On old 1940’s TV show called You Bet Your Life, hosted by Grocho Marx, one of the segments revolved around whether a contestant would say the “secret word”, a common word revealed to the audience at the show’s outset. If a contestant said the word, a toy duck resembling Groucho with a mustache and eyeglasses, and with a cigar in its bill, descended from the ceiling to bring a $100 bill.

More recently, on the Ellen Degeneres talk show, she too likes to play a version of Guess the Secret Word. It’s pretty hilarious as she baits her celebrity guests in the most unusual way to get them to say her secret word.

While having a secret word can certainly be entertaining it, it can also be a serious subject and can potentially save lives and prevent child abductions. The information below is relevant whether you have a preschooler or a high schooler.

From the time your child is old enough to understand verbal communication he or she should know the family secret word. It’s not to be shared with others but only used in the event that you need someone else, someone different, to pick up your child from school, daycare, practice or wherever your child may be that you are not.

If you are normally the one to pick up your child and you become detained for whatever reason, you likely have a backup – friend, neighbor or relative who will retrieve your child. Likely your child will know this person and have no problems getting into a vehicle with the substitute taxi driver.

What if, however there was an instance when you needed the aid of a co-worker or some other adult to help you out and pick up little Johnny or Suzy; someone your child did not know? Would you be comfortable knowing that your child went with this “stranger” simply because the adult said, “Your mom has to work late and asked me to pick you up?”

I hope you wouldn’t be comfortable in this scenario. I hope you have thoroughly discussed the dangers of going anywhere with anyone they do not know.

Decide together what the secret word will be – could be the name of a stuffed animal, or a character in a book or a favorite food or some made up word. It doesn’t matter what the word is, but it is one that your child will know is a Safe Word. Then if an unfamiliar friendly stranger is needed to pick up the child, the child will know not to go with this person unless the adult provides the Safe Word.

For example, if your safe word is “marshmallow,” instead of saying “your mom has to work late, she asked me to pick you up.” Your emergency back-up would say something like “You mom is making marshmallow treats for that event tonight and couldn’t leave with the stove on, so she asked me to pick you up.”

The sentence doesn’t need to be entirely accurate or even be totally believable; it just needs to contain the safe word, to silently alert the child that it’s ok to leave with this person.

There are also a couple other alternatives to this notification system.

One is to just point blank have the child ask the stranger: “What’s the secret word?” If the adult doesn’t know it, the child doesn’t go with him/her.

You could also have a secret handshake instead of a secret word. When my children were little they used to love holding my hand. Ok, probably more like I used to love holding their hands (I still do) but they were more willing to indulge me. At any rate, we had a secret hand shake that consisted of a pattern of varied squeezes, and it signified “I love you”. It was also used as our notification system if I ever was not available to pick them up. If they didn’t know the person, the person needed to know our secret handshake before they would go with them.

Whether you use a secret word or secret handshake; whether deployed covertly or overtly, the delivery doesn’t matter. The key is to have a secret notification system to be used in the case of emergencies. Practice different scenarios until you are confident that your child would know what to do in this situation. Once you’re comfortable knowing that your child would not go with a stranger, periodically bring up the subject just as reinforcement.

This can be something silly and memorable that you do with your children, so long as everyone understands the importance of why you are doing it. If you don’t have this plan in place, take care of it tonight before your children go to sleep.