Parents may be a little anxious about their child’s first day at school: will he or she adapt to school life away from home? Will he cry? Will the teacher criticize the child if he wets his pants? Will he get along with other children? Will he be bullied? Will he be able to protect himself? …… It is true that kindergarten is the first step of socialization for children, and it is a big challenge for children to leave home for the first time to live in a group. Challenges are always coming, so it is important to be prepared. In addition to this, safety issues cannot be avoided. Today, we will talk about some of the safety issues that we must talk about with our children in kindergarten. 1. Be sure to protect the most vulnerable parts of the body In kindergarten, children may clash with each other and cause physical collisions. When children enter kindergarten, they may encounter children who are a little taller and more dominant than they are. If the child is thin, he or she is more likely to be bullied by older children. Sometimes, the child will hit without severity and the small child may be injured. To prevent and mitigate injuries when children get into fights, parents need to show their children how to protect themselves. Self-protection starts with knowing your own body. We need to tell our children which parts of the body are the most vulnerable and how to protect them. For example, you can tell him that the head, or the head, is one of the most vulnerable parts of our body. On the head grow our eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. Then ask him, what are the eyes for? How about the nose? What about the mouth? What about the ears? Don’t forget to praise your child if he can accurately say what the five senses do. Then follow up by asking the child, “The head is so important to us, so should we protect it?” Let your child know: protect your head, jaw, and ribs. A hard blow to the head can cause you to get dizzy. If someone taps their head, make sure to block it with your hand and say loudly, “No!” The jaw and ribs are the more vulnerable areas of a person, and an external blow to an untrained person can easily result in fractures and injury to internal organs. To minimize the damage, know how to ask for help, or run away, as far as you can. Be sure to tell an adult about this afterwards. 2, injured, be the first to tell the teacher, and can cry Children are naturally active, and it is very common to be injured in kindergarten. After a child is injured, especially bleeding and pain, most of them will not handle it by themselves. At this time, the teacher’s assistance is very important. In today’s kindergartens, one teacher has to take care of more than 6 children. So the teacher is not able to keep an eye on every child all the time. If a child accidentally gets hurt while playing by himself/herself, for example, if he/she falls and bumps, or gets stabbed by a pen or other pointed object; or if he/she gets hurt or even bleeds because of a conflict while playing with the children. Tell your child not to be nervous at this time, and to make sure to tell the teacher quickly. If it is a leg injury and you cannot walk around and you are far from the teacher, you can seek protection from the teacher by crying out. Perhaps when a child is injured at home, some parents will tell their child that it’s okay, be brave, be strong, and don’t cry. And some children are more naive, act withdrawn, and don’t know how to ask for help. But when a child is starting kindergarten, crying because he or she is hurt is a good way to get the teacher’s attention and gain protection. It is a risky thing to stay silent and not get the teacher’s attention because you are afraid or strong. Of course, you should also tell your child that if he sees another child hurt, he should also quickly run to the teacher and help him relay the injury to the teacher. That way, the teacher can quickly come over and help him with the wound. 3.I don’t go with strangers We know that kindergartens usually register parents who pick up and drop off their children before they enter the school, and non-immediate relatives also need to submit photos to keep on file. Therefore, in general, there is no need to worry about your child going with strangers. However, if the parent who usually picks up the child does not arrive at the end of the school day because of work or other reasons, the parents should call the teacher to tell the child and give the child a “no strangers” vaccination in advance. Let your child know that only those people come to pick him up every day, and that if it’s someone else, even if it’s an uncle or aunt in the neighborhood, don’t go with them without your mother’s permission. The world we live in is not a fairy tale kingdom, but there are many crises lurking. It is important for children to follow the rules of self-protection, which may seem a bit stubborn, but for the sake of children’s safety, what’s the harm in being stubborn? 4. Don’t just touch me In kindergartens, children are sexually abused from time to time. Even if the kindergarten teachers your child attends are very good, you still need parents to do some necessary sex education to help him build a proper awareness of sexual safety. First of all, tell your child what are the private parts that belong to them. You can tell your child, as in “The Story of the Little Penis”, that the private parts of our body are not to be touched by others. In the bath, parents can first demonstrate to the child how to clean, and later let the child to clean their own private parts. When urinating and defecating, go to the private space – the bathroom to solve. When urinating and defecating outside, do not let the child’s penis exposed in public. In this way, the concept of private space is implicitly internalized in your child, so that he or she can develop the habit of protecting his or her private parts. Then, remind your child: in kindergarten, if you take a nap or wet your pants, and the teacher takes off and changes your child’s pants or washes your child’s body, you can tell the teacher that I wash my own penis; if an adult touches your private parts, you can also say “no” loudly and stay away from him. However, the probability of sexual abuse in regular kindergartens is still very small, so parents do not need to be too anxious. In fact, safety education for children is not only for kindergartens, but also for society as a whole, just because kindergarten is the beginning of children’s entry into society, that’s why we start talking about it here. — Children who enter kindergarten already have the ability to understand and follow safety rules. Then, let your child build safety awareness and know strategies for self-protection from the time he or she enters kindergarten. Some safety issues in daily life, such as not touching sockets with hands, not touching boiling water bottles, not climbing windows, etc., can also be appropriately taught by parents to their children.