SAN ANTONIO – Whitney Lawson has two young children, five and four years old.
“They are small, but that quickly changes, so I think it’s critical, vital for every parent to be one step ahead,” Lawson said.
Lawson stays on top of issues that affect them now and may affect them in the future.
She is on Crime Stoppers of Houston’s new Young Professionals Board, which has parents offering insight into the needs of children and their safety.
That’s why Lawson already knows that Crime Stoppers of Houston has compiled information on at least 16 safety topics, which they present to schools nationwide.
The topics include mental health, online safety, bullying, teen dating violence, substance use, trafficking, sextortion and healthy relationships.
Crime Stoppers, with the help of Phillips 66, released a brand new artificial intelligence tool in May that gives access to all of that compiled information in seconds.
“You can type, ‘I’m a parent looking for mental health help’ and then instantly you get information about how to talk to your child, how to connect with your children’s teachers, how to block words you don’t want your children listening to or watching,” Lawson said.
The tool is called Safe Text.
Any adult can text 901-4-SAFETY, which is 901-402-3389.
“You just type ‘Hi.’ You can also text ‘Hola’ if you want them in Spanish. Then it shows you everything you want to search for. So if we’re looking for cyber safety for parents, I can go back here, and then it sends me directly to the little booklet with all the information,” said Addie Carlson, the statewide education specialist for Crime Stoppers of Houston.
Carlson said the most popular search is cyber safety.
“There’s YouTube and tablets and all this access to technology. And unfortunately, it’s not set up to protect our kids. So parents have to do a lot of learning on the back end to figure out, OK, what are the best safety settings? How do I put them on? And where can I even figure out what’s safe, what’s not safe?” Carlson said.
Carlson said it’s crucial to seize the moment when children are paying attention to a conversation about safety topics.
“If you’re in the middle of that conversation, we don’t want to take time looking and scrolling through websites because then they’re gonna lose interest,” she said.
Parents like Lawson agree that the tool can take away stress.
“I think it’s overwhelming to even know where to start. Knowing it’s coming from Crime Stoppers, you know that it’s factually accurate – and you know law enforcement, educators, child psychologists, etc. have their stamp of approval, then I don’t have to hop around platform to platform and use deductive reasoning,” Lawson said.
Right now, Safe Text is just for adults, because some fact sheets give information that may not be age-appropriate for young children.
Carlson said they are developing a Safe Text version for children and teens, so the information they get instantly will be appropriate for their age.
