One of almost every parent’s biggest fears is for their child to be abducted. It happens every single day and can be overwhelming to think about. Luckily, there are ways to prevent kidnapping, lower the chances of your child being targeted, and an overall plan for your family’s safety. Even though looking at the numbers can be scary, you still have the power to ensure that your child isn’t an easy target, and maybe in some cases even prevent other’s children from falling victim to kidnappers.
Table of Contents
1. Be Active In Your Child’s Life
The vast majority of kidnappings are done by people you know rather than strangers. Less than one percent of abducted children are taken by total strangers. The most common scenario is a relative, followed by a friend or acquaintance. Make sure that you know who your child is talking to and be actively involved in their life. Meet your child’s friends’ parents and make sure that you show up to all of their extracurricular events like sports games, dance recitals, etc.
2. Teach Your Child To Trust Their Intuition
Your child has intuition just like you do, even if theirs isn’t as strong as yours. Intuition has been with us for as long as we’ve been human, if not longer, and is a powerful tool to keep us out of trouble. Teaching your kid to trust and nurture their intuition about situations is more likely to help them get out of sticky situations.
3. Stranger Danger
Although it is a fraction of a percent of a chance of a total stranger kidnapping your child, that doesn’t mean that it can’t happen. Make sure that your child knows not to talk to strangers, and teach them which strangers are more trustworthy in emergency situations. This is typically mothers and women in general, but not always. In most cases, men are the stranger abductors so in many cases a woman is your child’s safest bet in an emergency.
4. Keep An Eye Out For Sketchy Behavior
There are certain behaviors that you can see in both adults and children that you can look out for that are very telling red flags. For instance, if an adult is asking a child for help it usually means something’s not right. Adults aren’t going to ask a child for help finding their dog or directions unless they have an ulterior motive. Also, children under duress act in a certain way. If you hear a child asking the adult they’re with “where are we going?” in a stressed tone, or they’re screaming something along the lines of “let me go, I don’t know you!” it’s usually safe to assume that a kidnapping is taking place and you should alert the authorities.
5. Make Sure Your Child Can Tell You Anything
This one seems like a no-brainer, and most parents already believe that their children tell them everything. Unfortunately, this isn’t always actually the case. The best way to ensure that your child isn’t being targeted is to, at the very least, make sure that they know that they can and should tell you if adults are acting strangely towards them.
6. Check Sex Offender Registries
Knowing where sex offenders in your area can be infinitely helpful for planning your family’s safety by giving you an idea of who you should look out for. There are services that provide this information along with some additional perks, Registered Offenders List is a good place to find these types of services, and there are also national and state sex offender registries.
Planning For Your Child’s Safety.
The world we live in can be a quite scary one, and planning for your family’s safety is essential. By teaching your child certain behaviors and making sure that you’re doing all you can, you can ensure that your child is a more difficult target for kidnappers and lower the odds of one of every parent’s worst fears coming true.
