Getting Started:
- Encourage your child to choose a band
- Teach them to “Show & Tell”.
- Remind your child to wear it when you go out
- When your child is lost, they SHOW the band to a safe
adult & TELL them to “phone mummy”.
- Keep repeating it until it becomes second nature …
NB. Whoever has your child will be phoned for
a quick re-union. The ‘safe adult’ does not scroll through
the list of numbers (they wouldn’t know how without instructions)
to find one where someone answers. The idea is that if
you lose sight of your child, you put your phone in your
hand and wait for the call.
There is a benefit to wearing it everywhere in the beginning!
It’s easier to develop the habit and the mindset. And
children are keen to wear them. In my experience so far
(and I mean this genuinely).
it’s not getting them to wear the band that’s the problem
– it’s getting them to take it off.
A friend of mine said her 4 year old was begging her
to take her somewhere, when their Me Finders arrived.
I know of another little girl who wore it for four days
in a row, on a camping holiday.
There’s only one guarantee, as you’re changing your behaviour
as well as your child’s.
The time they don’t have it on will be the time you lose
them.
That’s Murphy’s Law. You might also know it as something
more colorful.
Me Finder – wear yours!
Safety Tips:
5 important things:
- The person who finds your child is invariably someone
like you – a parent with young children – or a security
guard
- Research in the UK has shown that 48% of men are too
scared to help a small child for fear of being accused
of being a pedophile or abducting them
- Stranger Danger is now considered to be not only ineffective
in teaching children about safety but it has been described
as “dangerous” by child safety experts
- Most children disappear for “not very long” – we’re
talking 10, 15, 20 minutes not hours
- A lifeguard on a busy beach in the UK – where up to
30 kids can go missing a day in the summer – has worked
for 9 years and (touch wood) has never lost a child
yet
So how can we put this in perspective & what do
we teach our kids?
We can teach our children to ask for help, if we can
give them a sense of who is a safe person …
Then came the idea of teaching our children to Show &
Tell – a phrase they are already really familiar with
from preschool and school.
Wow! Let’s teach them to Show & Tell the band.
We also added the Stay where you are so that children
will know not to go off with someone and not to go near
a vehicle (I discovered 99.9999% of abductions involved
a vehicle).
And, we can make the band so great that children want
to show it off and adults will comment on it. It helps
to bridge the gap. Even if they don’t find themselves
able to speak, a child can still communicate and they
can still get help. Children with special needs will also
clearly benefit. (I’ve already had great feedback from
parents with autistic children.)
Teach them to recognise a “safe adult” three ways:
- A mummy or daddy with children
- A person in uniform with a name badge, who is employed
where you are (eg Auckland Zoo, Rainbows End & the
shopping mall)
- What they do and more importantly, what they don’t
do
- They will stay with you til mummy comes back
- They won’t tell you to go with them
- They won’t take you near a car or other vehicle
Things to remember:
Keep repeating the message, so it becomes second nature
to your child
Play “spot the safe adult” when you are out and about:
“Who would you go to now if you were lost?”
Children are never too young and never too old to learn
about their safety – you just have to adapt the way you
put the message across.
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Me
Finder
