[i]Article created: 07/23/2005 04:22:41 AM
Teach yourself, your kids, to be ‘street smart’
Teach yourself, your kids, to be ‘street smart’. Terror attacks from huge outside forces are terrorizing. Wherever and whenever they occur, the events are brutal, incongruous and shocking. We put our trust in our government to protect our country, our hom
On a more local and immediate level, each of us is responsible for our own personal safety. When I hear about children, teens or people of any age suddenly disappearing or being personally threatened or abused, I can’t help wondering if we need to take more proactive steps to help protect ourselves and everyone in our communities in a better way.
When my friend Stephanie was 15 years old, she moved from Virginia Beach to Richmond, Va. From her first day in her new high school, she was tormented by a group of very tough girls. After a few months, the verbal abuse turned physical.
“Four girls beat me up and broke my nose,” she remembers the painful incident. “My parents signed me up for a self-defense karate course the very next day. It changed my life.”
Now a 48-year-old emergency room nurse and mother of three living in Baltimore, she believes that “everyone needs to be trained in self-defense. We shouldn’t wait for tragedies to wake us up. Knowing how to take care of ourselves, both mentally and physically, needs to be taught right from the beginning.”
When she met her future husband, they attended self-defense classes together, and her children are all trained in safety techniques and her 13- and 15-year-old daughters compete competitively in karate. I agree with her. No matter what our age, we all need to know how to protect ourselves and how to escape if and when a predator attacks. This shouldn’t be scary information. It is empowering, potentially life-saving education.
Knowledge builds confidence. I think we should all instruct ourselves and our children, and our parents, in self-defense, self-protection and awareness. We teach our kids to ride bicycles; we need to teach them the basic elements of how to safely get away from threatening situations. I’ll even go so far as to suggest that the basic elements of martial arts should be taught the same way we educate our children to exercise, eat properly and take good care of themselves.
There’s a need to first educate ourselves about safety techniques and then to teach our children the steps they must be prepared to take when they are in an uncomfortable situation. And I also believe that safety education should be an integrated part of school physical education classes. If we integrate all of the material, we will mainstream its importance.
I, for one, am signing up for a course to learn street smarts. At this point in my life, I need to know more than I can learn from watching a one-hour program on “Oprah.” There are many excellent courses and available resources in our community. I’m going to learn from them and I hope you will, too. Sheryl Wolff Kayne writes alternate Thursdays in WomanWise. She can be reached by e-mail at weighitis@aol.com.[/i]