6 guaranteed tips to keep your child safe at school.
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The safety of their children has always been the number one priority of every parent. Since it is a lot easier for parents to ensure that their children are safe when they are with them, it can be pretty daunting not to be able to do that, and yet balance the scariness of the situation with giving your children the right amount of freedom so that they can exercise safety measures and just learn and experience things on their own. Well, this balance can definitely be achieved, and on that note – let’s talk about different ways for you to ensure that your child is safe at school or preschool.
Be sure to understand school policies
First and foremost, when you are considering schools and preschools for your children, it is extremely important for you to do all the research that you can in order to ensure that it’s a safe place and that its policies provide that. And not only should you do this research once, in the beginning, but every year in case something is changed. So, be sure to know does the school handle emergency situations, as well as what rules students are expected to follow in those situations. Also, the policies against bullying, and if the visitors are allowed freely are information that you must have. This applies to Covid-19 regulations as well, which is of utmost importance these days!
Have regular conversations with your child
It is so important to have a trusting relationship with your kids since they are the ones that can tell you more than anyone else if something is off. So, initiate conversations, try to make them fun and informative, and not to make them an interrogation. Don’t disregard your child’s emotions and frustration, and always make them feel validated. You should always try to understand them to the best of your capability while staying patient.
Have regular conversations with the teachers
We have talked about having conversations with your children, but it’s also just as important to talk to the teachers. Besides you, they are the ones spending the most time with your kids and can tell you a lot about their interactions with other kids as well as their overall behavior when you’re not around, and hence can provide you with different tips on what can you work on with your children, and as experts from Early Learning Children’s Academy suggests, it can only help you in the long run. Also, if you have some important specific information about your child, regarding health, behavior, or anything else, it would be best that you inform the teacher about it.
Cover the basics
It would be for the best to provide your kids with certain information that would be of help, regarding possible emergency scenarios. Make sure that your children know their exact addresses, where and from whom to seek help if necessary, as well as the most important talk in the rule book – stranger danger, so, how and when to talk to strangers.
Use of technology
Since these days technology is already an inevitable part of our life and it is literally everywhere – you might as well make sure to exploit it and use it properly. Of course, it is entirely up to you if your kid is going to have a phone, but if you do decide that your kid will have a phone, make sure to help them understand how and when to call the emergency number. Make sure that they have all of the important numbers saved in their phone. Talk to them about the internet, make them understand how to interact with it, and the problems and dangers that it poses.
Pay attention
Last but certainly not the least, but by no means a hard task, just pay attention. You know your kid better than anyone, their sleeping routines, how much do they eat, are they active, what do they do in their free time and all of these behavior patterns form a baseline. So, if anything seems off, something that they are or aren’t doing doesn’t seem to match what they always do, be sure to talk to them. Find out if everything is okay. While in most cases it will be nothing, if there is any chance that something has actually happened and affected them in a bad way, it needs to be further investigated to ensure your child’s safety.
In the end, we all want the best for our children. As we have said, this really isn’t an easy job, but you surely will succeed, just be sure to follow up any warning sign or a red flag that comes up. Even though it’s scary to let your kid into the open world, it is also a beautiful thing knowing that you have given them everything in order to succeed in that world that you could.