How To Keep Your Kids Safe When You're At Work During The Holidays

The maths clearly doesn't mount up. Even if both dad and mom take their leave at different times, they'll still must discover alternative care arrangements for youngsters. Older kids will expend days in your house unsupervised.

How would they occupy their time?

Leaving young people at your home raises questions and concerns for folks. How long are they going to be in your house alone? How can I ensure their safety? How do they really occupy their time? What if someone concerns the house? Should I allow them to leave the property during the day to see a friend? How secure will the property be?

Based on our soon-to-be-published findings on young offenders and previous research into security alarm (particularly burglaries), those tips listed here may provide guidance for concerned working parents during school holidays.

Most burglars reported they can be motivated by opportunity and convenience. They look for unoccupied homes with open doors and windows in daytime. Teach your young ones how to operate door locks, ensuring back and front doors stay locked. But keep keys in locked doors in the event they need to exit quickly.

Most burglars avoid homes whenever they detect someone is there. So we have a fine line between making the property occupied, while ensuring children will not open doors to strangers. Ensure your sons or daughters know your rules on letting someone in your own home without your permission or answering the doorway to anyone they don't know. Have a plan on tips on how to respond to this.

Suggestions:

• ensure children know how you can phone triple 0 in the case of an emergency. Write down your individual's name, address and cell phone number and keep it with the phone. Kids (and adults!) can panic in emergencies and begin to forget basic details



• write down a responsible available person's number for anyone who is at a job that cannot take phone calls



• create a household "phone book" with each family member's particular friends. Make sure you understand the names and speak to numbers of their closest mates. That way should anyone ever lose your youngster or they tend not to return you then have a starting point to phone their friends



• limit time spent online and install security software that permits you to monitor online activity and prevent online predators.

Keeping children beyond trouble during holidays

While most parents believe their children would never participate in antisocial behaviour, having less supervision, structure and boundaries during school holidays may lead some children to push boundaries and even break legislation, particularly when encouraged by peers.

Our interviews, future released, with children who was simply charged with an offence indicated they committed the burglary during daylight in the company of friends as well as consumable items.

Very few actually "planned" their offences. Most just saw the means (goods left on display, doors and windows left open) as they definitely were roaming the streets trying to find something to try and do. And often these were responding to dares by friends. The most common tactic to discover whether to burgle a house was in order to knock on the threshold to see if someone was a student in.

So, if your kids is capable to go out during your school holidays, below are some parameters you can look at for their safety:

• agree on times they could be outside when you're not home (and limit extended periods of your energy)



• agree on where they can be allowed to go - locations provide pseudo-supervision (including shopping centres) are better than long periods of street-wandering



• make sure they've known not to go near people in cars who pause to talk to them (don't approach the automobile even if the body's speaking quietly). Explain that a majority of adults usually do not ask younger people for help - they generally ask other adults - so children should be wary of assisting adults when these are alone



• instead of telling children never consult strangers, tell them as long as they need help to watch out for a mother with children or get into a public place (such as a shopping centre) and request help



• notice if your youngster seems to have excess funds or new items in the home. Investigate further when they tell you they've been "given" or "loaned" something from a buddy



• notice whenever they seem quiet or reluctant to let you know how they have spent their day.

If you've allowed your kids to leave the property when you're not there, you will still find things to consider if they return to a vacant house:

• have a lockbox for spare keys to allow them to re-enter the house (10% of burglars reportedly entered a property with keys left in easily detected locations)



• given burglaries in many cases are committed during daylight, teach children undertake a quick "sweep" door and not to ever enter if something looks outside of place (including a door that is certainly now open or perhaps a damaged fly screen)



• ensure they phone you and other responsible adult whenever they return.

By following the following tips you can help keep your youngster safe and outside of trouble when leaving them alone over the holidays. Explore further

This article is republished from The Conversation with a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.