Safety Lessons From A Three-Year-Old
"Mommy, you have to wear your seatbelt in the car."
"I don't talk to strangers. If I see a stranger I run away and scream."
"We wear helmet to be safe and to keep our heads from getting a big, big owie."
"You don't run in the parking lot because a car could squish you like a pancake or a cupcake."
These are some of the instructions that our three-year-old has been giving us lately. Granted, she's got a bit of a bossy streak going on right now, but she's also talking about some important safety issues. As with most things these days, she's picking this stuff up from school.
Project Protect at Preschool
Stranger danger. Traffic safety. Gun Safety. Sex abuse. No doubt, these are important issues that parents need to talk about with their children. But at preschool? I was surprised when a letter recently came home from our daughter's preschool informing us that those topics were part of the curriculum of something called Project Protect. Our three-year-old attends Maitland's Richard S Adler Early Childhood Learning Center at the Roth JCC. I'll admit that at first glance I was uneasy at the thought of these topics being discussed with my daughter. But then, I read on.
Motivated by statistics
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1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be abused before the age of 18
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60% of the abuse is committed by someone the child knows
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50% of households in U.S. have guns
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Every 24 hours, 100 children are seriously injured by guns
Carol McNally, Director of the JCC's ECLC, uses these statistics to explain to parents the importance of the Project Protect program. These are the scary things that we hope to protect our children from, but we know from the stats that, despite our best intentions, bad things can and do happen. So how do educators teach safety to children so young? McNally explains that they do it in ways that the kids can understand. She says that the curriculum is "non-threatening and non-frightening" and that it's handled "with age appropriate materials though puppets and stories and songs and just frank conversations."
Parents want to participate
Parents are given a choice about whether to allow their children to participate in the program. McNally says there was 100-percent participation in the program this year. In fact, she says it's very rare that parents opt out. To prep the parents for the program, the school offers a meeting in advance of the start of Project Protect and parents are invited to attend the puppet show that marks the culmination of the program. To ease any fears, McNally explains, "We tell parents that this is just part of children being empowered to take care of themselves. If you take the scary part out of it and just present it as factual, I think you take the fear out of it for parents."
About The Program
The curriculum varies by age group. With the younger kids (ages 2-3), the focus is on stranger danger and general safety issues - like hot stoves, electical outlets, medicine dangers, wearing seatbelts and crossing the street. As they get older, body rights are introduced. What does that mean? McNally says, "We begin to teach children that their body is their own and that no one has the right to touch their body and they have a right to say no. We talk to them about what the 'uh-oh feeling' is. We all know what that is - when you get that feeling inside your stomach that 'uh-oh' something doesn't feel right. And that's when you need to go find somebody and get help."
The program has been in practice for about 20-years at the school and Carol McNally says that little about the curriculum has changed. From year-to-year, the same safety rules still apply to today's children.
The program culminates in a puppet show. There are four parts to the puppet show - a stranger danger scene, an inappropriate touching scene, a gun safety scene and something called safety stew. The topics are presented with cute puppets who talk to the kids in child-like voices.
"We also talk about how to call 9-1-1. Children should know how to do that. Maitland always knows when we're doing Project Protect. They get some 9-1-1 calls," McNally says, chuckling. "But they need to know you can't just get on the phone and start to cry. What would you say if you called 9-1-1 because you needed help?"
Positive response
The other parents in our daughter's classroom felt the program was a good idea and said that their children were also coming home imparting knowledge about safety.
Samantha Taylor's son Aaron attends the JCC. She says, "Project Protect is a great program. You think about talking to your kids about strangers and inappropriate touching but who knows how to do it? And more importantly - when?"
Taylor added, "Aaron came home saying things like 'we keep our seat belt on' and 'if my ball goes over the fence I need a grown-up to help me'. These are things I probably never would have thought to say to him. They take the material and the messages they want to get across and find an age appropriate way to do it, in a way only educators can."
Eliza's teacher, felt the program was a sucess. Irene Wieder told me, "At first I was worried they wouldn't get it. But I'm so excited. They got it!" The program covers a lot of ground and continues for three weeks. Of the length of the program, Wieder said, "Three weeks was perfect. It would have been too much in a week." At the end of the program, the kids were "interviewed" about what they learned and their responses were written on a poster board that was posted outside the classroom. From the looks of it, the kids got the message!
About The School
The Richard S. Adler Early Childhood Learning Center at the Roth JCC of Greater Orlando is a nationally accredited institution. It's won the Nickelodeon Award for best preschool in Orlando the past two years.
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