Rating: 
Summary: Powerful! Enlightening!
Review: The parts of this book that were hard to read were the very parts that I needed to educate myself on. I feel much more equipped to recognize danger and to teach my children how to be safe. Most importantly, DeBecker teaches us to trust our instincts. Great reading! ESSENTIAL to parents.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful! Enlightening!
Review: The parts of this book that were hard to read were the very parts that I needed to educate myself on. I feel much more equipped to recognize danger and to teach my children how to be safe. Most importantly, DeBecker teaches us to trust our instincts. Great reading! ESSENTIAL to parents.
Rating:
Summary: Best Book for Parents
Review: This book, if followed will take the gift of fear an enable us to use it to protect our most precious gift, our children.De Becker shows through more stories specific to the subject of protecting children from predators of all types. Helping children be aware of how a stranger could actually lie to them to get them to respond and strike up a conversation, then.... Teach our children this, we will limit the number of child abductions and violence against children.
Rating:
Summary: Buy it for yourself and those who take care of your child
Review: While expecting our first baby and then as new parents, my wife and I received loads of excellent advice from friends and family regarding childbirth, doctors, baby-care, day-care, formula brands, etc. Last week, as a father with 8 weeks of experience in parenting, I had my first opportunity to offer advice to an expectant parent. I suggested she visit two day care centers I had liked, visit the pediatrician my wife and I chose, and read Protecting the Gift by Gavin de Becker. Gavin de Becker makes his living predicting and preventing violent behavior. His firm provides security and consultation to celebrities, athletes, world leaders, the CIA, U. S. Supreme Court and other security organizations around the world. In Protecting the Gift, de Becker introduces parents to startling statistics revealing the violent reality of our culture: one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually molested by the time they reach adulthood; 90 percent of sexual abuse is committed by someone the child knows; the most common age that sexual abuse begins is when the child is three years old. Most parents live with a mindset that denies or ignores this reality. But as de Becker shows in his book, our children are living in this reality everyday. De Becker's purpose in this book is two-fold: 1) to hit parents in the face with the real dangers awaiting children, and 2) to teach parents how to avoid fruitless worry and to take meaningful steps to protect children. On both points, de Becker succeeds. Parents are raising children during an age when an FBI child-pornography sting indicts teachers, coaches, pastors and judges. It is an age of guns and date-rape drugs. At the same time, many parents experience an urgent need for help in raising children, often from the age of six-weeks onward. Parents look for family, day care workers, sitters, schools, nannies and friends to provide support in raising children. How can parents assure their children's safety? De Becker addresses this question by first focusing on the fact that violent behavior can be predicted. The book teaches that children can be taught skills to avoid dangerous situations and people. He emphasizes the development and use of intuition as a parent's key resource in recognizing threats. He cites numerous stories of people avoiding harm by listening to intuition and others who ignored intuition and became victims.
De Becker shares many practical lessons. He teaches what to look for in safe child-care workers and sitters. He lists the signs that indicate a dangerous stranger versus a friendly stranger. He also illustrates ways that well-meaning parents do things that increase a child's vulnerabilities. The Bible teaches that wolves dress in sheep's clothing and that evil-doers masquerade as angels of light. Nothing fits this description more precisely than a sexual predator of children. De Becker teaches that pedophiles and rapists often gain the confidence of their victims through being overly "nice" and "helpful." They have to do this. How else can a pedophile convince parents to trust him or her with their children. Over and over, we see that pedophiles go to where they can have access to children and, like chameleons, blend in perfectly.
I think people in the church today are especially susceptible to this type of criminal, because the presence of evil has been downplayed and we are usually willing to give people the benefit of the doubt and accept them at face-value. De Becker shows parents how to remove doubt and to know who can and cannot be trusted. There are several other topics in this book that I think are important to parents. The book cover summarizes one of de Becker's purposes in writing it: "By showing what danger really looks like-as opposed to what we might imagine it looks like-de Becker gives parents freedom from many common worries and unwarranted fears." A lasting impression I take from the book is that the people with whom I and my family interact are who they are not who I want them to be. I know that some people are influenced by perverse and evil desires aimed at children. Because of this truth, I think it is important that parents read this book. I also suggest that adults, especially women, read de Becker's bestseller The Gift of Fear.
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