Bullying. Stranger safety. Wandering. Personal safety and abuse prevention.
Children, teens, and young adults with diverse learning needs face many safety concerns, regardless of their unique abilities. Parents and educators repeatedly report issues with safety as some of their top priorities–and biggest fears for their learner’s well-being.
It’s why continuing to teach safety skills is so critical for each of the learners we work with and why setting goals in these areas should be a top priority for all families.
Why Unique Learners are at Greater Safety Risk
Kidpower International, a leading organization that supports teaching personal safety skills to kids–regardless of age and learning style–reports the following reasons many of our learners are at greater risk for safety issues:
- Not understanding the full scope of risk or difficulty evaluating safety risks.
- Communication challenges that create barriers in a safety situation.
- Dependence on others to meet some daily living needs.
- May not know how to respond in “risky” or dangerous situations.
- Difficulty establishing boundaries for self and others.
- Challenges with complex social responses including assertive advocacy, consent, awareness,
If you know that your learner may struggle with these issues, here’s how you can start to form goals and new behaviors around personal safety:
Setting Safety Goals with Unique Learners
Step One: Explore your values around safety.
Before any work is done on developing a goal, it’s best to evaluate what you and your learner value and find important when it comes to safety. If we don’t examine values first, chances are we’re going to develop a goal our learner doesn’t find worthwhile–or worse–conflicts with their own values.
For example, what if you and your learner have different values and beliefs about meeting and engaging with friends online? What you might share with a stranger online or via social media may differ from what your learner might be comfortable with. Yet there are still ways you can develop goals around internet safety that match both sets of values.
For more on this, check out our article What Safety Skills Does Your Teen Need to Know for a free .pdf values assessment you and your teen can use to explore this topic together.
Step Two: Develop a SMART goal.
We’ve already shared a lot of work on our blog and coaching on setting SMART goals. It’s our gold-standard, evidence-based method for achieving your learner’s biggest goals and a way to help develop new safety skills.
SMART stands for:
S – Specific – What is the behavior we want to achieve?
M – Measurable – How will we know that we’ve achieved it?
A – Attainable – Is the goal realistic? Is the outcome practical and achievable?
R – Relevant – Why is this goal important to achieve? What difference will it make for my life or for others around me?
T – Time-Bound – When will this goal be accomplished?
With these elements, SMART goals help us establish a clear vision for what our goal intends to accomplish and begin to chart out a path to get there.
To learn more about SMART goals, download our free .pdf guide to setting SMART goals about safety:
SMART Goals for Safety
When it comes to setting and achieving safety goals, it’s essential to use the SMART method because behaviors around safety can seem abstract or unnecessary to diverse learners. Evaluating risk and danger can be tricky – and isn’t always the easiest to motivate or kids to focus on. SMART goals help give your teen the best chance of success.
Some areas to consider when developing safety goals:
- How to respond to an emergency
- Street safety and navigating the community
- Recognizing home safety concerns (fire danger, using chemicals, preventing falls, etc.)
- Basic first aid
- How to safely interact with pets and animals.
- Internet and online safety
Step Three: Identify your learner’s motivation.
As soon as your learner sets a goal, the next step is to form ideas about motivation. How will we encourage and motivate the learner to achieve the goal and reward progress along the way?
Most teens and adults will need some form of external motivation to achieve safety goals–just explaining that it’s “the right thing to do” is not likely to get you very far.
Remember that your “why” or motivation may differ from your teen’s motivation. For more info on motivation and goal setting, check out our article: 6 Steps To Help Your Child Develop A Strong “Why” When Goal Setting.
Step Four: Write goals down and publicly post them.
Top-of-mind goals are kept a priority and more likely to be achieved in the long run. Once you and your learner develop a plan, write it down and post it in a high traffic area. Choose somewhere it’s likely to be seen every day by you and your learner. You can frequently talk about and positively reinforce progress and avoid forgetting or letting the goal slip by for days or weeks without practice.
Step Five: Reward progress and milestones along the way.
Successful SMART goal setting involves setting milestones or key indicators for your learner to know they’re on track for meeting safety goals.
For example, perhaps you and your learner set the goal of learning to use a smartphone map to navigate to and from a community location. You might break that goal into several parts and create a milestone for each piece. First, you might celebrate when your learner can identify all the key elements of using the app. Then you might create a milestone for when your learner navigates to a location on their own for the first time. Then create a final milestone and reward for when they navigate both directions.
By breaking it apart, you and your learner can recognize incremental progress toward meeting the entire goal. It’s significant for goal areas like safety skills, where there may be several steps to accomplish before the whole goal is achieved.
Step Six: Ask for support if you need it.
Finally, as a parent, teacher, or caregiver of a learner with unique needs, you’re never alone in supporting your child’s success.
Gathering friends, family members, and your child’s care team together to help with safety goals can take the pressure off you as a parent and can help your teen achieve more.
Seek out professional support or coaching for your diverse learner. Educate yourself by taking a deep dive into goal setting. Connect with other parents who might be facing the same challenges.