It’s a big step forward for your child to wear a band with your contact number on it. But for us, it didn’t go far enough.

Listen to any parent recall an incident when they lost their child somewhere – at the beach, a theme park, the shops  – and they will invariably talk about “that awful feeling”, “I felt sick”. You may have found yourself saying it.  This was a recurring theme of my research. Whether it’s one year, fifteen or thirty years on – mums, dads, grandmas all voluntarily talked about how truly bad it felt.

So, I wanted to do something not just to help kids and parents reunite quickly but also to help stop children & parents panicking when your child is out of sight for “that bit too long”. And particularly to do something positive with children to help them when the only constant, familiar thing to them – their adult – has disappeared.

They don’t just wear a band, they need to be able to do something other than panic.

Also, I discovered 5 important things early on:

1. The person who finds your child is invariably someone like you – a parent with young children – or a security guard
2. Research in the UK has shown that 48% of men are too scared to help a small child for fear of being accused of being a pedophile or abducting them
3. Stranger Danger is now considered to be not only ineffective in teaching children about safety but it has been described as “dangerous” by child safety experts
4. Most children disappear for “not very long” – we’re talking 10, 15, 20 minutes not hours
5. A lifeguard on a busy beach in the UK – where up to 30 kids can go missing a day in the summer – has worked for 9 years and (touch wood) has never lost a child yet

So how can we put this in perspective & what do we teach our kids?

We can teach our children to ask for help, if we can give them a sense of who is a safe person …

Then came the idea of teaching our children to Show & Tell – a phrase they are already really familiar with from nursery, preschool and school.

Wow! Let’s teach them to Show & Tell the band.

We also added the Stay where you are so that children will know not to go off with someone and not to go near a vehicle (I discovered 99.9999% of abductions involved a vehicle).

And, we can make the band so great that children want to show it off and adults will comment on it. It helps to bridge the gap. Even if they don’t find themselves able to speak, a child can still communicate and they can still get help. Children with special needs will also clearly benefit. (I’ve already had great feedback from parents with autistic children.)

Then I came across two great quotes which really made me feel I was on the right path:

No program or identification tool will keep children safe or prevent abductions 100% of the time. Parents, guardians and members of the community must all work together to help ensure children will be protected and have access to help if they need it. Child safety is all our responsibilities.

Nancy McBride, National Safety Director, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

Effective child safety programs are ones children will enjoy, understand and ultimately help to change children’s behaviour… The fundamental idea of prevention education is that children with self-confidence, grounded in safety competence and high self-esteem, are less vulnerable targets for victimization.

Source:

http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PageServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=3329

Teaching children the Show & Tell safety program became as important as the Me Finder™ itself.