School safety, security, and violence prevention resource

Truth is, I love to talk.  Probably why I got into training in the first place.  It didn’t take me long, however, to learn the crucial fact that in the heat of battle, when the rubber hit the road – how about that?  Two overused clichés in the same sentence – my student/officers could only perform – with any reliability moves, tactics, techniques and countermeasures they had been trained under the following circumstances:

·         Over 75% of trainees reported that they had been able to perform, under (survival) stress, countermeasures they had learned and experienced during  realistic training simulations and scenarios.

·         About 50% reported that they “almost automatically” performed “combat countermeasures they had Hard Wired during repetitive Stimulus Response Training Drills.

·         A very low percentage of my trainees reported that they were able to automatically rely on escape and evasion moves, etc. that they had learned during training dills where either I “taught” them through either lecture or Static Drills where they learned only a technique or an escape move without any nexus to a resistance stimulus, et al.

 

To boil this down, the primal fact is, for a parent or teacher who wishes to be an effective Safety Coach and help keep their children safe from predators – Talk to your kids, by all means, but when it comes to training them to stay safe:

·         Show them more than tell them in order to Soft Wire the skill in their beautiful Mind’s Eye.

·         Have them do what you show them at least 10 times @ (Repetition equals Hard Wiring).

·         And when they do it, have them do it against a Bad Guy (realistic scenarios and role plays with a Safety Coach), so there is a realistic threat stimulus portraying an act that a predator/bully, et al might perform in a realistic attack scenario.  The Stimulus Response Training Principle works.  Trust me.

 

But you might be thinking,  wait a second, The Hammer was teaching hardened, adult, combat tested adult officers.  I want to train my 6 year old.  What’s up with that?  And, If you are, you are right.  Different subjects call for different approaches.  Realistic “combat” scenarios will likely scare the bejeesus out of a 6 year old, so—-

 

·         Make sure you teach via games instead of scenarios.

·         Kids learn best when they actively participate and they do that when they are having fun.

·         Take into account your children’s limited attention span.  Dynamic and quick are the keys.

·         Here is a tricky training principle, though:  You gotta Create a Need for the Skill.  If you play Escape and Evasion Games (which is what I am suggesting), your child(ren) must know what they are being trained against.  If you simply play a Breathing Game, or a Twister Game, but do not explain why they are learning this skill(s) and why it is important (survival against an adult who intends to take them away from their parents), the games will have no meaning.

·         The trick, then, is to play fun, relevant Escape and Evasion Games, but to explain upon the start of each and every game why he/she/they are playing the game, what is/are the key skills they are learning, how and when the skills should be used.

 

I call these CAT (Counter Abduction Techniques) Games.  Of course, you can call them what you wish.  CAT Games are easy to devise on your own.  All you need do is understand what sneaky, vile and pernicious tactic sexual predators have used over the years to trick and seduce children to at first trust them and finally to leave the initial scene (where the child was approached) and go in the company of the abductor to a secondary, or more isolated environment.  Finally, you need to come up with a few physical tactics an abductor would use to quickly grab your child, toss him or her into a car and whisk him or her away.

 

If you need any help with what I suggested in the previous paragraph, all you need to is peruse some of my previous posts, and bang, you got yourself a game.  An example of a Safety Coach creating his own game is a friend of mine – Chris Pagotto, an MMA fighter – who devised a game requiring fighting and movement.  Chris placed different color mats on his basement floor (you don’t need mats, you can jury rig your own scheme), armed himself with a whistle and devised two games:

1.    Whistle Game:  Chris would fight, playfully but with the intent of acting out an adult trying to grab a child.  His kids would gleefully wrestle with him, using techniques he taught, like the Eye Gouge (goggles), Throat Chop, etc.  They would skillfully roll off him, Crab Walk quickly away.  When Chris blew a whistle, though, the kids would perform whatever skill(s) he was teaching that day, like performing an evasive roll followed by a Tactical Stand-Up and Escape; Cycle Breathing; running in a Zig Zag Pattern, etc.

2.    Jumping Game:  During their Play-Fighting, Chris would toss a child onto a different color pad.  When the child hit that pad he or she would perform whatever movement he was teaching that day.  Movement is a key Escape & Evasion skill.  Too many kids cement themselves to the ground.

3.    Twister:  I play variations of the old Twister Game with my students.  The primary skill is to twist away from the Bad Guy’s clutches and glom onto a body part, twist and glom onto another body part, so that the effect is the harder the Bad Guy tries the more body parts the child is glommed onto.  You can use Twister to teach your child to hook onto trees, bed posts, bikes, telephone poles, fences, whatever it takes to prevent him or herself from being abducted.

 

          Until Nest Time, Stay Safe.

 

          Hammer

 

 

 

 

 

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