Kidpower workshops are joyous, supportive and fun – despite the reasons why child protection skills training is important. We want adults to learn to teach children with joy and compassion. Learning new things, especially to combat harm, requires a supportive and positive approach.

Keeping kids safe is a grown-up job.

Coaching kids to develop their own age-appropriate real-world and virtual-world safety skills is also a grown-up job.

Most adults know this, but many also say they want more skills and greater confidence to provide this kind of everyday safety leadership with ease.

Kidpower can meet this need, and we are happy to announce that registration is now open for our premiere summer institute: 

Kidpower Skills for Child Protection

As a participant in this 18-hour seminar August 9-11 in San Francisco, you’ll receive personalized coaching to become a more effective youth safety leader as a parent, teacher, playground volunteer, counselor, coach, troop leader, or in any other adult leadership position serving youth.

Kidpower will draw on its 24 years of youth safety training experience to provide participants with information and hands-on training in the skills every adult needs to be strong leaders for young people learning to navigate peer and sibling dynamics, advocate for themselves, maintain personal safety online, and integrate stranger safety skills necessary for growing independence.

Whether you want to be the strongest possible safety and social-emotional skills coach for your own child at home, for your students in a classroom or on a playground, for athletes on your team, or for clients or participants in your groups, we’ll provide you with personalized guidance to help kids have safer, more positive experiences with people everywhere they go.

Kids are safer when the adults in their lives feel prepared to provide relevant, practical guidance for managing interpersonal safety on an everyday basis, so we hope you will join us!

Register now. A weekend of your time can help the young people in your life be safe and thrive for years to come.

The fact that the first girl was almost tricked into going to this man’s car is an urgent reminder that all kids need practice and reinforcement of these skills. Thank goodness her friend realized that what this man was asking them to do was not safe!

Yesterday at 3:00 pm two 6th grade girls were waiting to be picked up [at the corner next to the school.]

A man approached them saying that his keys had fallen into his car and his hand was too big to retrieve them.  He pointed to the car, which had the door open and was a couple of cars up the street.  

One girl started to go help him but her friend realized the potential danger and convinced her that they should run [back into the school] for help.  The mom arrived almost immediately but the man was no longer there.

A kidnapping can happen so quickly, and being approached by a friendly person asking for help in a familiar place can be confusing for people of any age.I am so thankful these girls are safe!

I appreciate the principal’s prompt actions in calling the police, notifying parents and teachers, sending out the description of the man and his car, reminding parents to have their children wait at the front of the school, and sharing this information with other schools in the area.

In addition to warning young people about what to watch out for, we are recommending that these parents and teachers use this situation to discuss, review, and practice safety skills with children and teens

Just telling kids “don’t go with strangers” is often not enough to prepare them for tricks that a potential abductor might use to get them to lower their guard.

We have found that raising awareness without having a concrete safety plan and practicing skills is not enough to prepare kids to be safe on their own  – and risks creating anxiety without necessarily making them safer. Positive Practice prepares young people to recognize potential safety problems and to protect themselves from danger in a way that increases competence and reduces anxiety.

We encourage readers to download and use the checklist from our article Protect Your Child From Abduction: FREE Safety Checklist to Prepare Kids to Go Without Adult Protection  to TALK with your kids, WALK with your kids, and PRACTICE with your kids.  We also encourage you to share this with others by making print copies of the PDF or by emailing it as an attachment.

http://www.kidpower.org/blog/kidnapping-prevention-checklist-for-parents/

Not sure HOW to practice? Kidpower provides an extensive personal safety curriculum  for all ages and abilities including articles and videos in our free online Library, easy-to-use and interesting books such as our Safety Comics in our Bookstore, training for teachers and parents on how to teach safety skills to young people, and workshops for students

(Please Note: For Copyright and Permission to Use Requirements, please Click Here)

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Audrie Potts from Saratoga, California, took her life after expressing her despair online about being sexually assaulted and cyber-bullied. Her parents only found these messages when searching for reasons after her death.

Yesterday, I watched a news conference by Audrie Pott’s mother, father, and stepmother, who are bravely speaking out about what led to her suicide at age 15 in order to protect other children and to bring the people who had harmed Audrie to justice.

In an anguished quest to understand what had led to their daughter’s tragic act, they had discovered through text messages and Facebook posts that Audrie had been sexually assaulted the week before she killed herself – and that the teen boys who did this had sent out a humiliating photo and comments that she believed had spread all over her school. Three days before she took her life, Audrie had written messages of despair on Twitter and Facebook, saying, “My life is ruined now!”

None of the adults who love Audrie had any idea of what had happened to her until after she died. Choking back tears, her mother explained, “Teens live in a world of their own.”

In honor of Audrie’s memory, I find myself asking, “In addition to holding the attackers accountable, is there anything we can learn from this tragedy that can help prevent future suffering?” The impact of technology on age-old problems of bullying, teen drinking, and sexual violence is one of these issues.

According to some estimates, teens spend half their lives online. These electronic worlds are too dangerous for our kids to live in without the knowledge and guidance of the adults who love them.

Too many times, adults don’t discover online messages about cyber-bullying, parties with heavy drinking, or warning signs of despair or violence until after something terrible has happened, when the opportunity to take protective action is gone.

We recommend that parents make their children’s use of mobile phones, social networking, and other technology contingent on making safe choices and on parents being able to see what their kids are doing in the virtual world as well as the real one. This means having ongoing access to your child’s text messages, social media, online gaming, and email, not in a secretive spying way, but in an upfront way, as part of the deal.

“But that would be embarrassing! “ many teens will object.

Parents can agree not to interfere or discuss anything they see unless safety is an issue – and not to post or even “like” something on their kids’ social media venues without permission.  It’s like being in the other room while teens are having a party – we can hear if things get out of hand and are there if needed, but don’t need to have our presence be obvious in an intrusive way.

We need to think of communication technology in the same way we think about using matches, sharp knives, stoves, and cars. We are careful about kids using these powerful tools because we understand that they can be used for good purposes, but can also, in an instant, but cause unimaginable and sometimes irreversible harm.

Even if teens feel embarrassed and get angry about the “I need to be able to see what’s happening” requirement, a core Kidpower principle is to Put Safety First, ahead of embarrassment, inconvenience, and offense. When you insist, persistently and respectfully in the face of heated objections, you are modeling how to Put Safety First.

“But what about the right to privacy?” many people will argue.

Believing that anything shared electronically is truly private is a mistake. At any age, we need to remember that, if we are texting or posting something we wouldn’t want a trusted family member to see, it’s probably not wise to post or text it in the first place. Many parents give kids permission to have online accounts with the advance agreement that they can check the account content at any time, because this support helps growing teens assess what they post.

“But what about supporting my teen in becoming independent?” many parents will worry.

I wish that we could have a magic formula for finding the right balance with teens between insisting on providing adult protection and guidance when needed while respecting that our teens are becoming more mature and independent. Our challenge is to give freedom to strengthen independence, but not to give freedom to do something we believe is dangerous just because ‘all the other kids are doing it.’

Although someone can make sudden destructive choices at any age, teens are at greater risk of taking actions that might harm themselves or others because their abilities to control their impulses, think ahead, and make accurate judgments are still developing.

According to research by Dr. James Giedd, Chief of the Unit on Brain Imaging in the Child Psychiatry Branch at the National Institute of Mental Health and his colleagues, adolescent brains keep developing until their mid-twenties, especially in the prefrontal cortex, which controls planning, working memory, organization, and modulating mood. As the prefrontal cortex matures, teenagers can reason better, develop more control over impulses and make judgments better.

Freedoms such as going to a party with no adults, being left on their own at home, as well as use of the Internet and any communication technology, should be privileges to be earned, not entitled rights.

At Kidpower, we recommend the following five-step process to prepare young people for more independence:

1. Make realistic assessments about your child or teen in each situation. What are the pitfalls of this place or activity? How well can my child or teen resist peer pressure? Is my child or teen comfortable in asking me for help? Are there potential problems that we need to address before going forward?
2. As a family, learn and practice “People Safety” skills such as those taught in the Kidpower, Teenpower, and Collegepower programs.  “People Safety” means people being emotionally and physically safe with people.
3. Co-pilot with your child or teen to field-test the use of these skills in their daily lives. This means staying connected with your kids’ activities everywhere they go in their physical and electronic worlds. Watch how they are interacting with others and provide a safety net when needed.
4. Conduct trial runs to rehearse independence in controlled doses with adult backup.
5. Keep communication open with listening, ongoing checking in, and review.

To help prevent future tragedies, we must stay aware of what our teens are doing until they have demonstrated the ability to take charge of their own emotional and physical safety and to act respectfully and safely towards others in their physical and electronic worlds, including social media and gaming environments.

Additional Resources:

How to Prevent and Stop Cyber-Bullying
Preparing Children For More Independence
CollegePower for Parents: Supporting Your College Student’s Independence, Safety, and Wisdom
CollegePower for Students: Take Charge of Your Own Safety
Protecting Yourself From a Sexual Assault

About Kidpower Teenpower Teenpower Fullpower International

Kidpower’s child safety expertise has been featured by USA Today, CNN, Today Moms, the LA Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Kidpower is a global nonprofit leader in providing child protection education and personal safety skills for all ages and abilities. Publications include: Bullying: What Adults Need to Know and Do to Keep Kids Safe, the Kidpower Safety Comics series, the Relationship Safety Skills Handbook for Teens and Adults, and The Kidpower Book for Caring Adults: Personal Safety, Self-Protection, Confidence, and Advocacy for Young People.  Since being established in 1989, Kidpower has protected over two million children, teens, and adults, including those with special needs, from bullying, sexual abuse, abduction, and other violence through workshops, consultation, and educational resources. Our K-12 curriculum is used by families, schools, and youth organizations for their own child safety programs. www.kidpower.org

Escuela Popular students say,”Please help us have fun and be safe with Kidpower!”

I’ll answer the swimming-bullying question below but, first of all, please support our first micro-donation campaign by taking a few minutes to help Kidpower meet a challenge grant which will double your donation.

Learning to teach the “Ready Position”

After an exceptional Kidpower instructor training program in January, we are currently accepting applications for our Teenpower/Fullpower Core Program Training.

This six-day training program is part of our instructor training process to certify candidates to teach teens and adults under our auspices.  The training includes how to adapt teaching for elderly people and individuals with special needs.

Here’s a recent testimonial from a new instructor:

I found the training program to be inspiring and positive. The part that really struck me was how much being part of this organization feels like coming home, with such a supportive and caring learning and teaching environment. Of course, it is the people who make it so. The fact that Kidpower can attract and keep such amazing people speaks volumes. Thank you thank you thank you!

Because the deadline is coming up quickly, please review the information in the links below and contact us right away if you are interested.

People who become instructors with Kidpower Teenpower Fullpower International have a genuine interest in teaching others how to protect themselves from emotional and physical violence and abuse. They are ready to make a long-term commitment to being part of our organization.

• Getting Started
• What is the Process for Becoming a Certified Instructor?
• How long does it take to become a Certified Instructor?
• Cost of the Certified Instructor Training Program
• Comprehensive Program Training (CPT) Description
• 2013 Schedule and Fees for the Six-Day Intensive CPTs
• How to Apply
• Certified Instructor Benefits

In addition to our certified instructor training program, we also offer trainings and coaching for individuals and groups who want to incorporate our methodology and skills into their own personal and professional lives. Please let us know if you are interested.

The Saturday after the Newton tragedy, I got a note from a mother who wrote, “My six-year-old daughter just asked me, ‘What if someone starts shooting kids at my school? What should I do?’ It breaks my heart that my child even has to think about something this horrible! What can I possibly say or do that will help her?”

Countless parents, teachers, and other caring adults are now having to answer frightening questions like this from their children.

I wrote to this mother, “First of all, in a very reassuring and matter-of-fact voice, tell your daughter, ‘That’s a very scary idea. I know you might be hearing a lot about this lately, but it almost never happens!’”

This answer is a good start but it is not enough. Because it does happen.  Shootings happen more often in neighborhoods that are struggling with violence. But kids and their adults get killed even in peaceful little communities like Newtown, Connecticut and Aurora, Colorado. As adults, we are acutely aware that, if it can happen there, it can happen anywhere.

So I recommended that this mother tell her little girl what she most needs to know, in a very warm voice, being careful not to sound or look upset herself, and say, “Lots of people are working hard to make sure that this kind of problem doesn’t happen here. I will do everything in my power to keep you safe!”

Because kids need to know what to do without having to think about the scary details of what this might mean, I recommended that this mother explain, “If someone is acting dangerously, the safest thing to do is to get away from that person and to get to safety where there are grownups who can help you. If your teachers tell you what to do, you follow their directions, quickly and quietly. If someone is being dangerous and you don’t know what to do, you run away from that person and get to safety. This plan will keep you safe most of the time, even if someone is acting dangerously.”

Children take their cues from adults. If we act calm and in control, they are likely to follow our lead. In London during the air raids, people were crowded into shelters while bombs were falling. I have heard stories about how the kids in shelters where the air raid wardens acted terrified became traumatized themselves. Kids in shelters where the air raid wardens led everyone in singing and cheering when they could hear their pilots fighting back were far less likely to show signs of trauma. The kids were in just as much physical danger in both situations. But they had far less emotional damage when their adult leaders acted hopeful and powerful instead of helpless and in despair.

Acting out what to do for different kinds of emergencies can help to prepare children and adults alike to take quick action if they need to.  Just like fire drills, if a dangerous person safety drill is done in a calm and matter-of-fact way, this can help to reduce anxiety. In our Kidpower workshops, we coach children to be successful in practicing how to handle different kinds of safety problems with people, depending on what issues these families, schools, and youth organizations are dealing with at that time.

In one first grade classroom after one highly publicized school shooting, the children’s anxiety about not knowing what to do was so high that I decided to lead a special practice for them right away. I sent the teachers and parents out of the two doors of the classroom to be “Safety” for the kids to go to outside. Then I said, “Pretend that I am starting to act dangerously. Stand up, go quickly outside, and ask your grownups for help.” (We don’t want to put scary pictures in kids’ minds that are not already there, so I stood there calmly, not acting scary but just asking the children to imagine that I was about to do something unsafe.)

Immediately, 30 children streamed out of the room and into their arms of their parents and teachers, who stood waiting and said earnestly, “I will help you!” And then, everyone then came back inside, sat down feeling much calmer, and we went on with our workshop!

But what about today? What are the best steps we can take right now, when anxiety is apt to be at its peak, to help our kids through this? First of all, we need to take action to protect children from further emotional trauma. Here are four recommendations from The Kidpower Book for Caring Adults:

1)    Shield younger children as best we can. Turn off the news. Protect them from overhearing ourselves and other adults talking about this.

2)    Give kids support for their feelings without burdening them with ours. Listen rather than talk. Think carefully before taking children to memorials or vigils where adults are actively grieving.

3)    Answer kid’s questions in a reassuring, truthful, age-appropriate way. Ask them what they have heard and if they have any questions. Only give them the information they really need to hear. If kids are feeling bad about a tragedy, give them positive actions they can take to help make the world a better place.

4)    Give children and teens extra attention and love. Do fun things together. Watch for signs of stress. Ask calmly, “Is there anything you have been wondering or worrying about that you haven’t told me?”  Get professional help if a child continues to feel very anxious.

Our recent article, Advice for Parents About Newtown Tragedy, provides more information about how to protect children as well as access to other free resources on our www.kidpower.org website.

As caring adults, we all need to work together to take social action that can help to prevent this kind of violence in the future.  Addressing the larger social issues that can lead to mass shootings is going to take time. In the meantime, the number of shootings is increasing, and we must find ways to make our schools safer and prepare our teachers just in case.

A number of experts have pointed out that our society has invested a lot of money over the years to make our schools safe from fire, with flame-proof building materials, fire alarms, and sprinkler systems. And the result is that no one has died in a fire in a school in recent years. Our schools are filled with our most precious resource, our children, and we need to protect them from sudden violence just as we do from other dangers.

One way we can honor the memory of the innocent children and courageous educators whose lives have been lost is to increase our investment in making schools safer for children and school staff alike – and  in taking difficult actions so that our society becomes safer for everyone.

Schools need help to become prepared to make it harder for a dangerous person to get into a school and easier for adults to protect kids in the event of a violent emergency. There needs to be a quick warning system that all adults know how to use. Classrooms need windows and doors that teachers can quickly lock and cover.

Effective plans will be realistic and will empower adults with training so they can make quick decisions by thinking problems through ahead of time. In an active shooting emergency, the safest plan depends on where the attack is coming from, where the kids are at that moment, and the set-up of the school.  Sometimes the safest answer is to get into the room, lock the doors, close the windows, crouch down, and hide. Sometimes the safest plan is to run away and get to a place away from the person shooting.

We need to keep our perspective and make rational plans rather than react out of panic. The challenge is to find the right balance between security and living our lives. For example the most dangerous thing we let our children do is to ride in a car. Even though cars are much safer thanks to seat belts, air bags, car seats, and greater awareness of the dangers of distracted driving, terrible accidents can still happen. Yet despite the risks, most of us still drive cars.

The reality is that life is not risk free. Our job as caring adults is to prepare for potential dangers as best we can, live our lives as joyfully as possible, and teach our children to do the same!

About Kidpower
Kidpower’s child safety expertise has been featured by USA Today, CNN, Today Moms, the LA Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Recent publications include the Kidpower Book for Caring Adults: Personal Safety, Self-Protection, Confidence, and Advocacy for Young People,  the Kidpower Safety Comic Series, and Bullying: What Adults Need to Know and Do to Keep Kids Safe.  Many families, schools, and youth organizations use Kidpower’s positive and practical curriculum for their bullying, child abuse and violence prevention training programs. Kidpower workshops, K-12 safety curriculum, books, videos and other services have helped to protect more than 2 million young people from abuse, bullying, and other violence since 1989. http://www.kidpower.org

Update Jan 7, 2013: Since the Newtown tragedy last month, more than 500 people have died from gun violence in the US. The article below has touched thousands of people all over the world because most of us share a great sense of grief about these heartbreaking events. This advice is relevant to helping children – and their adults – cope in the face of violence.

All of us at Kidpower, in each of our Centers around the world, join countless others in mourning the loss of the children and adults in the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. We are asking hard questions that have complex answers.

And we are holding the children in our lives even more closely right now, cherishing them, and longing to give them a safer world in which to live.

While you may have already talked about what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary with the children you care about, be aware that details are still unfolding on the news. Children may be getting new information from adults and other kids that they did not hear at first.  They might hear scary details, often inaccurate, about what happened from other kids at school or other group activities.

Check in with kids when they come home from school or other group activities.

As children hear more details about this tragedy, they may feel worried and scared. Kids need our support and our love, not our own anxiety, grief, rage, and fear.

Here are a few steps you can take right away:

1. Shield children as best you can.  Seeing and hearing about horrific events is traumatizing for people at any age. The response to traumatic events often continues long after the tragedy itself.

Try to protect children from hearing or seeing news reports about tragic events like this one. Turn off the radio in the car when experts are analyzing what happened even if your child seems to be involved doing something else in the back seat. Turn off your favorite news show on TV when your kids are in the room. Unless there is an immediate emergency where you must know what is happening for your family’s safety, getting the news can wait.

Interrupt friends, colleagues, parents, teachers, or other adults who start to express their feelings about what happened when children are around by saying, “Excuse me. Let’s make a different time to talk about this.”  Then, change the subject.

2. Acknowledge children’s feelings without burdening them with your own. Let them tell you their feelings and respond with compassionate, acknowledging statements. “Yes, this is very sad. Yes, this is scary.”

How YOU act is going to make a big difference in the impact on your children. No matter how you feel inside, take a breath and decide to stay calm and hopeful in front of your kids, projecting the messages that they are safe and everything is in control. Get support for your own upset and overwhelmed feelings with other adults in settings away from your kids. Remember that your children can overhear your conversations even if you are on the telephone in another part of the room, and they seem to be playing and not paying attention.

Think carefully before bringing children to memorials and vigils where adults are actively grieving. For children who are very aware of what happened and feel sad, you can help them express their feelings through listening to them, encouraging them to make drawings about their feelings, and telling hopeful stories about dealing with different kinds of loss.

3. Answer questions in reassuring, age-appropriate ways.  Rather than giving scary details about this tragedy, find out what your child has heard, listen to any concerns, and then provide just the information that your child needs to feel safe. For younger children, keep it very simple: “This almost never happens. The person who did this won’t be able to do it again. We are all working together to make sure your school is safe.”

Tell the truth but don’t put upsetting images in children’s heads that don’t need to be there. Don’t make untrue statements and promises you can’t keep, like, “This will never happen here!” Instead, provide reassuring explanations and realistic promises, “This is very rare. Lots of good people are working hard to make it even less likely to happen. And I will do everything in my power to keep you safe and to teach you how to keep yourself safe!”

The articles below provide answers to more complicated questions that might be troubling older children and their adults. Rather than imposing your own ideas, encourage older kids and teens tell you their ideas about what we each can do to make our world a safer place for everyone.

4. Give extra love and attention. Raise the issue if you think your child has heard about this tragedy and watch for signals that your child might be worrying and not telling you. Remember that kids, like many adults, often do not express upset feelings directly and might regress, be irritable, whiny, clingy, or demanding instead.

Even if a child doesn’t seem troubled, spend extra time with your kids over the next few days, having fun being together, listening to what they tell you, noticing any changes in behavior, and giving extra reassurance about any kind of worries, no matter how small.

Some children will not seem to be affected at first but will start to think about what happened and become increasingly upset about it over time. They might seem fine and then suddenly be afraid to go back to school after the holidays.  Seek professional help if a child shows signs of lasting anxiety.

We urge you to share the following articles with any adults with children in their lives who may have worries and questions, to help young people regain their emotional safety in the wake of this tragedy.

Helping Children Regain Their Emotional Safety After a Tragedy

Tragic Shootings: Kidpower Answers to Common Questions About How To Be Safe

Tiroteos en las Escuelas: Cómo ayudar a los niños frente a la violencia armada en la escuela

School Shootings: How to Empower Kids in the Face of Armed School Violence

Violence Against Children in the News: Teaching safety Instead of Promoting Fear

What If Someone Starts Shooting Kids at Our School? – A Heartbreaking Question No Child Should Ever Have to Ask

We hope you will spread this information as widely as you can.

Our free online library of personal safety resources has these and other articles that may help adults who are faced with worried and scared kids. We hope to reach those parents with reassurance and advice on how to minimize the trauma for children and help them go back to school feeling safe.

The loss of the children and adults killed in Newtown is a terrible tragedy. Together, we can take action to reduce additional trauma resulting from this horrific event.

On behalf of everyone at all our Kidpower Centers around the world, I thank you for your commitment to safety.

With deep sadness, love, and determination,
Irene

–
Irene van der Zande, Kidpower International Executive Director and Founder

About Kidpower: 
Kidpower expertise has been featured by USA Today, CNN, Today Moms, the LA Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Recent publications include the Kidpower Book for Caring Adults: Personal Safety, Self-Protection, Confidence, and Advocacy for Young People,  the Kidpower Safety Comic Series, and Bullying: What Adults Need to Know and Do to Keep Kids Safe.  Many families,  schools, and youth organizations use Kidpower’s positive and practical curriculum for their bullying, child abuse and violence prevention training programs. Kidpower workshops, K-12 safety curriculum, books, videos and other services have helped to protect more than 2 million young people from abuse, bullying, and other violence since 1989. www.kidpower.org

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Kidpower’s vision is to work together to create cultures of caring, respect, and safety for everyone, everywhere.

This is a lofty goal that is often challenging to make real in our daily lives. Personally, sometimes I get overwhelmed or triggered and am not my best self. And when I’m not my best self, I do not always act very nicely. Even more unfortunately, the world around us often does not promote these values. In fact, most societies bombard their members with negative messages showing that “being mean is funny” at least for certain groups – and that being different can make someone less worthy than others.

At Kidpower, we have learned that the violence prevention, empowerment, and personal safety skills we teach become meaningless if we do not uphold a standard of respectful, safe, and caring behavior throughout our organization.

Here are six steps from lessons we have learned over the past two decades that can help you to create cultures of caring, respect, and safety in your family, school, workplace, place of worship, and social groups.

1. Make a written plan. Define your values and set standards for how you want to act yourself and to lead others in acting. Take a look at Kidpower’s Mission, Goals, and Values and Ten Best Practices for Team Members for ideas that you can adapt and use.

2. Acknowledge obstacles. Overwhelm, negative social messages, triggers, poor communication skills, risks to important relationships, and leaders who do not yet have the ability or commitment to uphold positive values often get in the way of maintaining an environment where everyone is treated with care and respect.

Being realistic about these pitfalls can help you to prepare yourself to address them effectively – sometimes by being courageous and speaking up – and sometimes by using target denial and avoiding situations where problems are likely to occur.

3. Speak up even if it is uncomfortable.  Remember that discomfort is not the same as damage. Our article, Integrity in Communication, describes the reasons people give for not speaking up directly to someone whose behavior is making them unhappy and the harm that not speaking up can cause. Our article, Fullpower Boundaries for Adults with People We Know, describes how to set boundaries and to persist in the face of common negative reactions. Remember that most people don’t like being told what to do and that reacting negatively to a boundary at first is normal.

4. Be a powerful, respectful leader. Set a good example. Even if others behave terribly, do your best to get centered and to stay in charge of your own words and actions. Children, family members, friends, and colleagues will learn more from what they see you doing when you are upset than from anything you can tell them. Our article, Create Emotional Safety: Be a Powerful, Positive Adult Leader, describes how to lead with children but is also relevant for leading with adults.

5. Celebrate progress instead of mourning lack of perfection.  Accept that creation is messy and that it takes time and practice to develop new habits. Appreciate and acknowledge others and yourself for trying your best and for each time that things go well.  If you have trouble doing this, see Confessions of a Recovering Perfectionist.

6. Apologize when you make mistakes that hurt others instead of denying that this happened, but don’t over-apologize. Our article, Conscious Apologies, describes how to achieve this balance.

Finally, please be kind to yourself. Being caring, respectful, and safe starts with you upholding these values for yourself towards yourself as well as towards others. Remember our Kidpower motto that, “You don’t have to be perfect to be great!”

Watch our new video (just 5 minutes) about why we do this work and why we hope you will donate today to help keep kids safe tomorrow.

Last year, we launched Kidpower’s “One Million Safer Kids” initiative with the goal of making at least a million more young people safer by July 1, 2016. Our purpose is to protect 1 million more kids from bullying, violence, and abuse through new tools and partnerships to provide greater knowledge, action, and skills to parents, teachers, and other caring adults.

With the help of many of you, we have increased the safety of over 300,000 children so far by making Kidpower’s personal safety skills and knowledge far more accessible to families, schools, and youth organizations everywhere.

Thanks to the support of generous donors and the expertise of Storytellers for Good, we have just released a heartwarming “One Million Safer Kids” video  to further this initiative.

In 5 short minutes, this new video shows:

• how to make it fun for kids to practice safety skills
• the empowerment they gain
• the peace of mind this brings to their parents
• the story of how Kidpower began

I hope that watching this video will inspire people to help us reach even further and faster – to share Kidpower with all of the kids in their lives, in their communities, and around the world.

Please take 5 minutes to watch this video and then a few more minutes to share it with others.

You will be helping Kidpower to reach worldwide to provide parents, teachers, and children with greater access to our often life-saving personal safety and confidence-building skills.

Kidpower was started in 1989 after I protected a group of children, including my own, from a man threatening to kidnap one of them. Since then, Kidpower has helped more than two million young people learn to protect themselves from bullying and abuse, and build healthy relationships. We hope to boost that number rapidly through our One Million Safer Kids initiative.

A world with One Million Safer Kids is a better world for all of us. It is a world with more joyful playgrounds, classrooms, and neighborhoods. It is a world with more relationships strengthened by strong boundary setting skills. It’s a world with less trauma and injury. It is a world where children (and parents) feel safer because they are empowered. The potential ripple effect of One Million Safer Kids is both staggering and achievable.

One Million Safer Kids starts with one – one child protected, one safety skill taught, one resource shared, one gift of time or money- your actions today can help to keep a child safe tomorrow!

Remember – we love to hear from you! Please keep telling us your stories about how Kidpower has helped bring more safety, more fun, and less fear into the lives of you and your loved ones. Please keep asking your questions about how to protect and empower the young people in your care. We do our best to provide personal answers to everyone who writes to us. You can contact us at safety@kidpower.org.

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Staying together can protect kids from getting hurt or lost.

Oh my goodness! How did it get to be December already? Here at Kidpower we want all our readers to have a safe, joyful holiday season.

Your family can have more fun and less problems by putting a clear, realistic Safety Plan in place with children before you go out shopping or to public events. The following tips can help to prevent meltdowns, getting lost, arguments, and accidents.

Do Less!  Avoid stress by making decisions about what you do or don’t do based on what is best for your family rather than on the expectations of others. Simplify holiday meals, gift-giving, and social gatherings. Instead of hurrying, slow down – drive more carefully, take more time for transitions, and prepare everyone.

Get Ready. Before you leave home, review the plan of what is going to happen and not happen in terms that make sense for your family, anticipating potential temptations and triggers. Be realistic about long lines, big crowds, impatient customers, and distracted drivers. Be as specific as possible, involving children when they are old enough in making the plan and getting their agreement.

For example, suppose you are about to go on a shopping trip. You might say to a younger child, “Today we are going to visit 3 new stores at the Great Big Mall to get presents and look at the decorations. We might have to park far away if the parking lot is full. Some drivers are not paying good attention so we will hold hands. If there are long lines and busy people, we will be patient and wait. We can tell stories while we are waiting. We are NOT going to visit the pet store today to look at the kittens but we can do that next month when things are quieter. We are NOT going to visit the ice cream store today but we can have a cookie when we get home. We are NOT going to buy presents for ourselves today but we can ‘bookmark’ in our minds if there is a present you might like to have someday. There will be lots of lights and noises.  It will be interesting and fun. We will Stay Together and Check First before we change our plan.”

For an older child who is starting to be somewhat more independent, you might make and agree on a plan together. For example, “We are going to go to the mall. We will stick right next to each other until we get inside and agree to separate. You can visit the bookstore while I go to the department store and then we will meet at 2 at the food court. You will stay where lots of people are and call me on my cell to Check First before you change your plan about who is with you, what you are doing, and where you are going – you will check before changing your plan even with people you know. If someone you don’t know well tries to single you out or anyone makes you uncomfortable, you will move away and go into a store, go to the head of the line, and interrupt to tell a clerk to call the security guard. You will call me if you have any problems.”

For toddlers or children with special needs who don’t speak much, you can still review key safety rules in simple terms: Stay Together, Check First, Stop, and Wait.

Planning ahead is important for other activities as well. For example, “Today we are going to the movie theater. We will all try using the bathroom before we leave even if we don’t feel like going. You may have ONE small bag of popcorn but we will bring our own water instead of getting any soft drinks. .. etc.”

If a family member requires constant supervision, be sure to have handoffs clear about who is responsible when. For example, “While I am trying on clothes, Maria will stay with Josephine and we will agree on a fun place to wait, such as the mirrors.” Or, “If Joey needs to go to the bathroom while the movie is playing, I will take him and all of you will stay in your seats until I get back.”

Review the safety plan in case someone gets separated or lost.  Have your mobile phone number with your child. Sometimes parents even write the number on a younger child’s arm. Take a photo with your cell phone if you have a child who might get separated from you by accident. Practice how to wait and how to ask for help.

Remind, Watch, Intervene, and Redirect. When you arrive, review the plan or ask your child to repeat this back to you. At each new location, review what to do in case you get lost or separated – where to wait, who to ask for help, etc.

Split your attention so you can stay aware of what children who might wander off or bother others are doing all the time. Keep them next to you to avoid trouble. Remember that a child who does not yet have strong awareness or an understanding of important boundaries can get hurt, disappear, or do something unsafe in an instant. Be very consistent in intervening to stop unsafe behavior.

If something unexpected happens, stick with your plan unless it is an emergency. For example, if you run into a friend, avoid socializing unless that was part of your plan. Adult socializing can cause kids to get tired out and frustrated and to feel as if the plan isn’t actually real. Instead, you can keep moving and say, “It’s so nice to see you. I can’t stop to chat right now because I promised Christopher that we would do our shopping quickly. Have a great day!”  Showing your commitment to keeping agreements about time and activities even if you see friends provides an excellent role model for your kids.

Redirect wishes with compassion and humor. For example if a child is tired, you might sit on a bench and watch for a few minutes. Or you might say, “I wish I were an elephant and could carry everyone.” You can then make a game out of thinking of different ways each person wished you had to get around – magic shoes,  transporters, etc.

Celebrate! At the end of each trip, review what went right. Congratulate family members on what they did to make this trip fun. Give a reward for a job well done! If something went wrong, discuss this at a different time, before you go out again. Remember that people and outings don’t have to be perfect to be great!

Additional Resources:

Holiday Boundaries: Protecting Children’s Boundaries and Helping Others Do the Same

How to Make Family Gatherings Great Instead of Awful

“What If I get Lost?”

A Five Step Plan For Preparing Your Child for More Independence