It’s almost back to school time aka, the most wonderful time of the year. Parents are running around trying to get every single item on the supply list, trying to predict what size shoes for kids will need and getting ready for the first day of school.
A popular trend for the first day of school is to snap a photo of your kid before they go off on their first day of their new grade. We make a sign for our kids to hold up with all sorts of information that we may forget over the years.
But there could be a hidden danger for our kids in these first day of school photos.
While these photos will pop up in our memories on social media for years, sharing these photos may have unintended consequences. The signs we make for our kids to hold up in these first day of school pictures can reveal too much information about our children.
In a quick online search I discovered signs that share our children’s:
Name
Age
School
Grade
Teacher’s Name
What they want to be when they grow up
Favorite color, food, toys and hobbies
Pet names
These types of signs are nice, but they do not need to be shared online.
While we are the normal, decent people of the world, not everyone shares our morals. Predators and human traffickers can use this information to target our kids and groom them for kidnapping.
Using the information on these signs, a bad guy can approach your child with a made up story using real details like your child’s name, school and teacher. Once a predator has your child’s attention and builds false trust, it can be easy to convince your child to leave with them.
Do not post these signs on social media.
Instead, I’ve created a free printable that you can download to use this year to post your pictures on social media. My printable sign doesn’t have information about your child and will be safe to share online. Then you can swap this sign out for a more personalized photo that is not to be shared online. If you use a Secure Dad sign consider, tagging it with #securedad.
Please share this post with a friend so that we can make our kids safer! For more on keeping your family safe, consider The Secure Dad Newsletter.
Download your free printable first day of school sign here. It will print on a standard 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper.
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