Every day, children face a variety of potential threats that may compromise their safety, ranging from traffic accidents, to burn mishaps, to accidental firearm discharge.
“The onus is not on the child to keep themselves safe,” said Rasha Baruni, assistant professor in the U of M’s department of psychology whose research examines child safety programs. “It’s the adult’s responsibility to ensure the safety of every child in all contexts.”
“That said, I believe that we still need to teach children the safety skills in the event that they do encounter a safety threat when the adult is not present. It’s sort of like an extra layer of protection.”
Prior to Baruni’s academic career, she provided individuals on the autism spectrum with educational and behavioural services in multiple countries. Several of her clients engaged in highly dangerous behaviours, such as attempting to burn down their houses after finding matches.
“This was really concerning to me, and I thought about how reactive our approach is to safety skills,” Baruni said. “It’s been demonstrated over and over again, and so in many behavioural programs for individuals with disabilities, [that] injury prevention and teaching safety skills isn’t always prioritized.”
Safety skills training is often overlooked in instructional settings, as it is not seen as an immediate concern, Baruni noted. This tendency to deprioritize safety education has created significant gaps in many training programs.
Baruni explained that traditional passive safety training for children, such as classroom discussions, videos and activity books, often fails to be effective in real-life situations. While students may learn how to behave when faced with dangers like abduction or firearm safety, studies show they often do not apply these lessons when tested in natural settings.
Research in the U.S. has demonstrated that children who claim they would not touch a gun or talk to a stranger often do so when unaware they are being observed. The findings suggest a need for more hands-on, practical safety training methods.
“It’s more important that they actually perform the skills than tell us about it,” Baruni said.
Baruni’s research uses a Behavioural Skills Training (BST) approach, which can improve children’s real-world responses to dangerous situations. Unlike traditional safety education, which relies on classroom discussions and videos, BST emphasizes active learning — children receive instructions, watch demonstrations and physically practice safety skills.
To assess the effectiveness of BST, Baruni uses naturalistic, in situ assessments, where children are unaware they are being tested.
“We would model what you would do in that situation, and then we would get them to actually practice it,” Baruni said. “If they performed correctly, then we would give them praise or some kind of reinforcers that would then indicate to them that they they’re doing it correctly and to keep going. We would keep rehearsing repeatedly.”
Having spent years in the U.S., much of Baruni’s work focused on firearm safety training, a pressing issue in many American communities. Research demonstrates BST approaches to firearm safety are far more effective than passive learning methods like school presentations or videos. Baruni’s work also focused on teaching parents how to implement firearm safety practices at home and on training behaviour analysts to use BST with individuals with disabilities.
While firearm safety is less relevant in Canada, Baruni emphasized that BST can be applied to other critical areas, such as poison prevention, abduction prevention, bullying and online safety.
With children spending hours online each day, online safety threats in particular have become a growing concern. Baruni explained that traditional methods — such as simply telling children not to engage with strangers online — are ineffective. While children may verbally acknowledge safety rules, studies show their behaviour often changes when they believe no one is watching.
Baruni’s research applies BST online safety by focusing on real-world behavioural responses. For instance, if a child receives a friend request from a stranger on Instagram, the goal is not just to recognize it as a threat but to actively reject the request and report it to a trusted adult. To measure effectiveness, she once again employs naturalistic assessments, testing children’s reactions in real-world settings where they are unaware they are being observed.
By expanding her work beyond firearm safety, Baruni aims to develop evidence-based strategies to protect children from digital risks, reinforcing the importance of hands-on safety training in today’s online world.
“What children do is more important than what they say they will do,” Baruni reiterated. “Sure, we can have discussions with children about safety, but it can’t just stop there.”
“We have to take it beyond the discussions. That’s not where the learning is going to happen. The learning is going to happen when you get up and do it.”
