Helping Your Kids Be Safe at Home

As your kids get older, it is important to teach them some basic safety habits. This is particularly important for kids who are old enough to be left at home alone (for any amount of time). You do not, after all, want your kid to fling open the door to a stranger, or worse—invite him in because he says he knows you! Yikes!

You can take quite a bit of the responsibility out of their hands by installing things like a home security system or a home automation system. If you spend some time looking at systems you’ll see how easy these systems are to integrate and work around kids who stay at home alone. Of course, the alarm and automation system can’t do all of the work. Your kids will have to have some responsibilities too but you can learn a lot more about plans and prices here: http://www.homesecuritysystems.com/home-security-prices/

 

Priority #1: Safe Words

Have a code word that people can use to prove to your kids that they actually know you. This has been common practice for decades. The word can be anything you want it to be but make sure that the word is not ever written down. Make sure to impress upon your kids that the word is not to be shared with anyone—even best friends. This way, if an adult tries to tell your kids “It’s okay, I can come in, I know your Mom” your child will know to ask for a code or safe word. If the right word is not delivered, tell your kids it is okay to close the door in the stranger’s face—that it isn’t rude if you’re trying to keep yourself safe. A great story about this can be found here: http://www.busyparentsonline.com/health/20041_codewords.htm

Priority #2: Never Tell Anyone That You Are Not at Home

It’s rare for strangers to show up at the door anymore but it still happens and, even more commonly, strangers do call the house (no matter how many times you submit your home phone number to the do not call registry). Teach your kids to say “My parents are busy with a project but I can take a message” or “My Mom doesn’t want to be disturbed right now but I’ll tell her you stopped by” and then to take down the person’s information.

Note: Tell your kids not to accept any business cards or literature from strangers. The same rule that applies on the playground (staying at least an arm’s length away) applies to people at the door too! Keep a pad of paper next to the door so information can be written down.

Priority #3: Locking Themselves In

Teach your kids to lock the doors behind themselves when they get home from school or come in from playing (make sure they know that when left home alone they need to stay inside the house with the doors locked). This is where a home automation system can become quite handy (similar to these Verisure Alarms for Home & Business). Give your kids one of the fobs for the system and encourage them to push the lock button whenever they hear someone (or something) get close to a door or window.

These are just a few of the things you can do to help your kids feel safe when they are at home alone and to give you some peace of mind about not being able to watch over them every minute. You can find a few more here: http://kidshealth.org/parent/firstaid_safe/home/home_alone.html. What are some of the safety habits you and your family have developed?