Teaching Your Child How to Use the Home Alarm

Explaining to a child why you need to have a home alarm system installed on the place where they should feel safest is a difficult task. Teaching them to use it with ease, and without fear, could be even more difficult. The idea of something scary potentially harming their home and the people they love the most is traumatizing for a child at any age and there are many ways to begin to make them more comfortable with the idea of a computerized system protecting their home. Here are some of the best tips:

1. When first explaining to a child, especially at a youngish age, the reasoning behind installing a home security system, do not use alarmist language. Words like "criminals" and "guns" and "danger" are all scary to young children. By using words like those, you could end up doing more harm than good in the explanations. Try simplifying the explanation by saying something along the lines of, "The home alarm system helps Mommy and Daddy protect our house from bad guys because we love you."



2. Help your child get comfortable with the idea of turning the home security system on and off by themselves. Teach them the password with a fun way to memorize it. Make up an acronym or a song to help remember the numbers and letters that it may contain. Sing it with them until they remember it and then give them a light quiz or question to see if they remember it. Stress to them that it is a private matter and that it should not be told to other people by letting them know gently that it is an important and special secret, rather than saying it is private.



3. Practice some emergency drills as a family every once in a while. Be sure the first time your child hears what the home alarm sounds like that they are prepared for it, so as not to be taken aback by the loud and often intimidating noise. Teach children to learn emergency phone numbers and where they are posted in the house (emergency phone numbers should always, logically, be placed near the most commonly used house phone and plugged into any and all cell phone that the family owns). In addition, tell them which neighbor they should go to in the case of an emergency.
   
   
4. Try to arrange a meeting with your home alarm system providers and your children. Make them comfortable knowing that there are "good guys" watching out for your home even when you are doing everything you possibly can to make sure your home is safe, too. If you cannot arrange this, encourage local public schools to hold safety seminars and assemblies with local enforcement like the police and fire departments. Many schools already hold them for fire safety; find out if your child's school does one on stranger danger and keeping the home safe all the time.

The more your child knows about security systems, the more confident they will be using them in the house. adt alarm system is committed to helping your family stay safe 365 days a year.