What Age To Teach Children About Safety?

Posted on 07. Jan, 2010 by Kelly in Boundaries, Children, Gut Feelings, Personal Safety

I teach children as young as two and a half and three years old about safety. There are definite ways to do it without scaring them. I acknowledge their gut feelings (“ickies”) to help them learn to trust these instincts they were born with for the purpose of keeping them alive.

This can be challenging for parents since most of us have glossed over our own gut feelings with logic, politeness and justification since our parents and teachers unwittingly taught us to ”fit in” and “just get along” as children.

At what age should we teach children about safety? Well, that depends on how soon parents learn to trust their own gut feelings and establish and enforce their own personal boundaries.

We can’t give what we don’t have. Teaching children how to be safe from verbal, mental, emotional and physical attack has more to do with the parent than the child.

Read my other posts for tips on refining your own gut feelings and personal boundaries. They may very well save your life or that of your child.

Be Safe!
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Tags: Children, gut feelings, parents, personal boundaries, safety

2 Responses to “What Age To Teach Children About Safety?”

Arletha Skinner

08. Jan, 2010

Hi Kelly,
I agree that children at the age of two and half and three year olds should be taught to ttrust their gut feeling about people, I encourage my son to trust his gut feelings. We are living in critical times where children are the target of some dangerous people..
Kelly keep up the good work .
Arletha
Lila

09. Jan, 2010

I know that much of teaching kids about safety has to do with parents. I was in one of Kelly’s children’s self-defense workshops and she taught the parents how to teach the kids as they grew older. Seeing how to teach them gave me so much peace of mind. I ask her when I have a question and she’s always gracious in writing a blog post about it so that my question can help others as well.