A clip of Loose Women (the talk show for those who are unfamiliar with it - and nothing else!) in which they talk about a course aimed at children to prevent abductions reminded me of all the times I'd been taught as a child to be wary of strangers. As a child, we didn't have any courses as such - which was odd considering the number of child abductions and murders that were going on at that time - but we did often get one of the local police officers come into our school to give us talks (we also had the firefighters come in to talk to us about fire safety.) This would then be followed with further instructions from our class teacher or head teacher which would include videos that we'd have to watch. Though thankfully nothing too scary! Then of course there were all those public information broadcasts that we used to get during the commercial breaks. Oh and of course our parents would always be telling us not to talk to strangers; accept sweets from strangers; get into cars with strangers etc.
How were you taught about the dangers of strangers and what to do should you find yourself in a dangerous situation? And furthermore, do you think that being taught about the dangers of the world made you aware and alert as a child... or downright fearful?
I grew up mainly in the Far East and we didn't have any ads on the telly, as far as I can recall, and neither did we have anyone come into our schools to talk to us about 'stranger danger.' It was very different though for my cousins who were living in Britain and I know such matters crossed the minds of my aunts and uncles many times. Now that I'm a mother myself of children who are born and raised in the UK, I've also been more aware of teaching my children about the dangers of interacting with strangers since they were tiny. I'm lucky because we live in a relatively safe area where such incidents are virtually unheard of but that doesn't mean of course that you shouldn't be careful.
I also grew up in an area that was quite safe and crime was virtually unheard of. Most of the pickpocketing, handbag thefts, carjackings and so forth seemed to take place in the bigger cities. One thing my dad was afraid of was that as a British national, his children might be at risk of being kidnapped so he put measures in place to limit the possibility of that happening but thankfully such incidents didn't even come close to occurring.
I don't remember any of those adverts that a lot of you are talking about. I grew up in the nineties so maybe by then they'd stopped doing them. 🤔 But I do remember the policeman coming into our school to warn us about getting into cars with strangers and things like that. I only ever remember him coming into the school once though. That can't be right. You'd have thought that an officer would have come in at least once a year.
As far as “stranger danger” goes, I have two fairly mediocre stories, but that's all I can think of, nothing too sinister.
I recall at school sometime in the late-60s/early-70s (in Sydney, Australia) aged about 7-8-9, somewhere about those ages, a policeman came to the school warning us about being beware of strangers. I think he handed out some leaflets and maybe we saw a film, I’m not too sure.
However, not long after this, it could have been days, weeks, months (very hard to remember) I was walking home (about a 10-minute walk) with about three other kids and we saw two men standing beside the road with a camera on a tripod. One of them asked us kids to walk across the road and they were going to film us. We looked at each other and decided we best not do this as they were “strangers”, so we refused. The two men then said something to the effect of, all you have to do is just walk across the road, that’s all; but we still refused and walked off.
Looking back, I’m certain it was nothing sinister, probably just a TV crew or something looking for some footage of kids crossing a road. But it's always stuck in my mind.
Another time, around the same “era”, for some reason a kid at school gave me a 20-cent piece, decimal currency had just come out in Australia, and a shiny new 20c piece was a big deal, to a kid at least. When I got home, I showed it to my mother and she “hit the roof”, telling me that some strange man had given it to me, she didn’t believe my (true) story about the kid giving it to me. That one still boggles the mind, both her reaction and the fact she didn’t believe it was a kid that gave it to me.
I grew up in the eighties and it was pretty standard to have talks in school and have a police officer join us for assembly giving us advice for what to do, answer our questions and we had role play situations and things like that. I'm not a parent so no idea if they still do things like that but if they don't, they ought to.
I know we like to romanticize about the past but if we were brutally honest, we weren't living in perfect times. I'm a child of the 70s and we had more than our fair share of child abductions, serial rapists, serial killers and all sorts that we really don't want to think about. But that said we still played in the street, went to the shops on our own to spend our pocket money, went to school by ourselves, walked over to our friends houses etc. And it did us a lot of good. Can you imagine how we'd have turned out if we'd been mollycoddled?
But of course our parents educated us on potential dangers and what to do. We knew which places to avoid, what to do if we got lost, to be home before a certain time etc. We did have talks at school where we learned all the usual things about not accepting sweets from a stranger or getting into cars or into homes of people we don't know. We even had to practice being able to give descriptions of people and vehicles. And of course I absolutely remember all those TV broadcasts teaching us to stay safe. Thankfully I never had to put any of that advice to good use. And my local area was no playground!
I agree with Donnabella. We both grew up in the same area and my parents were the same. they warned us about dangers and told us what to do, the kind of people to go to and things like that. My mum always taught me that if I was lost, I was to go into a shop and ask and not ask people on the street. Growing up I memorised our home phone number in case I needed to call my parents. Mobile phones were still a long way off! But despite the dangers I'm glad that my parents raised us to be independent and allowed us certain freedoms as we grew older. Keeping us locked up inside the house would not have been the answer.
The area I grew up in was hardly the safest area of London. But that said my mum didn't try to wrap me up in cotton wool or anything. My parents knew it wasn't the answer and knew I'd have problems as I got older if they did that. So they taught me what to do and gave me the right skills to know what to do if ever I was approached by anyone dodgy. Plus as we had lots of family and friends in the area, we were quite confident that there was always someone who'd be able to help if either me or my siblings needed it. In any case I was hardly ever on my own, as I was always hanging around with my little group of friends.
LOL! In the town I grew up in, everyone would know if they saw some stranger hanging around so they really wouldn't stand a chance! LOL! We all pretty much knew whose kid was whose so if we saw anything that looked odd, someone would be sure to ask questions. But the place I grew up in was quite safe and I don't remember anything terrible happening. Were we given instructions about what to do if approached by a stranger? Maybe but I don't really remember. I do know we were given lots of instructions about what to do if there's a fire and stuff like that.
I do remember some of those public safety adverts that were shown in the eighties. My mum says there used to be a lot more on during the eighties. Apart from the ones about being approached by strangers there were ones for other safety issues like what do if there's a chip pan fire or if there's a gas leak. I don't remember us having police officers come to our school but we were given talks either in class or during assembly. It may not have been the nicest topic to talk about but it definitely beat another rendition of Morning Has Broken! 😀
I definitely remember those short films that used to be shown about safety whether it was at home, on the street etc. I wonder what happened to them. In more recent years I haven't seen these kind of films. My children have certainly never watched anything like that warning them about the dangers of getting into a stranger's car and so on. Luckily that's what they have me and my husband for. And also I know they've had talks at their school from the teacher.
But yes in my day, I do remember all of the above!