Education and Talking to Your Children is the Best Way to Avoid Child Abduction

Child abduction is a serious issue in our society today. According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), a child goes missing every 40 seconds in the U.S.  That's over 2,100 per day and in excess of 800,000 children are reported missing each year.  What's worse is that another estimated 500,000 go missing without ever being reported.

Why so many missing children? 

To understand why there are so many that go missing we need to understand the various forms of child abduction which include parental abductions, runaways, lost or injured children and abduction by strangers.

Parent abduction is the most common kind of abduction and occurs primarily when parents separate or begin divorce proceedings. In a study performed for the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention it is was reported that in 53% percent of parental abduction the child was gone less than one week and 21% were gone one month or more.   An alarming and growing concern is Internet abduction. A recent study showed that 1 in 4 youth received aggressive sexual solicitations that included attempts to contact or meet offline.   Due to these alarming statistics there have been many efforts to help prevent child abduction including the use of;

Child Id Kits
Photo Id card
ID bracelets
ID wristbands
GPS monitors
And even Cell Phones

Additionally, social networks such as MySpace have partnered with Enough is Enough and National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to help keep the Internet a safe place for children and teens.

But is it enough? We need to educate both our youth as well as our parents on how to prevent child abduction.

The best way to accomplish this is through a new DVD called Kids and Strangers: [http://www.KidsNStrangers.org]

This 60 minute DVD is ideal for kids, teens & adults and covers topics from Going to school and playing on the playground to texting and chatting online to parent tips and family talks.

As a society we have taken the rights steps toward helping to eliminate child abduction. We have created Amber Alert, Jessica's Law, Megan's Law & numerous other child laws. But think about it, each of these laws is named after a deceased child and aimed at the 2,000 juveniles, each day, who are victims of child abduction.

Let's stop naming laws after our children and start doing something to prevent these tragedies from happening. Let's start educating our kids and parents...