What home safety rules should I teach my child before leaving him alone?
The main safety rules to teach your child before leaving him home alone is to not come into contact with anyone who they should not be in contact with. For instance, don't answer the door, and don't give out information over the phone. You want to be able to test them to see if they actually will do that. The main things are that you don't want to tell somebody over the telephone how long the child's going to be home alone and that's what the bad guys are trying to find out. Is there a parent there, how long will it take until they come back? So you want to be sure that they never give out that information. Secondly, letting anyone in the house; that is the worst thing of all. So you want to make sure that they never, ever open the door for anyone. If it's the next door neighbor or one of their best friends then they're going to know their voice. They also have the ability to look outside through the peep-hole and see them; they're going to know it's okay. But, somebody they don't know, I would absolutely make sure they understand that those people are not there to be their friends and if they're trying to get into your house they're lying to you about why they want to be there because no one is authorized. We didn't order any pizza, we didn't order anything to come to the front door. There is no reason for you to ever open the door and they need to know that.
