Preparing Parents and Caregivers to Keep Their Kids Safe
Kidpower prepares parents and other caregivers both to protect their children and teens from harm and to empower their kids with skills for taking charge of their own emotional and physical safety.
People Safety training provides social-emotional tools that people of all ages and abilities can use to prevent problems and strengthen relationships. Parents and caregivers are in the best position to build these skills every day.
What will I learn in a Parent/Caregiver workshop?
In this adults-only workshop, parents, teachers, and other caregivers learn the Kidpower approach for introducing and practicing People Safety skills with young people.
The topics addressed include:
- What adults need to know about personal safety for children
- Kidpower’s Underlying Principle about making choices that put safety ahead of embarrassment, inconvenience or offense
- How to teach your child skills that can prevent most bullying, molestation, assault, and abduction without creating fear
- How to coach children so they are successful in practicing safety skills
- How to make a safety plan for everywhere children go
- How to establish a common language about safety within your family
- How to advocate for your child’s emotional and physical safety
Kidpower Teaching Method: How do we teach these skills?
Through discussion and hands-on practice, participants find answers to the questions, “How can we teach our younger children to be safe without scaring them? How can we prepare our older children to balance their need for increasing independence with their safety?”
Participants learn how to build these basic People Safety skills into their everyday parenting and guidance of children so that they can help improve the safety and quality of their children’s interactions with both strangers and people they know.
Because this is an adults-only program, participants have time and space to ask questions and discuss their questions and concerns.
Parents of children and youth from 0-18 years of age have found the workshop useful. Some parents even take these workshops when they are still pregnant.
What if we can’t get to a workshop?
Our Library offers a wealth of free resources, including articles about how personal safety skills can address difficult life challenges, such as:
- Self-Protection for People With Disabilities
- Personal Safety to Help Stop Domestic Violence
- Substance Abuse Prevention
Our Store sells publications such as our cartoon-illustrated Safety Comics and Teaching Kits for children, teens, and adults that introduce personal safety skills in basic language that individuals with limited reading skills as well as the general public have found to be important, respectful, and relevant. Our Store also sells our Kidpower Guide eBook, our Kidpower Book for Caring Adults, our Relationship Safety Book, and our Comprehensive Program Manuals. These materials show how to teach People Safety skills and concepts to the important children, teens, and adults in your life.
If you don’t have a Kidpower center close to your community, consider setting up a new one and training as an instructor. We also train teachers and other professionals to include People Safety Skills in their programs and schools so that people everywhere can learn how to protect their emotional and physical safety.