Should I teach my child "stranger danger"?
Stranger Danger is a failed concept. Stranger Danger is from a time when we didn't have good information on child safety. By telling a child not to talk to strangers you are doing certain things. You are creating a hypocritical environment because your child sees you talking to strangers all the time, and that becomes problematic in its own right. You're also limiting your child's choices, and you're giving them a paranoid vision of life that suggests that they shouldn't expand themselves and they shouldn't get out and talk to people. You're also limiting any assistance that they might be able to utilise in a dangerous situation, because the vast majority of people in this country, in this world, are good people and would do anything they can to help a child that finds themselves in danger. What we want to do instead, is we want to substitute good information. We want to tell our child that they should check with mum and dad. We want to tell our child that they should always be with one other person, at least, when they are outside because there is strength in numbers (that's obvious) and that they should trust their feelings. We want to tell them that if something feels wrong they should put distance between themselves and whatever that is, and then again, finally, that if they are endangered and they feel threatened that they could go to strangers to help them out of that difficult situation.
