Why Play "What If..."?

Teaching your kids how to cross the street is no big deal. You give them rules, and help them practice until they show you they know what to do and can be trusted to do it.

We suggest you teach kids what to do if they get lost or are approached by someone questionable in the same way you teach them how to cross the street.

Our free Child Safety Kit shows you how to use the "What If…" game to teach your kids abduction prevention. You can teach your children how to:

• Assess a situation.
• Decide to seek help.
• Find a safe person to ask for help.
• How to ask.
• How not to be lured away.
• How to yell, "No!"

The best thing about the "What If…" game is that you can adapt it to your own life situation, and you can play it with children of all ages.

For example, when you walk into a grocery store with your child, you can ask, "What if you couldn't find me, who would you ask for help?"

Going through the exercise of actually choosing the right person to ask for help is an excellent way to establish brain patterns that can kick in if they are ever needed.

Scientific research shows that our brains work by pattern recognition. When an extremely frightening situation happens, human brains sort through their database for a "script" of actions taken previously. The brain that has more "scripts" can respond more quickly than a brain that has to process never practiced information.

That's why schools hold fire drills. Each time the kids get out of the building in a safe orderly fashion during a fire drill, their brains remember what they did and why. Actually going through fire drill practice is much more effective than only being told where the exits are and what to do in case of an emergency.

Our free Child Safety Kit shows you many ways to play the "What If…" game to teach safety to your child and create useful "brain scripts," in case an emergency happens.