behavior over time. Often adult groomers will use “secrets” to make their target feel special, and on the same level as them, maybe even telling them, “You’re much more mature than other kids” etc. Hopefully the not keeping secrets advice they were given when they were much younger kicks in and they realize that this is unsafe behavior. The grooming process often works by gradually shifting boundaries, so that the child adapts to the manipulation incrementally and doesn’t immediately recognize what is happening to them. Both coercion and grooming exploit developmental vulnerabilities that occur at this age e.g., the desire for belonging/acceptance, being emotionally validated, a curiosity concerning the adult world, and a fear of embarrassment, whilst taking advantage of their limited life experience.

                      The goal of giving children personal safety advice is not to make them suspicious of the world, but to help them gradually develop judgment, confidence, and the ability to recognize when something feels unsafe or is inappropriate. As a parent/caregiver you should try to equip them with the skills to profile behaviors not people e.g., not all strangers are bad, but when an adult asks a child for a secret to be kept that’s not something that should be done etc. Perhaps one of the most important things is for us all to be parents/caregivers where children and teenagers feel safe sharing their concerns, fears and experiences with us without feeling they’ll be judged.