My 6yr old has Down Syndrome and is an escapist. She has no danger awareness and no stranger danger, the opposite; she walks to stranger and hugs them.
WE made some social stories on this and also watch wee video’s on Youtube kids “don’t open the door to strangers” etc
We can only repeat and teach them in a gentle way about safety. They may not understand fully yet, but there are many rules kids don’t understand fully and they still have to obey.

Explain the importance of not going anywhere with anyone without checking with mum and dad first. No matter what the person says, it’s never ok without mum and dad knowing. Also discuss inappropriate touching.

It depends a bit on their age, but with our kids we’ve started the message that most people are good, but there are some bad people out there who might want to hurt them, and you can’t tell from looking who these people are. So therefore… enter spiel about who they can go with, and NO-ONE ELSE. It is a really difficult balance to find.

I agree with mom94125 – we stress who is OK for her to pick them up. We’ve also told them about not doing things they’re not comfortable with or about keeping secrets even from people they know. It’s a scary world these days isn’t it – I think as a parent, you just have to be vigilant and keep informed about what’s going on and how to best deal with it.

Definitely important, to many predators around just wait for an unsuspecting child

think about it the other way around- tell your child about who it is acceptable to be around etc. i have told my daughter (school aged) that only grandma, daddy or i will ever pick her up from school and if we are not there straight away, to go to the office and wait. guide them positively instead of leaving it up to them to work out who is safe to be around.

We are fortunate that the nsw police force still attend stranger danger lesson to our childrens schools so that put my mind at ease a bit. I think it is about talking to them and testing them to see if you are happy with the responses . Tell them some of the dangers of say going to a strangers car etc. I started doing that when they were able to understand so it is never too early to teach kids about safety issue s.

Just let them know that not everyone is nice and wants to be their friend. It’s not ok to go anywhere or do anything with anyone unless mum and dad say so. Also don’t accept gifts (lollies, car rides etc) from anyone they don’t know no matter what they say

This is a tough one as they may think they know a person then suddenly realise it isn’t who they think it is. They say we all have a double. There was 2 ladies in the area I lived in that looked identical, freckles in the same place of their faces too. They were not related in any way. It is Ok to teach them not to talk to strangers and not walk too close to them…..At some point you may become friends with that same person who is then no longer a stranger. It can be very confusing for children. You then have to explain that, not easy with a small child.

Went past a lady and little one waved hello to her. I asked him if he knew her but he didn’t. So I gave him another lesson on stranger danger

I know that not only strangers can be predators but some families have them too. I love your comments. Hopefully I might be able to find the other stranger danger one with the passwords. That’s a great idea.

Thats really hard to do one day i sat down and asked my school age kid, what would he do if he was playing out the front of our house and a person walked up and offered him a huge bag of lollies or to help him find his lost pet, if he goes with them. His reply was i would go with them just to get the lollies. Well at that time there was some big news on the tv, it still is about a missing child. it was on tv that night and we watched the news usually i dont watch it with the kids, but i did that night to kind of prove a point to him. I then explained that chances are that kid might never see his family again. It was enough to make him realise stangers are a bad thing. His younger sister also piked up on the conversation. I dont know if this was the right thing to do but his reply scared the life out of me……..

This is a tough one because you don’t want to scare children, but you want them to be cautious. I believe it was on this site that I read a story about children and parents having a password, so that children know not to go with anyone who doesn’t know the password.