School safety, security, and violence prevention resource

SAFETY COACHES:  HOW YOU CAN USE ANIMALS AND BUGS TO TEACH YOUR KIDS TO SURVIVE A PREDATOR!

 

If you’ve been following my posts, you already know that I advocate parents acting as their child’s Safety Coach(es).  To teach them skills and techniques that can help them survive attacks by a sexual predator.  If this is your first taste of my Keep Schools Safe blog, just let me say that parents and teachers can become excellent coaches and can provide the needed support for a child in a dangerous world.

 

IN this post I would like to suggest that you can speed the learning process along by sparking your child’s vivid imagination.  And few things spark a child’s imagination better than animals and bugs.  I use this same kind of imagery when I do my S.T.I.C.K. and C.A.T. (Survival Techniques and Intervention Concepts for Kids/Parents and Counter Abduction Tactics) trainings for children. 

 

PARENTS (Safety Coaches), here are a few of the imageries you can use to teach your child how to physically escape and evade the predator:

 

• Claws.  Kids have no problem imagining they are a tiger or a cat.  Make claws out of your hands and rake the attacker’s eyes when he bends down to pick you up.
• Paws.  Pretend you are a wily cat or dog and you don’t want to be carried away.  Squirm and wiggle your way free.  Also I use this imagery for my wrist grab escape where the child quickly turns and moves his hand and wrist out of the Bad Guy’s grasp.
• Hug Like A Bug.  Grab onto whatever is close to you and hug it like a bug.  A tree.  A Pole.  Your bike.  A post of your bed.  The Bad Guy’s legs and torso itself when he tries to put you into his car.  One kid I taught, who was being abducted from a bathroom stall in a park rest room, dropped to the floor and hugged the bottom post of the stall and curled himself into a ball.
• Roar Like A Lion.  Let everyone know this is not your father trying to carry you off.  Also, roar at the Bad Guy as he approaches,  The abductor is not looking for a crazy, noisy kid.
• Crab Walk Away.  All kids know what a crab does when it scrambles away on the beach.  Teach you kid to sit down, keep his or her eyes on the Bad Guy, place a hand on each side of his or her rump, and “walk” away using his or her hands and by raising the rump.  If and when the Bad Guy catches up with him, teach you child to kick wildly and scramble in a circle.  If this fails to scare away the Bad Guy – which it probably will – the last resort is to Hug His Legs Like A Bug, making it hard for him to carry your child off.  By the way, have your child do dozens of reps of crabwalking away from a hypothetical attacker.  You will be surprised how fast he or she can move.  Some potential abductors will break off the attack right there because the child is severely delaying the predator in the original crime scene, and time is something the predator really doesn’t have a lot of (the key to a predator is speed and silence – get in, snatch the kid, and get the heck out!)
• HULA HOOP.  I use a hula hoop to teach kids their Personal Safe Zone, within which no person should be allowed to enter uninvited.  Control Your Space.  The distance from the child’s belt buckle to the end of the hula hoop (about 2 1/2 feet) represents the kid’s Personal safety Zone.
• THROW YOUR SLEEPING BAG ONTO THE TOP BUNK.  Teaching small kids how to get into a combat stance to block incoming punches is tough.  This imagery, where they throw their arms up toward their faces helps.  None of them have a problem imagining throwing a heavy object up in the air.  I use this image relative to self defense against Bullies, mostly.
• BEAT YOUR BONGOS.  Is a great image that most kids easily understand and helps me teach them to knock a bully’s punches staright down toward the ground.  Teach them to hit the “bongos” with the heels of their palms.
• The Cobra Eats The Fly.  I use this image to teach children how to block a bully’s roundhouse punches.  I do not teach blocking skills against an adult predator.  Think of a roundhouse punch coming in toward the child’s ear.  Now, ask your child to form a “Cobra’s Head with their hand and wrist.  Now, flick the Cobra’s Head at the “fly (the punch)” and snatch it out of the air.

 

Until the next post.  Stay Safe.

 

Hammer

 

 

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