My six year old is well aware of ‘stranger danger’ yet he continues to talk to anyone and everyone, (including spouting off his full name and address and other too personal info occasionally). From the age of two I have struggled with him wandering off to nearby people (if I am ever off guard when out and about with him) to chat. He even tried to run into a pub to chat with someone who he thought looked like Santa once when he was three. Thankfully he now at least restrains himself to chatting to strange children rather than random adults for the most part (but not always), but if me or my husband bump into anyone we know and start talking to them he will begin chiming in, eventually speaking over us and taking over the conversation.
The most trying thing is this obnoxious way of speaking over us, meaning we can never seem to get in any adult conversation but to be honest the fact he still goes off to talk to strangers really worries me. His brother isn’t like this and I am shy to the point of anxiety, so all I can think is that he gets it from his dad, but even then it’s also his dad who talks to him about stranger danger the most. He also brags a lot, and though it’s innocent it’s something we have also been working on.
we have talked till blue in the face about stranger danger, and read loads of books about it to him but I am honestly wondering if they are too vague? Like we are very careful not to scare him too, and the books can be a bit metaphorical rather than real life situations, but he just point blank refuses to believe that someone who seems nice could actually not be. I don’t know precisely what sort of book I am asking for, just I need help explaining to him, in plain terms (he is a very literal child) how someone can seem nice and yet possibly be a danger to him. For instance we know a nice lady from the park and I know she’s harmless but she has been baking our kids cookies and giving them odd wee treats for months how and I just know that my son would go off with someone like that no questions asked. We met a family with a girl his age on a walk the other week and we didn’t even talk to them, but he got chatting with the daughter and walked along with them even though they were going in the opposite direction. It didn’t even occur to us that he would be so silly as to not come back but sure enough we watched him start running with her and he ran off over the hill - and just kept going! He completely tuned us out as we shouted for him to come back. Even the little girl stopped and was clearly thinking ‘what are you doing’? as he ran around her chatting loudly and not even hearing us.
How do I even tackle this attitude of his? It’s great that he’s confident and chatty but it’s brazen social overconfidence and I need to help him learn to tone it down a little.