Twice a year, our family reviews the status of our household. We review everything. We reorganize the house, de-clutter each room, paint, and, as parents, we address issues our kids have been having with goal planning. We look at all aspects of our lives and seek places for growth and improvement. This time around, we found a need to work on child safety.

We reviewed what we doing to protect our child and how were we educating her in protecting herself. We asked if we were prepared if she was hurt or missing. We realized that since she had begun to use the Internet and became more independent safety issue would be something we would have to work. Not knowing where to start we went to the one place that we knew that would help us, The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is an organization that offers information and tools for parents to help protect their children from predators. The use of this site is free, so if you find it helpful please donate a couple of dollars to support this important organization.

Here are few ideas we discovered to help you get started on the road to better safety for your kids

• Find information on Sexual offenders who live in your area; visit the Dru Sjodin National Sex Registry. Identifying potential predators is important, when we did our search this year we found ten sex offenders in our area.
• It’s vital that you teach your kids about child safety. A good site to visit is www.thesafeside.com, John Walsh, host of America’s Most Wanted and Julie Clark, the creator of Baby Eistein developed this helpful safety program for kids making learning about safety fun as well as educational.
• Each year create an ID kit for each child in the family. The kit should contain the child’s personal information, such as height, weight, allergies, identifying marking such as scars or moles and a recent photo. In addition, many dentists now offer free or low cost dental impressions. Having current dental impressions in your files is not a bad thing.
• Purchase or Activate Parental Controls on Your Computer. By limiting your child’s access to the Internet, you will be able to monitor what your child does and doesn’t see. If they need access to something that’s prohibited, they should have to ask you first before viewing it.
• Make sure you have access to your child’s social networking page. Knowing what your child is doing online is important. You should also know whom they are talking to and what kind of photos they are sharing.
• Pass code your computer, partitioning your computer is a smart way of making sure your kids do not have access to adult materials
• Make Sure your computer is in a place you can monitor it. Knowing what your kids are doing on the internet is essential to keeping them safe. No one under the age of 18 should have unlimited access to a computer without parental controls.
• Teach your children not to put personal photos on the Internet. Compromising pictures posted on the Internet as a teenager can affect a child’s future forever. Once a compromising photo or blog is online it’s there forever and available to anyone. Monitor the amount of time your child spends online, it’s important not only to know their friends from school but also on the Internet.
• Talk to your kids about what to do if they’re lost. Establish a list of “Safe” people. These adults will be caring for your child when you are not there. Make sure your kids know that if a person is not on the “Safe” list they are not allowed to go with them. Keep your list small so your kids know everyone on it. Give them a code word so that if they are in trouble they can let you know quickly.
• Teach your children at least one contact number and their address. Our daughter learned her phone number and address by the age of two because we created a special family song to the tune of Jingle Bells. We also have a special necklace with our contact numbers should she get lost when we travel or go into the city.

Teaching your child about safety has become as important as potty training. Daily we hear of children getting hurt, meeting up with adult “friends” they’ve meet online. With the creation of the Internet, we have opened up new vistas of learning; unfortunately, we have also opened a window into our homes for sexual predators. Teaching your kids about child safety is one way of barring that window.