Fingerprint America is committed to providing tools for parents and community leaders to educate and protect our young. From our growing line of nationally acclaimed Child Safety Products to our online clearinghouse of safety information and links to helpful sites, we are dedicated to building strong, secure communities for the future.

If you have a question about protecting our children, send it and we’ll research an answer for you. Each month we will post as many responses to your questions as we can.  Also, watch our opinion column, designed to help us all keep questioning ourselves as we work to learn all we can to keep our kids safe.

August’s Preview

• Monthly Safety Tips:
• School Safety Tip: Know the Bus Driver!
• Personal Safety Tip: Making your Auto Safer for Youth
• Questions From Readers and Our Answers: Linking for Good in Cyberspace
• Statistics: Booster Seat Facts
• Open To Discussion - One Opinion: Help to Reduce Violence in Youth Sports
• Links

Click Here For Fingerprint America Identification Kits

Monthly Safety Tips:

School Safety Tip

School will be opening soon in many areas of the country. Many children will be learning how to ride a school bus safely, but this classroom lesson may not be until a few weeks into the school year. A parent sending a child onto a bus for the new school year should take the time to meet the bus driver. Learn his or her name, and let them know that you would like to hear about your child's behavior from time to time. Then follow up, be there to meet the bus once in awhile and question the driver about your child's behavior.

Also be sure to ask your child how safe they feel on the bus. Report to the office anything you hear from your child that disturbs you, whether the driver ran a light, didn't stop at the train tracks, or that there is a bully on the bus. If you only hear nice things about the bus trip, be sure to thank the driver occasionally too! Keeping this personal connection may relieve anxiety and may even help your child have a good adult community resource.

Tell Us What You Think! E-Mail (Unless you otherwise requested, we may publish any tips, questions opinions, etc. that we receive.)

Personal Safety

Hospitals now require that a newborn leave the hospital in a properly fitted car seat, but after that it becomes a parent's responsibility to track the height and weight requirements to ensure future protection. In the event of a car accident which leaves the adult unable to provide information about the infant passenger, it is a good idea to have marked the child's car seat with informative stickers that emergency personnel can rely upon. The WHALE program is designed to help parents and caregivers easily provide this added safety feature, and are available at FingerprintAmerica.com.

We don't leave matches within children's reach, and we guard them near water so they won't drown. Do we so readily ensure that our children must be buckled up properly in a car? While your child may have reached an age where she or he legally is not required to be seat belted, unless the child meets proper height and weight requirements your car seat belts are not adequate protection. Check the Statistics section listed below.

Questions From Readers and Our Answers

Question: It seems like my teenage son would rather be on the Internet all day than spend time with any relatives. I miss the personal interaction people seemed to have before all this e-mail. I worry that my son will be running into all kinds of indecent information and people if he spends so much time on-line. Just the fact that a site like Fingerprint America exists worries me - do you all believe there is so much danger in the world?

Answer: If it seems that the personal touch is missing from your life lately, too much time spent on technology, you are not alone. Something is happening in our culture, and it feels a bit like trying to clean out our closets as we attempt to organize and share all the information available. Yet the time and effort each organization puts into establishing a website takes the information a few people had hidden in file drawers and literally puts it out into the world for all to find, and learn from. The Web is transforming the way we can care for each other.

While the Internet has brought us new forms of stalking, new ways for child molesters to contact children, and new ways for privacy to be invaded that no one imagined when we were children, it also has given us the ability to unite concerned and caring people. There are so many decent and amazing sites available for good people to find each other, to learn from each other, and grow stronger by uniting. In the age-old battle of good vs. evil, this is a new age where so many people have access to learning and linking together. FPA will continue to help you find new links and new information to better protect and raise our children. Ask your son to spend some time "surfing" the Web with you, showing you all the amazing things he has found. It may relieve your fears. And you can show him you found us!

If You Have A Question or Answer, Let Us Know. E-Mail

Statistics

If your child is between 35 and 85 pounds, and is at least 35 inches tall then it is likely that he or she could be seriously injured if they are using just a regular seat belt. Many 8 or 9 year olds are taken out of boosters too early. To protect them adequately they need to be in booster seats to achieve proper positioning of your car safety belts. Lap belts need to fall below their abdomens, to fit snuggly over their hips. Shoulder belts should lie across the chest, away from the neck and lie smoothly.

Once a child is 4'10" they are probably able to fit into a regular seat belt without a booster.

Click here to view a Parent's Guide to Booster Seats.

Open to Discussion – One Opinion

"What the #@$&* is wrong with you? Why can't you catch the #@$% ball? I threw it straight to you!" screams a father on a Sunday afternoon. The child looks depressed, and longing stares at a few kids riding bikes. What is going on here? What is the point of this interaction?

For too many adults, how their children perform is a reflection on the quality of their parenting. Too many adults bring their own history of failures and broken dreams to rest upon their children's shoulders, a second chance to prove…something. Unfortunately, this is so pervasive in our society at this time that sports organizations are searching for ways to prevent parents from disrupting the climate of a sporting event, and trying to keep our children sheltered from the disturbing increase of violent outbreaks among the parents.

As adults, we are responsible for figuring out when our children are developmentally ready to join competitive team sports, which is often not until age ten, and we are responsible for being aware of who is coaching the team. Increasingly, parents are demanding that volunteer coaches have some minimal form of training, focusing on teaching the sport, and how to look beyond winning. And more and more often leagues are requiring parents to attend workshops on sportsmanship, so that the parents hear what is acceptable behavior at youth sporting events. While this may sound controlling, that is exactly the point, since the loss of control by adults is ultimately a frightening and shameful event that children need to be protected from.

To learn more, visit the National Alliance for Youth Sports at http://nays.org/ and a full length report on the topic here.

What’s Your Opinion? E-Mail

Links
Reminder to law enforcement and educators, what’s “old hat” to us may be startling safety advice for new parents. Keep repeating “the basics.” For safety advice for parents, CLICK HERE to link to Our Safety Tips. 

This newsletter was created for Fingerprint America. All rights reserved. Reprint with permission only.