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This is just a random thought. In the first season of 24, Jack's daughter gets kidnapped, but the kidnappers don't want her mom to know. So they have Kim call her mom and say she was just out late at a party and that she'd be back as soon as she could. Now I've heard that the police recommend you have "code words" with your kids to use in such a situation. As in "If you're being forced to say something, tell me that you love me at the end of the call."

So do any of the parents around here actually do that? Just curious.

My parents do, although they only have one word to use as an identifier in an emergency situation when they are unavailible for whatever reason.

Durandal wrote:Now I've heard that the police recommend you have "code words" with your kids to use in such a situation. As in "If you're being forced to say something, tell me that you love me at the end of the call."

Oh man, that totally would not have worked for my family, since we do the "Love you," "Love you, too" exchange for virtually all of our calls...

My parents refuse to negotiate with terrorists or kidnappers so it never really mattered.

My family isn't damned with crushing stupidity like Jack's, so they'd be able to alert others without needing prearranged codewords.

I thought the thread was about codewords for hot, dirty action when you need to send the parents to grandma's or something.

The only code words I've come across are the ones that say "you'll be sorry for this embarrassment once we get home".

My parents never had any for us but this is an excellent idea, believe it or not I have never heard of this, but I will definatly be using it for our kids in the future.

Of course my parents could have done this with us and I just don't remember. But I find it hard to believe being kidnapped would have happened a lot when I was a kid back in the 70's and 80's, or maybe it just wasn't in the media as much as it is now.
Oh well, I'm safe now.

Code words are pretty much unnecessary. If your child is kidnapped, God, Buddha, whoever or whatever forbid, you're not going to get a call from kidnappers at least here in the States. The odds of being kindnapped for ransom are so low as to be incalculable, and if it is a ransom situation, siad kidnappers are going to let you know. If it an emergency, then someone the child knows is going to come get them, and said child just neeeds to be briefed not to get into a car unless they are known or a cop, and cop is complete with badge and car. If it is a kidnapping by some scum of the earth child molester, then there won't be a call.
In Jack's case, the writer's fucked him over. If I worked for some government agency that did what Jack does, I'd convey that danger to my family and have a few plans. Kim was a rebellious teenager, but she's not a complete idiot. A code word would have had Jack drop everything and tear LA apart brick by brick until she was found.

Zed Snardbody wrote:My parents refuse to negotiate with terrorists or kidnappers so it never really mattered.

Oh, man! That's the best thing I've heard all day. My brother and I don't have a "things are bad" code-word, but we do have a phrase-counterphrase to verify that something is actually true or serious. It is obviously a nonsense phrase, though, so someone would wonder why we said it.

Yup mine is "beef bourgignon(sp) with ketchup". Lol j/k

No code words. I've only heard of this from T.V. shows, most recently from an episode of Bones.

Is the danger of being kidnapped (or your children being kidnapped) so high that you need something like code words to use in such a case?

This is the first time I have ever heard of such a thing.

Ideally, this was supposed to happen every day, but my mom is a total flake, so it only ended up happening every 3rd Thursday of the month, but here was the plan..

"Every day" my mom would give me a new special word in case someone came to pick me up at school. One day it would be bananas, or dandelions, just something stupid and new every day. And if someone came to pick me up, I was supposed to ask them. I never actually asked anyone, cause the only people to come get me were family members, but I understand what she was going for. Looking back I don't see the need for the added security of changing it everyday. Or the plan in general. I like the idea of having something special to use for "something isn't right" though.

Tinkerbell wrote:"Every day" my mom would give me a new special word in case someone came to pick me up at school. One day it would be bananas, or dandelions, just something stupid and new every day. And if someone came to pick me up, I was supposed to ask them. I never actually asked anyone, cause the only people to come get me were family members, but I understand what she was going for. Looking back I don't see the need for the added security of changing it everyday. Or the plan in general. I like the idea of having something special to use for "something isn't right" though.

Yeah, that's the other situation where I can think of such things being useful.

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:

Durandal wrote:Now I've heard that the police recommend you have "code words" with your kids to use in such a situation. As in "If you're being forced to say something, tell me that you love me at the end of the call."

Oh man, that totally would not have worked for my family, since we do the "Love you," "Love you, too" exchange for virtually all of our calls...

And I mock you for it.

Tinkerbell wrote:Ideally, this was supposed to happen every day, but my mom is a total flake, so it only ended up happening every 3rd Thursday of the month, but here was the plan..

"Every day" my mom would give me a new special word in case someone came to pick me up at school. One day it would be bananas, or dandelions, just something stupid and new every day. And if someone came to pick me up, I was supposed to ask them. I never actually asked anyone, cause the only people to come get me were family members, but I understand what she was going for. Looking back I don't see the need for the added security of changing it everyday. Or the plan in general. I like the idea of having something special to use for "something isn't right" though.

That's a good point and I think it's a good idea, these days (and I don't know how often it happened when I was a kid) you see a lot of parents who write their kids names in big letters on the kids bag or lunchbox (me being one of them, hey I didn't think about this completely, I just wanted my son and daughter to be able to see their bag easily in a pile of bags at school and daycare) or on mittems and whatnot. So when you think about it any child molestor or adult can go up to your child and say "HI Paul, your mommy asked me to come pick you up from school" and the kid would go.
With a code word the child would be able to stop that or at the very least show to the rest of the school yard that this person is not someone he/she knows, which would gather attention and hopefully get the guy stopped.

Anyway, I'm sure all of you know about this danger.

I just wanted to thank you for that idea, because silly me, I made the mistake of putting their names on their bags in big letters and now I can feel a bit more secure knowing that I can prevent it to some degree. Our children already know not to go with anyone they don't already know and in this small town the only people who can pick them up are myself, my husband and my mother and father.

We had one code word, which was to be used in the event that someone besides a few people on a short list tried to pick me up. My parents would tell them the code word in that case; and then we'd make up a new one. It never came up; but we've all remembered it to this day.
My wife and I plan on devising a word with our daughter, when she's old enough it makes sense to do so.


We didn't have a 'uh-oh' code word. I don't think that would be likely to be useful.

In the '70s-80s there was a big fuss about children being stolen from parents. Thus, my family had a code phrase for when we chidlren got seperated in stores. "Gauley Mountain Fire Tower"

People practising "code words" with their children ... gee, that doesn't sound like alarmism to me at all. The average child is far more at risk from the shitty junk food their parents feed them than kidnappers.

Besides, most child kidnappings are performed by one of the two parents, not a stranger. It's usually a situation where the two parents have separated, and one of them decides that he's getting a raw deal on visitation rights or wants to take the kid with him back to Pakistan or something.

Darth Wong wrote:People practising "code words" with their children ... gee, that doesn't sound like alarmism to me at all. The average child is far more at risk from the shitty junk food their parents feed them than kidnappers.

Besides, most child kidnappings are performed by one of the two parents, not a stranger. It's usually a situation where the two parents have separated, and one of them decides that he's getting a raw deal on visitation rights or wants to take the kid with him back to Pakistan or something.

I agree, everytime I here of a child kidnapping case on the news it usually turns out to be a disgruntled parent. In fact my dad once got hassled at the border because they thought he was taking my sister from my mom because she went with him to get gas at 0630.

The purpose of our code word wasn't for the sake of kidnapping paranoia; it was so that my parents would be able to assign a friend of theirs to pick me up in an emergency, and I would go along with that person.

We had them when we lived overseas in some not so nice countries.

muse wrote:We had them when we lived overseas in some not so nice countries.

Canada?

Silly Zed, overseas, as in across the ocean?
Middle east and some 2nd & 3rd world countries in Asia.