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As our teenagers grow up, they are going to want more freedom, more independence, and less parent involvement in their social activities. However, with this increased freedom, comes the parent worry of “how do we keep our teenagers safe?”
Teenagers can be emotional, irrational, take risks and can challenge authority. All of which can be the typical development path teenagers. Despite this, these traits can make parents anxious about giving their teenager more freedom, especially outside of the home.
As a result, it is important that we try and support our teenagers to become more independent, but do so as safe a way as possible. There are a number of risks out there for teenagers and it is impossible to avoid all of them. But what we can do is create a plan and level of trust with our teenager to ensure they are as prepared as possible for the world around them, and the risks they may encounter.
Therefore, I wanted to put together a list of tips to help parents keep their teenagers safe when they are outside the home. These are all tips that I have seen be effective with multiple families with teenagers. You may not need to use all of these tips all of the time. However, I hope they prove helpful in offering some guidance of what parents can do to keep their teenager safe.
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1. Understand how much guidance your child needs
One of the first things I would advise a parent to do when thinking about keeping their teenagers safe, is to understand how much support their teenager will need. Some teenagers are very mature and street wise and may require little support. Other teenagers may not have the first clue of what to do in the outside world and may require a lot of safety planning.
You will know your child best. What are their strengths/weaknesses when it comes to looking after themselves outside the home? It is important for parents to know this, as this will dictate what action you need to take.
2. Establish the details
When you teenager comes to you with plans to go out on their own or with friends, it is important to establish the details with them. It makes it a lot harder for parents to keep their child safe if they have no idea what the child is doing, or where they are going.
Therefore, find out the key details of what your teenagers plans are. Where are they going? Who are they going with? How long are they going for? How are they getting there/getting home? What are they doing? The list can go on depending on how much support you think your teenager needs and how much you need to know.
Your teenager will likely see this as obsessive nagging or you just being nosey. However, these are all really important questions to have answers to before your child goes anywhere. Knowing this information allows you to do your own quick risk assessment and identify what needs to happen so you know how to keep your teenager safe.
3. Ensure there is a communication plan
Having a clear communication plan can be a central aspect when thinking about how to keep your teenager safe. We parents need to know we can contact our teenagers when we need to, and most importantly, they can contact us if they need us.
Therefore, before your teenager goes anywhere, ensure you have discussed and agreed a communication plan. Firstly, check that their phone is charged. Secondly, agree some check in times when your teenager will contact you to let you know everything is ok. Finally, insist on the communication plan being non-negotiable if they want to go out. Highlight it’s importance to your teenager, so they get into habit of maintaining contact regularly and as you see fit.
4. Safety planning
Safety planning is using your knowledge to help your teenager plan around any potential issues or risks. Furthermore, safety planning with your teenagers allows you both to get on the same page of what potential risks your teenager may be exposed to, and what to do if they are faced with them.
There are a number of factors that will impact how necessary a safety plan is. For example, where your child is going, who they are with or how familiar your teenager is with this place.
There are too many different types of safety planning strategies to cover everything entirely. However, a few examples of safety planning could be:
- If they are using public transport, what would the child do if there was an issue with the transport?
- If your teenager is approached by someone unfamiliar, what do they do?
- If they lose their phone or run out of money, what do they do?
- If they get lost, what should they do?
Again, this is why it is important to establish the details of your teenagers activities, so you can appropriately safety plan and educate your child as much as possible.
5. Building trust
As our children grow up and become teenagers, our relationship with them will change. What was once a dictatorship, whereby parents would largely control most of their child’s life, swiftly changes to more of a democracy. With the teenager wanting to make their own choices and have a say in the restrictions placed upon them.
Therefore, it is important that we try and build a level of trust with our teenagers. Trust can be mutually built by both parties doing what they say they are going to do.
For example, you may agree with your teenager that if they arrive back home on time and follow all the rules you set, next time they go out you can trust them more and set fewer rules. If either of you go back on what is agreed, that trust can be damaged and cause further issues with compliance.
As parents, try and find opportunities to build trust with your child. If they are complying with you, reward them and praise them for their cooperation. The best form of reward for teenagers, is usually more freedoms. It is mutually beneficial if you know you can trust your teenager to follow your rules, as you know they are keeping themselves safe and the teenager benefits in the long run, as they may have fewer restrictions placed upon them.
6. Coordinate with other parents
If your teenager is venturing out of the home with a group of friends, it can often be an effective safety measure to coordinate with the parents of their friends.
Let’s be realistic, teenagers can be crafty and what they say they are doing and what they are really doing, can be two very different things. Therefore, speaking with the parents of the other teenagers to clarify plans, share contact details or ensure you are working together to keep your teenagers safe, can make it a lot harder for them to outwit you!
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7. Trial runs
If your teenager is going somewhere new, or doing something different, it can be helpful to do a trial run with them before they do it independently. For example, your teenager may be going into a town or city by themselves for the first time. There can be a lot of potential risks around such an activity.
Some teenagers may even have a lot of anxiety about being on their own or taking care of themselves in an unfamiliar environment. Therefore, having an opportunity to be with their parent, become more familiar with a place or activity, identify what the risks might be and advise your teenager with how they should respond, can increase their confidence to keep themselves safe.
For example, you may travel with them on public transport if this is new to them. Show them where to get the transport, how to pay and how to get home. All of which would ease both the anxiety of the parent and the child!
8. Have clear rules and expectations
When trying to keep your teenagers safe, parents must give a lot of thought to the rules and boundaries they place on their teenager when outside the home. These rules need to be clear and consistently applied. Whilst teenagers may fight a lot of the rules we put in place, they need them!
An effective way of implementing clear rules and expectations, is by highlighting the benefits of compliance to them. For example, letting them know that complying with what you ask now and building that trust, will enable you to reduce the number of rules in future.
For instance, you may set a rule that your teenager needs to check in with you every hour to let them know they are ok. If they comply with this each time they go out over a number of occasions, you may agree to reduce this to 2 hours, as a result of your growing confidence that they are keeping themselves safe and you can trust them more. If these rules are broken, you can go the other way and introduce more restrictions. Ultimately, if they don’t like it, they don’t go out.
Whatever rules you set, stick to them and make sure they all in place to keep your child safe. Have consequences ready if your teenager does not comply and rewards planned if they do as asked.
9. Back up contact details
A minor point, but an important one. Where possible, try to have back up contact details on hand of anyone accompanying your teenager, or of any venue/location they may be going to. You may even ask for the contact details of any friends parents, if they are with their friends.
This is to ensure that if there are any issues with your teenager’s phone, you still have a means of contacting them. Equally, you could ask your child to keep a copy of your own phone number, separate to their phone, so they can still access your number and contact you in an emergency.
Small details, but could be a big help if any problems arise. Far too often have I worked with parents, who have had teenagers lose their phone when out with friends and have no idea where they are or what they are doing.
10. Follow up discussions
Follow up discussions with your teenager after they have been out, can be a useful way to understand how effective your arrangements are for keeping your teenager safe. Whether it have been successful or unsuccessful, explore the reasons why and if anything has to change.
If your child is successfully complying with your rules, keeping themselves safe and there a few issues, your follow up conversation may be a one based around praise and reinforcing this behaviour.
On the other hand, if problems are emerging or your teenager is not complying, you may need to discuss what has to change to address this.
These conversations can help your stay vigilant as a parent, as it is important to remember that some risks are hidden and our children may not realise a hidden risk is around them. Discussing the activities of our teenagers out the home allow us to add an extra layer of vigilance and helps us avoid complacency.
Summary
Being a parent of a teenager is not about avoiding every possible risk. Risk is a part of life and part of teenage development is about experimenting and pushing boundaries. However, parents must balance this with also keeping their teenagers safe from harm, or better yet, educating our teenagers to keep themselves safe.
All teenagers are different, some may need a lot of guidance, some may adapt very quickly. Some parents may need to use all these strategies, others may think they are overboard and they couldn’t imagine needing to use them.
In my experience working with parents, I have met parents on both ends of this scale. One common theme is that regardless of how well you think your teenager can cope, no teenager is immune to risk or things going wrong.
If you have tips of your own, please leave them in the comments below for other parents!
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