By Frances Bryce, January 7, 2021 — Teaching my daughter how to be safe was very important to both of us. We lived about a block from where she attended kindergarten. A stop sign was located at the corner where we had to stop to get to her school. I used this moment as teaching. When we stopped I explained that we had signs that would keep us safe. The sign gave us a time for us to cross, and that would be taking our turn, and then the cars get to take their turn and this kept both of us safe. It let us go on the green and red light we must stop because now, the cars would be moving.
Later, we included other safety measures as she grew older and one of them was to never approach a stopped car or parked car to give directions. She was probably ten to twelve when kids had more freedom to explore the neighborhood without an adult always being present. Our house was near a wooded area, which was called Carpenter’s Woods. The kids would take their dogs to the area. They were not allowed to go inside the woods unless they were with one of the parents of the kids, and the dogs would run in the woods, and when they were tired of romping around they would come back and the kids would come home.
So, this particular day, a car was parked not far from the corner and approached my daughter and her friend, and he walked in a wobbly fashion. He said he had dropped his car keys and he wasn’t able to find them, would they help? And they remembered the safety talks that they had heard from me and their parents, and they said, “Of course not.” She said the guy walked back to his car and drove away.
I told her how proud I was of her and her friend to remember that they [should] never approach a car and if the guy had dropped his keys and he was able to walk back to his car and drive away, of course, that was not a good sign. I know that in areas where the kids feel safe and where the parents call safe in what we call a good neighborhood. It’s important to remember the safety rules that they may want to help because that’s a kind thing to do, but we enforce that.
Also, when she got a little older, we gave a list of the people that she could ride home with if we didn’t pick her up and that was usually her uncle and her aunt, and one of my neighbors who had a daughter and they were friends. I agreed to the terms and she thought at first they were sort of stringent, but I stuck to this because sometimes, the person who’s there is not there to get help but to cause harm. My husband, a prolific reader said, “Okay,” as I was reading and not talking with him one day about this and when I came in, my daughter was not there. She was in high school at this time, and because he was reading and not paying attention, she asked if she could go wherever she wanted to go and he said yes. But when I came in and came home, I asked where my daughter was and he said he was upset because he could not remember her telling him where she was going and he had no clue. So, we were both worried for a period of time before she came home, and then we discussed that if she had permission to go someplace and I wasn’t there, or vice versa, the other person needed to know. This permission made it safe and secure for all of us, and she never forgot to pay attention to that. Neither did my husband. That was the parents teaching safety.