A teaching tool for children in self care

Because of the high divorce rate and the increasing number of working mothers, many U.S. children come from families in which parent(s) are unavailable for 2 to 3 hours after school, when the parent(s) are still at work. Although many communities have after-school care programs, many children do not have access to these. Such children must return to empty houses and face loneliness, boredom, and the risk of personal harm. To assist these children to avoid harm, the authors devised a tool to teach age-appropriate "survival skills" to 6- to 9-year-old children in their classrooms (after parental consent). This article describes the authors' experience and the teaching tool.