Do you have a family codeword?

For most people codeword may seem like something only used in military. If soldiers are ever captured and forced to do a video tape, they can say the codeword, blink their eyes, tap their fingers, or do anything in certain patterns to let military know that they are in danger without being noticed by the captors. Actually, setting a codeword (or code signal) is something every family should do as well.

Is it necessary

While we’ve all taught our kids stranger danger: not to talk to/ walk away with people you don’t know, but is it enough? A recent social experiment comes up an overwhelming result to parents: 7 out of 10 kids are willing to walk away with a complete stranger because he offers to show them more puppies. This experiment shows how easily kids are lured and all it takes a kidnapper to do is holding a cute puppy! That’s why every family needs to have their own codeword set.

In a kidnapping case few years ago, the kidnapped girl actually had the chance to talk to her parents on the phone, not only once, but twice. However, her parents didn’t get the message she was trying to signal and she was murdered in the end.

What I do in my family

I’ve been teaching the importance of family codeword to my kids since they were little. We set up both codeword and code phrase just in case it is needed in different situations. Our codeword is “the magic wardrobe”, which is from The Chronicles of Narnia. They were very into that movie when we tried to find a codeword suitable for us, so we decided to use something related. It’s great to set up family codeword this way because it helps them memorize. Finding ideas from songs is another good way to set up your own family codeword. For family code phrase we have “love ya mom/dad”, which they don’t normally say it this way, so it’s not so obvious that they are asking for help.

One time I had too much work and couldn’t pick up my kids from school on time. I asked my colleague (my kids didn’t know him very well) to pick them up and told him they would expect you to say a “codeword”. He thought it was weird to do so when he heard it, but after my explanation of the necessity of having family code word he decided to set one up as well.

Our kids safety is prior to anything else. Other than family code word you should also teach them more about lures used by strangers and keep the communication lines open as they grow up having more accesses to the internet world.