No not because I am in any trouble and nor are either of my children. I have been working on developing relationships with the police for my youngest daughter. For some unknown and bizarre reason she has developed what can only be described as a phobia of police. She is constantly talking about them and seems quite nervous and when I asked her why she was doing that she said she did not want them to come and take her away from me!!!
My dad is a retired policeman and still works as a civilian in my local police station so I arranged for us to visit him today to try to help Savannah deal with her fears. It has worked a treat I think. We spent about an hour there and everyone we met was completely awesome. She got to see inside a police car and put the blue lights on, she got to see 3 different kinds of police hats but would not wear them!!! She got to pick up a stab vest (or try to have you ever felt the weight of those things!!!) and she saw a pair of handcuffs up close. She got her fingerprints done and generally was shown around. She got some high visibility stickers to take away with her and my eldest daughter now wants to be a scenes of crime officer (or CSI officer as they are now called) and get into forensic science. I always wanted to be a forensic scientist but did not nother as it meant I had to go to University to get my degree and when I was doing my A levels that was the last place I wanted to go. As it happens I have now studied to that level and above so perhaps I could have done it but Imogen was well interested in the whole finger prints and catching criminals etc.
What is such a shame is that the police now do not do any kind of "community" open days or at least ours don't. Things like that are so important for our children. They learn that police are not people to be scared of and they develop a healthy respect for what they do do and what they stand for and maybe this is where todays society is going wrong.
I am not going to get into the debate about why todays society is so much different from that when I was growing up and seriously at 37 I am not that bloody old, but there are major problems with todays youth and having a healthy respect for the law and the people that represent it is one way of helping that happen. That said I am also aware that there are inherent problems with some of the people in these positions of power!
Anyway that was not whay I was writing this. I just wanted to say thank you so much to my Dad and to the police officers that I met today at Margate Police Station who helped me to show my daughter that police are not bad or evil. And maybe you could take a leaf out of the local fire fighters and do the occasional open day for the local community to build a relationship with them and improve relations.
TTFNx
Sounds like a really great experience for all of you. Kids get such funny things into their heads don't they. My little one is really frightened of cars at the moment, I've been explaining that she has to be careful, not run into the road etc, but it seems to have gone the opposite way now and she screams if she sees a moving car a mile away!
ReplyDeleteOh I'm glad she seems a lot better around the Police. Billie used to be scared of the sirens she used to cover her ears or I did in the end. I found out later she had glue ear and it was the volume that scared her. She's fine now shes older and has got the problem anymore.
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