Video Blog
Written Blog
Playing the ‘Stranger Adventure’ Game
You can teach your kid how to differentiate between safe and unsafe people by playing the “Stranger Adventure” game. In this game, which you can play with your child anytime, anywhere, you simply observe the people around you and talk about them. This isn’t about...
The 99.999+ Percent
99.999+ percent of the world is made up of people your child doesn’t know, and nearly every one of those gazillion people pose absolutely no threat to your child. Teaching her that strangers are not to be trusted can cause her unnecessary fear and anxiety when she...
Predator Repellant
The number one thing predators don’t want is to get caught. This is their biggest fear. Below is a list of things your child can do to repel predators. Predators are likely to be put off when your child: Walks confidently and with purpose. Taking up as much space as...
How Predators Groom Their Victims
Grooming is the main way predators manipulate their targets to gain their trust and then take advantage of them. Predators are pros at quickly assessing the strengths and weaknesses of their chosen targets and deciding which tactics will be the most effective for each...
Who Are These People?
If you’re going to protect your chipmunk from “predators,” it’s important to know who they are. Some people like to comfort themselves by believing that predators are complete monsters who lurk in the shadows, but in reality, they look like ordinary people and come...
The Benefits of Raising a Little Baby Badass
Throughout your darling’s childhood, he’s going to encounter tons of people, most of whom you both know fairly well—at daycare and pre-school, on play dates, at events, in your own home—and any one of them could be a predator. I don’t care how alert you think you...
A Word about Worry
I’m going to stop for a minute to talk about worry and how to release it because, frankly, it’s freaking you and your child out and it’s not making him any safer. While it’s important to be informed about the dangers your child faces, such knowledge is destructive...
Parenting in the 21st Century
Your world (today) isn’t even remotely close to the world I lived in when I was parenting back in the 80s and 90s. I’m not saying there weren’t school shootings and bullies to deal with, but it wasn’t, like, IN YOUR FACE EVERY SINGLE SECOND OF THE DAY, NO MATTER WHERE...
The World is Safer Today than When You Were a Kid—Yes, Really!
Nearly 90 percent of adults say they feel less safe than when they were growing up, even though today’s crime rates are at a level not seen since the early 1960s! So, if crime rates in the US and the world in general have gone down so dramatically, why do we remain...
The Awful, Horrible, Maybe Not Quite as Terrifying as You Thought Facts
When writing my book, Badass Parenting, I struggled mightily with how to present the facts about childhood danger without scaring you so badly that you’d put the book down and never touch it again. It’s hard to discuss subjects as harrowing as sexual abuse, bullying,...