Runaway Prevention Tips Newsletter Article

By Toronto4Kids
  

It's been a few hectic weeks for those desperately searching for a missing 15-year-old boy who disappeared from his home in Barrie on Thanksgiving Day after getting into an argument with his parents over his excessive use of the online WWII video game Call of Duty 4. The number of Canadian children and youth who disappear each year is growing at an alarming rate. According to Government of Canada Stats, 60,582 kids went missing in 2007 and of those, 46,189 were runaways. Steven Baird founder of Street Smart Kidz (www.streetsmartkidz.ca) offers the following tips for parents, to help prevent kids from running away from home.

Runaway Prevention Tips for Parents

Pay Attention
When your children are talking to you, listen. Don't just nod your head while you are watching television or reading the paper. Don't just pretend to listen to them.

Give respect
Acknowledge and support your children's struggle to grow to maturity. Understand. Try to sympathize with what your kids are going through. Look at life at least occasionally from their point of view. Remember that when you were their age, your ideas seemed to make sense to you.

Don't Lecture
All children hate to be lectured to, especially teenagers. Kids respond to clear information and direction, most of all when they know the questions they ask will be answered.

Don't Label
Throwing of useless labels will only confuse the real issues that you wish to address.

Discuss Feelings
Talk to your children about what you feel and allow your children to talk about their feelings too.

Create Responsibility
Give your children choices, not orders. Help them to understand the consequences of their actions.

Positive Praise
Describe your child's positive and negative behavior and how it affects others. Be specific and give praise to reward good behavior. Do this at least as often (if not more so) as you criticize behavior that you do not like.

Stop Hassling
Asking your child too many questions only shuts off information. Give them the opportunity to volunteer their thoughts and feelings, while you show sincere interest.

Don't Always Give the Answers
You want your children to be able to find their own answers or solutions to problems. You can help this by not giving them the answers all of the time.

Use Team Work
Work together with your child to lay out the problem then work together to find a mutually agreeable solution.

The Key Issue
You must tell your child that, NO MATTER WHAT, you will always love them.

Baird also stresses the importance of completing an I.D. Kit for each of your children. Though finger prints, DNA samples and photos by themselves will not keep your children safe, they will provide vital information if your child ever goes missing. There is a free kit available online at www.streetsmartkidz.ca. If you don't use that one, use another source, but just get one done!