Guidelines for Creating a Safe and Caring Home
Creating safe, caring, participatory and responsive homes is one of two important steps we can take to promote socially and emotionally healthy children. The other is teaching children core social emotional skills, knowledge and beliefs.
The purpose of these guidelines is to help parents create positive environments for all children, helping them become confident and independent individuals and learners. In addition to teaching and learning of core social-emotional skills, knowledge and beliefs, we must help children feel safe and connected to their environment. These feelings are an essential element keeping children engaged in the educational process and sensitive to the needs of others.
First and foremost, children need to feel safe. There is a hierarchy of "feeling safe," the most fundamental level of which is physical safety. If we don't feel safe from physical threat or injury, children and adults alike are anxious and unable to attend to social and or emotional concerns, the second and third levels of hierarchical need. Social safety refers to an interpersonal sense of being safe from verbal abuse, teasing and/or threats. Emotional safety refers to an internal sense of being safe.
Understandably and appropriately, parents (and teachers) are first and foremost focused on issues of physical safety. To the extent that physical safety is not present, it will undermine our ability to function, to learn and to teach. However, in order to feel safe and connected to their environment, children need to know that they are free not only from physical harm but also from forms of verbal/social aggression, be it bullying or sexual or emotional threats. In recent years, more and more schools have developed anti-bullying programs. To what extent - if at all - is there any bullying in your home?
Establishing meaningful relationships between children and adults increases the likelihood that students will feel comfortable sharing their safety concerns with caring adults.Students who feel "connected" and safe at home - and also at school -- are less likely to use substances or initiate sexual activity at an early age on the one hand and report higher levels of emotional well-being on the other hand (Resnick, et. al, 1997; Eccles, et. al, 1997; Steinberg, 1996).