Hellobee Boards

Would you consider teaching him to go to a neighbor’s house to ask for help? We live in a high rise building, but you can only access your own floor. I’ve instructed my LOs to either go bang on the neighbors’ doors on our floor or take the elevator to the lobby and get the security guard or another adult if I were somehow unresponsive.

My son is only 2, and I hope we don't need him to respond at this point... But I try to be prepared.

His nanny is older, and though she is in great shape and doesn't seem her age at all, I worry a little bit. So this is what I have been able to do so far.

-I have introduced him to our retired neighbor, she has dogs that he loves too, so it helps. I ask him where she lives all the time, I've talked to her about what we have taught him (before we taught him) and told her why we chose her (nextdoor, he knows her, he knows her dogs, her dogs love him and protect him).

I have preprogrammed my cell phone number into the speed dial on the house phone, and had him call me from it.

Basically I tell him if his nanny or mommy get a booboo and can't talk to him, he needs to call mommy (not helpful that I am the only speed dial but I don't know if he can remember which number goes to who). Also he needs to go get the neighbor. The neighbor has my cell phone, my husbands, and my sister's just in case.

DD is 3.5 - she knows her full name, my full name, DH's full name, and my mom's full name. She knows the town and state we live in, as well as our address and apartment number.

She knows how to get to the "favorites" section on both of our phones. We both only keep a few people in that section for the purpose of DD. All of them have a close up picture of their face as part of the contact so she can see who to call.

We currently live in a large apartment building with a full time office staff. She knows to go to the office or stand in the hallway and yell for help in an emergency. (Though this is of course all in theory, who knows what would happen on the moment).

911 has proven to be a challenge in our area if calling from a cell phone. She would, potentially, have to provide too much information to multiple people. So it seemed easier to teach her other options.

We are moving next week to a single family house in a new state so we are having to start over with most things. Obviously our phones will be the same and we will now live near family. She has learned our new address for the most part (I think it will be easier once we are out of our apartment to really drill her on it). We only have one close neighbor at the new house, who we haven't met, but I am hoping we could teach her to go there.

It's so hard to teach her what an emergency is, how to tell if it is a true emergency, and teach different responses for unknown situations. I hope you find ways to teach your DS that make you feel more comfortable. And I hope your DH is doing okay!

@DesertDreams88: I only have a house phone because it made my TV & internet bundle cheaper for some reason. I don't give the number out for anything except if my immediate family can't get a hold of us. It's also nice for if the nanny's cell phone isn't working right (it's not really the phone its that she's older and gets mad at it )

Maybe check with your cable and internet provider

My five-year-old has been in a couple of minor emergencies with me, and kept a very cool head, but I'm not sure how the dial 911 bit would work. Normally I keep the smartphone where the kids can't get it, because they can reprogram it with a few casual swipes and it will take me a while to even work out what they did. Maybe I should be better about keeping it in one (kind of hard to reach) spot, so he'd know where to find it. I like the idea about finding the neighbors, too. We don't know them that well, but well enough for an emergency.

@DesertDreams88: we started working with DD on these things at 2ish but a lot of really didn't take until closer to 3. But I think just constant repetition of things really helped.

DH and I also developed a "plan" - we have two daughters...so we discussed who gets who in the event of an emergency. And I shared with him some tips I have learned from my co-worker who is a firefighter...

This is making me think that it's time to talk about this again. My 3.5 year old knows his full name, parents, and brothers full name. He also knows that our doorman and the doormen of the neighboring buildings are "people to ask for help". He also knows that there are buttons in the elevator to push if you are stuck or need help. Our building is "fireproof" and it would actually be very dangerous to leave during a fire except if that fire is in your unit, the hallways might not have enough oxigen in them to breath even if they do not seem smoky. I spend a lot of time explianing that to babysitters.

We talk a lot about what to do if you get lost. Find someone in uniform (police, MTA employee, crossing gaurd) or someone who works in a store or 'other mommies/nannies' (a bit tricky) to help. I am slowly trying to figure out how to teach smart street sense to toddlers...

For those of you who have taught your kids to use your phone, do you not have a PIN on your phone? I keep my phone locked with a PIN to prevent my kids from accidentally getting into my work emails or deleting things. I'm just wondering if I should reconsider the PIN?

@lamariniere: I taught my 6yo how to use the emergency feature @Hypatia: mentioned. No way can I go without a pin right now. I ask her to show me when I remember and I also made a cheat sheet for the fridge (since she can read now, useless for my 3yo) with shots of each screen where the necessary part is circled in red. It also has all the address and contact stuff written out, she knows it but figure it can’t hurt.

@Hypatia: I added my favorites as a widget but I can’t seem to access them from the lock screen

@Hypatia: This is a great tip! Thanks! I've set up my phone.

@Hypatia: thank you so much!! I tired googling last night but I must’ve been too tired to search correctly!

There are some good tips here! I need to teach my almost 5 year old a little more. I went on her school field trip to the fire station and learned that if you dial 911 from a cell phone, even if your phone has no service, it will still bounce through different providers until it can put the call through- important in my area which has notoriously bad reception.

My daughter knows our address, parents fullnames, my phone number. But we don’t have a landline. I’ll put some people in my favorites now!

Thank you for all the tips everyone! These are great. We live in the city, so the thought of LO going on the street to find a neighbor kind of scares me. However, it has made me want to get an Alexa!

@T.H.O.U.: that is a great tip actually! My son doesn't have a tablet yet, but that is definitely something I'll do when the time comes. Or when I set up a user profile on my phone for his games, I can use it then too.

@Mrs. Carrot: Something I work on with my fourth grade students (health is the subject where this falls in our curriculum) is problem scaling. Rather than dwelling on specific examples of emergencies, maybe it would help your LO to talk about "levels" of problems. The tiers we talk about are:

-problems my students can solve themselves (e.g. "I forgot to wash my hands in the bathroom.")
-problems that can be solved with help from a peer (e.g. "I didn't hear the directions.")
-problems that can be solved with help from an adult (e.g. "I missed the bus.")
-problems that need adult help RIGHT NOW (e.g. "I fell and am bleeding.")
-problems that even an adult would need help with (emergencies)

Just saw this article, and it made me think of this thread.

https://www.scarymommy.com/toddler-saves-dad-facetime/