At your child's school, at children's sports events or around the neighborhood, engage your fellow parents in conversation. Push the conversations beyond small talk. Get to know them as best you can without prying. Engage them in conversations in which issues of child safety will come up; this will provide opportunities to mention that you have taken certain safety precautions in your home. This will communicate that such measures are important to you.

Tell your children that they are not allowed to visit a friend's home unless you know the friend's parents. Period. As children get older this rule becomes increasingly difficult to enforce.

"But it's even more critical the older kids get," she says. "The stakes are so high, and the risks are great."

Brown says that many parents allow themselves to be manipulated by their children into relaxing or compromising rules.

"Kids will employ any and all strategies they can to get their way," Brown says. "They'll claim that there will be horrible social consequences if they're not allowed to participate in certain activities or to be a part of certain groups of kids. If parents give in to this manipulation it creates an overly permissive home environment, and those are the homes that concerned parents who care about their kids' safety should insist that their kids avoid.

"Frankly, kids want boundaries. They feel safer and more secure with rules. And parents who establish and enforce rules communicate to their kids that they are loved and that the parents are committed to their well-being. Kids are virtually incapable of saying 'no' to their friends. So parents have to help their kids by making rules and sticking to them. And kids have to know that the rules apply to them no matter where they are — whether it's in their own home or in a friends' home."

SAFETY FIRST WHEN KIDS VISIT FRIENDS

When evaluating the home environment of your children's friends, of foremost concern are issues of safety. You need to know: