The little girl’s parents had a brilliant system in place to ensure she would always know when someone was genuine or not when they were picking her up
The thought of your child being approached by a stranger with nasty intentions is every parent’s worst nightmare.
The horrible truth is that there are people out there who will tell lies to vulnerable youngsters to trick them into going off with them – and your little ones might not realise what’s really going on. An 11-year-old girl was walking near a park with her friend just outside Phoenix in Arizona when she was approached by an unfamiliar man in a white SUV.
He told her that her brothers had been in a serious accident and was instructed by her parents to come and pick her up. The little girl used this brilliant stranger danger trick to see if he was telling the truth – and it might have saved her life. She asked the man whether he knew the “code word”.
This was a prearranged word agreed by her parents in case they needed somebody else to come pick her up. The man didn’t know the word and drove away. “Kudos to the parents of this child for having a code word and talking … to their children about stranger danger,” Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb said to USA Today. “We hope by putting this out, it will encourage parents to have that conversation and create a plan with their children, so they know what to do if they are in that situation.”
The “safe word” or “password” system is also backed up by The Morcombe Foundation – a foundation set up by the family of Daniel Morcombe, who disappeared from the Sunshine coast when he was 13. The Morcombe Foundation has other preventative strategies, including making a list of five trusted adults, having a family password, not sharing information about yourself, being observant and not to go off alone.
