Home Safety: Get Your Kids Involved

To all par­ents and home­own­ers: have you ever got your chil­dren involved in keep­ing their home safe?  Now, get­ting your chil­dren involved in the pro­tec­tion of their home may sound like a crazy idea but the skills and knowl­edge they learn in how to pro­tect them­selves and their fam­i­ly from dan­gers are great life lessons for their future, mak­ing them more inde­pen­dent. So how do you start? Read below:

1) Intro­duce and Explain the Mon­i­tor­ing Devices

Sev­er­al mon­i­tor­ing devices can be found with­in your home and it’s impor­tant to intro­duce these devices to your chil­dren.  Start with the basics first: the smoke detec­tor. Most like­ly, your chil­dren will have heard of a smoke detec­tor at school and have actu­al­ly prac­ticed a fire drill at some point in time.  What’s impor­tant is to explain to your child what car­bon monox­ide is and the dif­fer­ence between it and a smoke detec­tor.  After intro­duc­ing them to these devices, go through a fire drill/escape plan with your child, detail­ing what must be done when each sound is heard.  Let­ting your chil­dren know what to do when each device is sound­ed pre­pares them for emer­gen­cies and gives them the skills for inde­pen­dent liv­ing in the future.

2) The Home Secu­ri­ty Sys­tem

Intro­duce your chil­dren to the home secu­ri­ty sys­tem, explain­ing to them what it does and what it pro­tects. Also, show them where it can be found in the house so they don’t acci­den­tal­ly set the alarm off by open­ing a win­dow wrong.  How­ev­er, do not tell them how it’s oper­at­ed.  You can save this part for when your child is much old­er. Next, if you have an app on your mobile device that allows you to con­trol your secu­ri­ty sys­tem, make sure that you don’t give them this device, espe­cial­ly younger chil­dren. You don’t want them acci­dent­ly dis­abling the sys­tem.  If the app per­mits, lock it with a secu­ri­ty code so that it’s only acces­si­ble by you.

3) Have a Rou­tine in Place

To make sure your teenagers are doing their part, teach them a sim­ple rou­tine that’ll allows them to learn about keep­ing their home safe will being able to become more inde­pen­dent.  An exam­ple could be as fol­lows: Before leav­ing the home, make sure all appli­ances are turned off and all main floor doors and win­dows are locked. Not only will they learn an impor­tant skill but will under­stand what it means to take respon­si­bil­i­ty.

4) Use School Teach­ings

Did you know that what kids learn at school about per­son­al safe­ty can come in handy at home? One of the best ways to teach your chil­dren about home safe­ty is to relate it back to some­thing they’ve already learn. Let’s look at it fur­ther:

Don’t talk to strangers - Just like when chil­dren are taught not to talk to strangers, the same can be applied to home safe­ty. When plan­ning a vaca­tion or doing upgrades to your home, it’s best not to dis­cuss these things with strangers.  Close neigh­bours, fam­i­ly and friends is okay but not some­one you just met.

Check your sur­round­ings — When your teenage chil­dren go out with their friends, par­ents will always remind them to keep an eye out on the sur­round­ings, mak­ing sure that they’re not in a dan­ger­ous place.  The same can be said for your home safe­ty.  Con­duct a rou­tine check around the home to make sure that there’s noth­ing there that could help a bur­glar break in.  Also, use this as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to trim large bush­es and trees to pre­vent bur­glars from hid­ing behind them.

Check to see if any­one is fol­low­ing you — When kids are old enough to walk home from school alone, this is one les­son that is learned first. The same could be said about your home.  As you go about your day, leav­ing and return­ing home, check to see if there’s any­one who’s keep­ing an eye on you and your rou­tine.  Look out for sus­pi­cious activ­i­ties (such as cars that come, stop and leave imme­di­ate­ly) or oth­er things that could a be trig­ger.

There are many ways par­ents and home­own­ers can get their chil­dren involved, from cre­at­ing fun check­lists to learn­ing about new secu­ri­ty meth­ods.  Regard­less of the method that is cho­sen, get­ting your chil­dren involved in pro­tect­ing their home is a great way to build con­fi­dence, learn new skills and become more inde­pen­dent. Start today and get your chil­dren involved.