ACCORDING to Missing Children South Africa, a child goes missing every five hours.
This chilling statistic should serve as a warning to every parent to take extreme preventative steps to ensure their children remain safe.
Listed below are seven tips to help keep you be on guard:
* Keep all lines of communication open between you and your children. Each child must know your cell phone number, home phone number and home address.
* Teach your children not to take anything from strangers. If a stranger offers anything to your kids, they must check with you first. In your absence, they must not accept it at all.
* Decline all job offers. Children are not likely to receive job offers, so consider it strange if your child does.
* Establish trust between you and your child. The best relationships between a parent and their children are when they trust you enough to share anything with you that makes them feel uncomfortable. It is important to know when something or someone is bothering your child.
* Make them understand you are not deliberately spying. Monitor all online activity and content.
* Speed and noise are key. If someone is chasing your child or forcing them into a car, the best reaction is to scream and make a dash for it, provided the attacker does not have a weapon.
* Establish a plan of action. In the event your child gets lost in a busy public space, they’ll know what to do or where to meet you.
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