Your family safety training should include encouraging your children to talk to strangers if you really want them to be safe. If this is drastically opposite of what you've been teaching, you may want to adjust your verbiage, for safety's sake.

Here's The Deal...

The whole concept of "Don't talk to strangers" is one of the most absurd we've ever come up with. If we didn't talk to strangers, none of us would have friends, jobs, spouses or families. Telephones and television would not have been invented because there wouldn't be anyone to call and no one for actors to talk to. In fact, there would be no actors at all because without auditioning, you can't get an acting job. Would there be any people to watch TV anyway? Or surf the internet? For anything to get done, we have to talk to strangers. We were all strangers to one another before we met.

The Good News!

Because our verbiage is negative, we have (fortunately for their safety) taught our children to talk to strangers by default Because when we tell someone not to do something or use the word "don't," the person we are speaking to receives the sentence without the negative words in it (because they are impossible to visualize), and they usually do exactly what we said not to do.

The Reason Kids Need To Talk To Strangers

The fact the vast majority of attacks are perpetrated by someone we know tells us that strangers are safer than people we already know. Obviously, we need a better, more reliable way to gauge who is safe and who isn't. For this we turn to one of our two most underrated, overlooked and underused natural resources - our gut feelings! These are survival instincts we were born with and their job is to keep us alive. When a child learns to acknowledge, trust and follow their gut feelings about every person, place and situation in their lives, they are automatically, and tremendously, safer forever.

How To Teach Children About Gut Feelings

1. With your supervision, have your child speak to a stranger
2. Afterward, ask your child if they felt good about the person (yes or no)
3. Ask your child if they needed help, if they would ask that person for help (why or why not)

There are numerous opportunities, every day, to ask your child how they feel about something or someone and help them to acknowledge, trust and follow their gut feelings. If you choose to empower your child to use their own best safety tool, not only will they be inherently safer from verbal, mental, emotional and physical attack, they will have healthier self-esteem and a much greater chance of success at everything they do.

So tell your children, for their own sake, "Please talk to strangers," and this one vital tip will be the core of your family safety training.