Strangers...

Well...I had the "talk about strangers" yesterday with Ben. It went well. He got the idea a lot quicker than I expected.
Recently there have been some incidents around here locally where strangers may or may not have been trying to grab a child around some of the schools. You never hear about stuff like that in this town so it was surprising to everyone to hear about 2 recent incidents. The police are on the case and everyone is on a heightened level of awareness so everyone feels safe. But I thought it was time for me to bring up the subject with Ben.
I kept it light and I didn't want to scare him or anything. But we did talk about what to do if someone asks him to get in a car or go in their house and he doesn't know them. We kind of made a game of it where I asked him all kinds of scenarios and he would yell out "RUN AWAY!" We also talked about "safe houses" around the neighborhood where he can go if he's not around the house. Houses like our neighbor's houses or friend's houses.
It kind of saddened me that he's 4 and we were already talking about this, but I felt it better to introduce the idea. Besides, he's like my second shadow, or I am to him. Right now he's hardly ever out of my sight.
Still though...someday he will be. Better to talk about it now rather than later.