When my youngest daughter was about three years old she had
not one, but two bullies in her preschool. These two bullies were twins and had already
developed a very sour reputation with several school systems – already by the
age of three! My heart broke then and
still breaks for them. I’m sure there
are many unfortunate reasons for their behavior.
We can’t control how other people parent their kids. Or control how other kids behave. Far be it from any of us to correct another
parent or critique them based off what we see for a few seconds.
A parent’s best line of
defense is to teach their kids how to stand up for themselves.
I married a very strong, don’t-take-no-guff-from-no
one kinda woman – so this part of parenting two daughters actually came
relatively easy for us. We had decided
long before we had any kids that we would teach them to feel confident in defending
themselves – and we wanted them to learn it at an early age. So when our youngest came home with a black
eye and an “Incident Report” from her preschool, we knew we were already at
this stage.
We sat our little girl down and coached her on how to defend
herself. Of course we told her that it’s
a good thing to go tell the teacher if someone is hurting you. But what happens
when that doesn’t solve the problem?
With clear words and plenty of scenarios, my wife and I helped build our
daughter’s confidence and taught her how to yell “Get Away From Me!”, make
fists and how to push someone away and then run away. Now, when I say we taught her how to yell, I mean really yell. I spent many years training
in self-defense and learned that if you don’t train like it is real, you won’t
do it when it is real. So with her
little three-year-old voice she YELLED “get away from me!”, “I’m
a tough girl!”, “don’t MESS with me!”
I know it might seem kind of harsh to teach a three year old
how to do that, but it was our decision to do it. You need to decide how you’re going to teach
your daughter to defend herself.
The same night I wrote this post I heard from a long time
friend of mine about a very frightening event she went through. Long story short, she woke up at about 3am to
her 1 year old crying. When she rolled
over to get out of bed she saw an intruder standing next to her. She froze in fear and watched as the man,
apparently startled by the child crying, walked to the foot of her bed and lay
down on the floor, as if to hide until she returned to the room. My friend woke her husband, who was sleeping
right next to her and pointed to the foot of the bed, mouthing “there’s someone
here.” My friend, not sure if she
actually saw what she saw, meekly said, “hello?” The intruder stood up, said hello, and then
walked out of the bedroom and out of the house.
The man was wearing a woman’s wig, no shirt, a thong, no pants and no shoes. Terrifying huh?
People do weird things, scary things and dangerous things
and you never know when or where it’s going to happen. You can’t go through life
thinking something bad is always going to happen to you – and you don’t want
your daughter to think she’s going to be a victim of some horrendous crime just
because she’s a female. But, as her
father, you need to at least talk to her about these kinds of things.
If you don’t know any self-defense tactics,
look into it with your daughter. Let her
know you want her to be safe. See what your local college or park district offers for self-defense classes. Call your police department and see if they offer any classes. Go online and do a basic search for self-defense and you're sure to find a plethora of resources.
Here’s short list of basic self-defense moves you should
talk about:
·
Kicking in the groin is always allowed. Hit there first and hit there hard. Then run away screaming.
·
Eyeballs.
They are soft and no one likes getting pocked in them. If someone is attacking you and you can get a
finger in there, pop that eyeball out if you can. It’ll be gross, but you’ll probably get away.
·
Keys.
Sliding a couple of keys between your fingers for a punch or a slap will
do a lot more damage than one without keys.
·
Mase.
Have her carry a small bottle of mase in her purse or backpack and know
how to get to it fast. Teach her how to
use it and test it outside.
·
Fighting.
Lots of screaming and clawing will not only draw attention, but scraping
skin cells out from under fingernails for DNA evidence is one of the first
things police look for when someone is attacked.
·
Look up when walking. I used to scold my wife about this. As we would walk to class in college or just
through the store or parking lots I’d catch her looking at the ground and then
ask her what color shirt the guy was wearing that just walked by. Be aware of your surroundings.
To a young girl this might not be appropriate to talk about,
but only you can gauge that. Take your time, be patient and help your daughter to be aware of her surroundings. Hopefully her awareness will keep her on her toes and she won't ever find herself in an unfortunate predicament.
