Rockport couple’s business strives to keep kids safe

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ROCKLAND – Your kids are in danger.

If you watch TV news programs regularly, you might think that danger has something to do with a stranger lurking near the playground fence, or a newly identified disease.

Think again.

“Thirty thousand times a day, kids are visiting doctors’ offices and emergency rooms for injuries that could have been prevented,” according to Wendy Gordon.

Those injuries are suffered in falls and cuts around the home or in car crashes when children are not properly restrained in a safety seat. And worse than the injuries are child deaths from drowning, choking and head injuries that parental prudence might have prevented.

“It’s a greater problem than mumps, measles and polio and all the things that people used to worry about,” she said. “It’s a greater problem than ‘stranger danger,'” the fear of abduction or molestation by an adult.

Gordon, 47, runs “I’m Safe” Productions with her husband, David Gordon, 45, from an office in downtown Rockland.

The Gordons once were highly paid corporate executives – she in science publishing, he in consumer health – living in Carlisle, Mass., without children, happily burning the candle at both ends.

Through their work in the publishing world, the couple discovered that while there was a wealth of safety educational material available for children, very little was aimed at those 3 to 8 years old.

The conventional wisdom was that young children are best kept safe by educating their parents. Yet everyone has heard stories of 4-year-olds calling 911 and saving the life of a parent, Gordon said, thereby proving the power of an educated child.

So Gordon and her husband had a vision of “creating this army of 3- to 8-year-olds,” she said, for no less important a reason than making them safe in a dangerous world. The couple’s work, begun just six years ago, is now reaching children in 47 states.

Gordon remembers she and her husband sitting in their Massachusetts home, mapping out what would become “I’m Safe.” David Gordon asked her pointedly, “Are we going to talk about this, or are we actually going to do it?”

Despite raised eyebrows among friends and family, the couple took the plunge, moving to Rockport in 1998 and launching their new business in Rockland. They now have two children and love life in Maine, she said.

Wendy Gordon said her husband summed up his feelings about the move by saying he had climbed high enough on the corporate ladder to realize the view at the top was overrated.

The Gordons contemplated launching a nonprofit but didn’t want to “live from grant to grant,” Wendy Gordon said.

“For the first couple of years, I used to joke that we were the only for-profit who operated like a nonprofit,” she said. Now, though, the business is modestly profitable.

David Gordon has the business savvy, Wendy Gordon said, while she tends toward creativity.

Their products are sold to schools, day care centers, community health educators and governmental agencies.

Gordon estimated they have published more than 1 million books.

And “I’m Safe” videos are shown on public TV around the country, and on closed-circuit TV in hospitals and other public facilities.

Their first product was a book called “I’m Safe at the Mall.” Children are told to stay away from strangers, so if they are separated from their parents at a store they sometimes panic and hide.

The Gordons researched the problem as they always do before creating a book or video, and concluded that children could learn to identify store employees who could help. The book includes games through which children look for clues that a person is an employee, such as tags, uniforms and store counters.

Children also are taught to identify a mother with children as a safe person to approach for help. Gordon said 97 percent of abductions are perpetrated by men, so a mother is a statistically safe bet.

Another product teaches children to insist that adults watch them as they swim, teaching them to identify what an eye that is watching them looks like; eyes reading a book, or looking at a friend while talking, are not watching the child, children learn.

Gordon said children are not shy about nagging their parents to do the right thing, whether it is buckling a seat belt or wearing a helmet while riding a bicycle.

Many of the videos use animation with animal characters that seem to connect with the 3- to 8-year-olds, she said. The Gordons also have learned not to use images showing what not to do; children who can’t read may internalize the wrong message.

“There is a lot of safety stuff out there that’s just not accurate,” Gordon said.

All their videos, books, stickers, certificates and other materials are reviewed by the national Safe Kids Campaign. That group usually recommends the Gordons’ products, she said, to educators.

“We get to put their logo on [our products],” Gordon said.

In Maine, the Gordons work with the Maine Safe Kids Campaign and its midcoast chapter. Much of that work centers on child safety seats for cars. On Saturday, Gordon was at Fuller Chevrolet in Rockland helping with a free monthly inspection for parents. Too often, car seats are improperly installed, she said.

Gordon said the work is deeply satisfying, knowing that her efforts are saving lives – as she often learns from parents.

“I’m doing something that matters here,” she said. “I love that.”