COULD YOUR CHILD RECITE YOUR HOME ADDRESS UNDER PRESSURE?
In this digital age, we find many old school safety facts are no longer drilled into our children’s memory banks. Young kids tend to rely more heavily on data that is stored on devices rather than in their brains! But there are some basic facts children should be able to recite with ease, under pressure and without a device. Your home address is one of them.
How would your child cope if they were in a situation where they need to call for help or direct someone to contact family members on their behalf? What if you fell down the stairs and your child needed to call you an ambulance? What if your child was lost? What if there was a fire? Could your child call emergency and name your house number, street and town?
In our courses, and in our experience with emergency services, most children can not. Many don’t even know what the name of their suburb is, let alone their neighborhood or street. Fortunately many calls made to emergency can be traced, however this should not be relied upon.
We recognize that modern society is very mobile and changing addresses occurs frequently. So when moving we encourage parents to accompany the move by learning, memorizing and reciting the new home address with their children as a matter of priority.
We realize this seems extremely simple and logical, but you would not believe how common it is for children to struggle with basic facts like this!
So why not test it out with your kids today. Ask them where they live – it’s easy to do! At the very least you’ll have the peace of mind to know that, in the rare case they ever need it, your address can spring easily and quickly to your child’s mind (and into the hands of adults who can help).
Please share to help us keep kids safe and empowered everywhere!
