Never too Young

This post is prompted by a comment I read online by someone who'd attended a seminar with one of my colleagues on the IKMF Global Instructor Team.

The person expressed surprise that my colleague taught his young children anti-abduction strategies. And then went on to express thanks that we don't live in Israel, where such things might be necessary.

This is a sentiment I hear quite a lot. We should protect our children from such knowledge about abduction and the like. They are too young to understand. We will just scare them.

I don't think this could be further from the truth. If you're not teaching your children simple skills and strategies for possible emergency situations, then you should be!

I can't recall the exact figures, but it's a no brainer; virtually all families who have a plan in the case of fire in the home survive. Virtually none of those who don't, do. Just a simple plan. Where to go if the alarm rings. How to get there in the dark. How to bring other children or siblings along. How to escape.

This plan doesn't have to be scary or paranoia-inducing. We don't need to make our kids tremble in their beds at night through fear of burning to death. From a young age these can be practiced as games. Sound the smoke detector and practice walking or crawling to the special room. Do it blindfolded.

The same with other areas of personal protection such as anti-abduction. Put the music up loud, close the windows and doors and get the kids to shout "you're not my mum, leave me alone." talk about running from cars that stop. There's lots of ways to get simple messages across without being frightening. Do it occasionally, not all at once too.

Is this paranoia? Well, perhaps we don't have the levels of kidnapping that other parts of the world have, but we do have sexual predators. They're always moving amongst us. The recent uproar about evil-personified - Ian Brady - is a sad and tragic reminder of this, if we really needed one.

D