How To Keep Your Kids Safe From Sex Trafficking
Any child, boy or girl, can be a potential victim of the sex trade occurring worldwide. However, some children are more vulnerable compared to the others due to their intact innocence and their lack of awareness of the dangers that lurk around them. Traffickers, commonly believed to be only men, are constantly on the lookout for new victims to be sold into the devious trade. And unfortunately, there are also a handful of women that have been contributing to the never ending supply of children in sex trafficking and human trafficking rings.
However, just educating them is not enough. They may very well just ignore all the things that you have to say in regards to such dangers around them and live in their own free world. This is where we as parents need to take strides to ensure that our children are indeed safe from the snares of sex trafficking.
5 Important factors to protect your kids
#1 Build A Home of Love
The basics always start at home. Be sure to cultivate a relationship with your kids that is based on love, trust and openness. Bring them up in a way that they feel comfortable sharing with you every aspect of your life, both good or bad. When they get a taste of such love and trust at a young age, they would be able to effectively distinguish between real acts of love and deceitful promises when they go out and deal with people from the real world, be it friends, colleagues or potential partners.
#2 Monitor Their Connections
Be sure to keep a close eye on their group of friends and the people that they hang out with. You should already know all the people your kid is friends with and also where each of them live. Try to get your kids to invite their friends over so that you’d be able to gauge the kind of clique that your child keeps. There have been some cases where victims of sex trafficking, especially teens, were sold to human trafficking groups by their own friends or boyfriends, so it never hurts to be extra cautious.
#3 Scan Their Social Media
From time to time, it would be great to sit down with your child or teen and get them to show you what they’ve been doing on social media. In order to do this, you will need to keep an open and judgement-free mind. Should you find that your teen has been talking to a possible sex trafficker, you should point out the red flags that your child may have missed, as calmly as possible, and show them how they should be dealing with such people they find on the Internet, should they have another such encounter in the future.
#4 Tell Them To Say No To Strangers
This one is a time-old tradition that we’ve been hearing since our grandparents were kids. Naturally, you should teach your kids not to talk to, approach or receive anything from strangers and people whom they barely know, even it is an acquaintance of yours. For much younger, school-going children, it may be worth to tell them to never accept rides home from anyone other than actual family members or designated drivers. You never know what kind of danger is waiting, even with a “friend’s parent”.
Be always aware to protect your kids
These steps may seem simple and you may be tempted to skip a few of them, thinking that your child may not need them. Such assumptions are extremely dangerous and irresponsible. Sex trafficking and human trafficking can happen at any time and it’s our duty as parents to do everything in our power to keep our children safe and sound.
Disclaimer:
The above is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute a legal advice or specific recommendations in any way.
