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Personal-safety teaching

How you teach children to stay safe from harm by others: warnings about strangers, a trusted-adult plan, body-safety rules, or little explicit teaching.

How do we teach our child about personal safety and abuse prevention?

In short: Parents choose between 4 main approaches: "Stranger danger"; "tricky people" plus trusted-adult plans; Body-safety rules (names, no secrets); Little explicit teaching. Evidence: evidence leans one way. Research or guidance points in a direction, but it's thin, small or correlational. Best settled: preschool.

Evidence
Evidence leans one way
Best settled
Preschool
Part of
Raising the child

Personal-safety teaching: what are the options?

Parents usually land on one of these 4 approaches.

  1. 1. "Stranger danger"

    You teach the child to avoid people they do not know.

  2. 2. "tricky people" plus trusted-adult plans

    You teach the child to watch for adults who ask them to break rules or keep secrets, and who to go to for help.

  3. 3. Body-safety rules (names, no secrets)

    You teach correct body names, that no one touches private parts, and that secrets from parents are not okay.

  4. 4. Little explicit teaching

    You do not teach this directly.

Personal-safety teaching: what does the evidence say?

Evidence leans one way. Research or guidance points in a direction, but it's thin, small or correlational.

Professional opinion favors teaching behaviors to watch for, since most harm comes from known people

Sources

What else is worth knowing?

Most harm to children comes from people they know, so experts have moved away from stranger danger. Current teaching focuses on body rules, no secrets from parents, and adults a child can turn to. It is taught in small pieces over years.

Questions to ask each other

  • How did our parents teach us about safety?
  • What do we want our child to know about adults they can trust?
  • How will we start these talks without scaring them?

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First published 2026-10-03. Last updated 2026-10-05. General information, not medical advice.