Abduction Awareness—Protect Your Children

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Protect Your Children (NAPSA)—Asyou prepare to send your child back to school, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has some powerful information for families that can help keep children safer. NCMEC has analyzed more than 9,000 confirmed attempted child abductions by someone unknown to the child. While these abductions are rare, important patterns emerged during the nineyear analysis, including the fact that many attempts took place when children were going to and from school—and that most children who escaped an abduction ran, screamed or pulled away. There are potentially lifesaving skills thatall children should learn. Using the insights gleaned from this analysis—for example, most children were offered rides or candy by their would-be abductors—NCMEC has teamed up with Honeywell to develop an innovative program called Kid Smartz’. It uses tips, role-playing, video animations, song and dance to give kids the knowledge and confidence to avoid abduction. KidSmartz.org teaches children four important rules: Always check with a parent, guardian or other trusted adult before going anywhere; take a friend along; tell people “NO”if they try to touch or hurt you; and tell a trusted adult if anything makes you feel uncomfortable. For the attempted abduction analysis, visit www.missingkids. org/attemptedabductions. To help your children understand and remember the safety rules, visit www.KidSmartz.org.