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The Words They Will Actually Use
Paperback
Publisher Price: $59.99
Publisher: Verity Callander
Published: Aug 23 2026
Pages: 148
Weight: 0.46
Height: 0.32 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Be careful is not a plan. In the moment, a child who has no sentence ready will freeze - and then say nothing about it afterwards.
This book supplies the sentence.
Sixty situations your 6-to-12-year-old may actually meet, each with the exact words to say, written out, short enough to remember when frightened. One main line, one fallback line, and a two-minute rehearsal to make it stick.
SIX PARTS, SIXTY SCRIPTS
- Out and about - lost in a shop, a car slowing down, an adult asking a child for help, someone saying your mum sent me
- The people we know - the relative who insists on a hug, the adult who asks them to keep a secret, the coach who wants time alone
- At a friend's house - no adult home, an older child, something on a screen, and how to leave without a scene
- Online - the very friendly stranger, the request for a photo, the threat not to tell
- Peer pressure - everyone else is doing it, being filmed, dares, the friend who stopped being one
- After something happens - how to tell, telling when frightened, telling again if the first grown-up didn't listen, telling when you already said yes
WHAT THIS BOOK DELIBERATELY DOES NOT DO
It is not built on stranger danger. That idea has been repeated for forty years and it makes children less safe in two directions at once: it points them away from the far more common situation - someone already inside their life - and it teaches a lost child to hide from the very people who could help. This book teaches safe adults, checking first, and tricky behaviour rather than tricky-looking people.
It does not teach fighting. Loud refusal, moving away, and going to a safe adult are the actions here.
It does not frighten. The tone is closer to a fire drill than a warning, because fear does not make children safer - rehearsal does.
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