"Although the question is phrased as 'how to teach kids not to talk to strangers while also teaching them to have good manners,' I think the question could be how to teach our kids to talk to others safely.' What I mean by this is, arming our children with language and choices about who to talk to and when to talk to others, in order to keep them safe. Our job as parents, in a world that is often unsafe and unpredictable, is to lay a solid foundation early, so that our children will gain the competence to make good decisions about safety as they grow.

"Teaching skills for assessing a situation and negotiating safety rather than setting up absolute rules for safety can begin when our children are very young. If we simply say, 'don’t talk to strangers,' there may be certain people that befriend our children who no longer fit into the 'stranger' category but who could be harmful to our children. In addition, there may be a family member who our child is not familiar with so they believe that person is a 'stranger' and will not be polite to them. It is therefore best to identify for our children the adults in their life who are 'safe.' Explain that it is even okay to be friendly to someone that we don’t know if we are with Mom, Dad or another 'safe' adult, because they are there to protect us. We can help children understand that they must never speak alone with someone they do not know or go with them unless they have been given permission by that “safe” adult who has been identified for them.

"When we talk about stranger danger with our children, it is an excellent time to develop good communication patterns by making it feel comfortable to talk with us or another 'safe' adult, to express any fears or concerns that your child may have. Establishing these open lines of communication early will be beneficial, as your child becomes a teenager. If those effective patterns of communication are established it will be easier to discuss risky behaviors and other safety concerns with our children as they grow. In turn they will have gained the assessment and communication skills they will need to keep themselves safe from strangers and other dangers."

Anyone have questions for Joan about this? Let me know by posting a comment, and I'll try to get her answer. (Or maybe she'll log on and answer herself in a comment.)