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This article is about you helping to teach your children self defense. It is meant to only cover children ages 12 and under. Kid's older than 12 years of age suffer the brunt of criminal victimizations in our society and therefore need more "adult" self-defense tools.

As a long-time teacher and martial arts practioner, I'm know what the public perception is about what children should learn to "defend themselves." But after carefully looking over crime statistics, looking over the potential arsenal of weapons available for use by your child, and determining what weapons will work to both keep your child safe from harm and safe from legal issues of mis-use, I provide you with the following information.

Statistics

In general, kids 12 and under have only a few worries with respect to a crime. In the case of violent crimes they suffer the most from Assaults, Sexual Offenses and Kidnaping. Boys predominate as victims overall and of assaults, and girls predominate as victims of both Kidnaping and Sexual Offenses. All of these crimes are generally committed by someone the child knows (family member or acquaintance), very often right in the home itself.

In the realm of every-day "crimes", they face bullying, which may or may not lead to an assault. Three out of four students report that they have been bullied, so this is THE MOST SIGNIFICANT "crime" that juveniles need to learn to defend against.

• Bullying is reported as most severe in grades 7-9 (12-16 year olds) with grades 4-6 next (9-12 year olds).
• A Secret Service study of school shootings found that almost 75% of the school shooters were bullied, persecuted, threatened, attacked or injured by other students prior to their action.
• Bullied boys are 4 times more likely to be suicidal and bullied girls 8 times more likely. Each year 1 out of 13 juveniles, 7.7% of all kids, attempt suicide, a rate that has tripled in the last 20 years.
• Nearly 60% of boys classified as bullies in 6th through 9th grade were convicted of a crime by age 24.

Of all juvenile crimes, the highest voilent crime against children under 6 years of age is Forcible Sex at 2.4%. Assaults are second at 2.1% of all juvenile crimes and less than 1% were kidnapings.

Children ages 6 to 11 suffer a greater level of victimization, especially a large jump in victimizations from Assaults (3 times) and Sexual Offenses (nearly 2 times). Of all juvenile crimes, Assault tops the list at 6.6% of all juvenile crimes for victims in this age group, 3.6% were Sexual Offenses. Less than 1% of all crimes against juveniles were Kidnapings against children from 6-11.

Girls predominate as victims of sex offenses and kidnaping, boys predominate as victims of all other crimes.

More than 70% of reported sex offenses involve juvenile victims (victims under 18)!

• For women, 22% of all rapes occur before age 12.
• For men, 48% of all rapes occur before age 12.

Kidnapping

Of children missing from their homes, only 9% were abducted. The highest percentage of missing children, 45%, were runaways/throwaways. Children under age 12 account for only 26% of missing juveniles. I suspect that children under 12 have a much higher percentage for being kidnaped than being a runaway/throwaway, but have no statistic to back it up.

As we've seen above, most kidnapings of juveniles was done by family members or acquaintances, especially with children under age 11. Family abductions are most often perpetrated from the child's father or male family member. These kidnapings generally occur in the afternoon/evening time frame and they are generally kidnaped from the home.

Juvenile abductions usually occur in the afternoon or evening. For Family abductions, 41% occur in the afternoon, with the balance evenly split between morning and evening. For Stranger abductions, 79% occur in the afternoon/evening timeframe. For nonfamily abductions, it's uncommon for the abduction to be performed during the morning or night.

Where a child is kidnapped from is usually determined by who is committing the crime. Family members usually kidnap from the home. Stranger kidnapings are most often done when the child is outside. Less than 5% of children are abducted from school.

Younger children are generally abducted by family members. 79% of family abductions are against children under age 11. Most often, children are kidnapped by their fathers or an adult male family member. Since child abductions generally involve lengthy court battles and the children are rarely harmed, their return is usually more drawn out.

Young juveniles are not as likely to be abducted by a nonfamily member. Only 19% of nonfamily abductions are against children 11 and under. Unfortunately, these abductions are more traumatic for the child when they occur, with 46% being sexually assaulted and 31% being physically assaulted. Luckily, 90% of nonfamily abductees are returned within 24 hours with 99% being returned alive.

So, statistically, the crimes your child are most likely to face that he/she has to defend himself from are bullying, simple assaults, and sexual assaults. And most of the perpetrators of these crimes are from someone your child knows, either a family member or an acquaintance.

Now that we know what we're facing, let's look at what you and your child can do to help prevent these crimes from occuring.

Confidence and Interpersonal Skills

One of the biggest things that your child can learn that will help them in all aspects of life is confidence and how to interact with others. Children who are confident will do better in school, will become more successful in life, less likely be a victim of crime, less likely to use drugs or alcohol, less likely to join a gang, and less likely to run away. You'd be surprised just how much emotionally stronger confident kids are. There are two things you need to do to help teach confidence to your child. The first follows the addage "fake it 'til you make it." That means that your child should act confident even if he doesn't feel it yet. How do you act confident? Well, a confident person holds their head up when they walk and looks around them. Their arms swing naturally at their sides, they look people in the eyes as they approach them. People will respond very positively to a child that acts this way, which helps to embolden your child. Many times, a child will feel more confident after a while, just by acting this way.

The second way to build confidence and teach them how to interact is to encourage your child to excel in things they enjoy. Teach them character traits such as patience and perseverance and the benefit of continual learning. Teach them how to successfully use courtesy, respect, generosity, and teamwork when working with others, rather than resorting to bullying tactics or passivity. That's the power of martial arts training for kids. It's not so much about them learning to fight, it's about instilling in them the confidence in being who they are, in knowing what great things they can do if they only try. It's about teaching them how to interact with others in a healthy way.

How can YOU teach that?

Well, at my school I give the students homework to teach them just that as part of my Martial Arts Character Development Program, as well as reinforcing the definitions of the terms with famous quotes and stories. Here's the definitions I teach them along with the tasks they have to perform. Maybe you can have them perform similar tasks along with some kind of reward when the tasks are completed...

• Courtesy - treating people kindly
• Respect - treating people and things as if they are valuable (e.g., diamonds)
• Generosity - giving willingly, without being required to

These three are taught together. To learn these traits, their task is to perform 50 random acts of kindness towards another. Each time an act is performed, it's written down. When 50 are reached, they get a reward. These acts of kindness can be things like holding the door open for someone or giving another child a part of their treat. Even saying things like "please" and "thank you" count. One of the things I enforce, though, is that a single type of act such as saying "please" can only be counted a maximum of 5 times. After that it doesn't count. I want them to learn to do a whole variety of things.

• Teamwork - working together to achieve a common goal

Their task for learning teamwork is like the previous one, except they're to perform 50 acts of teamwork with another. The subtle difference is that this task is less about doing something FOR someone and more WITH someone, like housework or yardwork. Again, I enforce variety with the 5 maximum rule.

• Patience - waiting without complaining
• Perseverance - never giving up

These two traits go hand-in-hand as well. Their task I assign to them to learn these is to perform 1000 kicks, of course spread out over time. They're to learn how to break the task down into managable chunks and to keep doing it. You'll have to come up with something else they have to do 1000 of but make it something similarly challenging.

• Knowlege - learning through study or experience

To learn what knowledge is about, I have my students read 5 books that I choose and write a 1-page book reports on each on what they learned. You might have them read something that interests them in order to help them grow in their knowledge of the subject, or maybe have them read books on bully prevention. The book reports are more to emphasize that they're learning something rather than something to "grade."

Defense Against Bullies

The biggest problem your child will face each day is bullying. It's probably the biggest problem all of us face day in and day out. Three out of four students report that they have been bullied. Bullying is defined as "to treat in an overbearing or intimidating manner." A bully tries to use physical or emotional force, force they have no right exerting, in order to make another do something or to demean them. For example, a child will tell another that he'll beat him up if he doesn't give over his lunch money. He's forcing your child to do something and he has no right to do it... as opposed to a police officer forcing a thief to hand over money he stole. Bullying doesn't have to be physical, though. Emotional bullying (e.g., teasing) is much more common and has just as big of an impact on the victim.

Bullying is not two students of roughly equal strength fighting with each other. It is not a friendly back-and-forth banter or teasing. It is not a "shouting match" between two disagreeing students. It is one person exerting dominant and malicious control over another and it can have extreme consequences for both of them.

Bullying is generally considered to be the result of poor interpersonal skills and has severe consequences for both the perpetrator and the victim. Here's what the Centre for Children and Families in the Justice System's web site, www.lfcc.on.ca/bully.htm, has to say:

"Victims of bullying typically are very unhappy children who suffer from fear, anxiety, and low self-esteem as a result of the bullying. They may try to avoid school, and to avoid social interaction, in an effort to escape the bullying. Some victims of bullying are so distressed that they commit, or attempt to commit suicide.

"Even when bullying does not drive victims to the extremes of suicide, victims experience significant psychological harm which interferes with their social and academic and emotional development. The sooner the bullying is stopped, the better for the long-term outcome for victims. If bullying patterns are allowed to continue unchecked, there are long-term consequences for the victim. A follow-up study by Olweus (1993b) found that by the time former male victims of bullying were in their early twenties, they had generally made a positive social adjustment, as they had more freedom to choose their social and work milieu. However, they were more likely to be depressed, and had lower self-esteem than a comparison group who had not been bullied.

"The serious long-term outcomes for bullies are also important to recognize. Bullies tend to become aggressive adults who stand a much higher chance than average of obtaining multiple criminal convictions (Olweus, 1979). These findings by Olweus and his group fit well with other studies which have found exactly the same outcome for children, especially males, who are aggressive as children (e.g. Robins, 1978; Loeber & Dishion, 1983)."

Because bullying is performed on an uneven playing field, I teach kids to ALWAYS tell an adult if they're being bullied, especially if it's ongoing. The adult can then help stop it from occuring and help the child cope with it. And that doesn't mean telling the child to strike the offender or telling them to just deal with it. Other strategies have to be attempted first.

There are generally 4 types of bullies. This part deals with the non-physical actions first. If a bully physically attacks your child, different rules apply. I deal with child-on-child attacks later on in this article.

Teaser Bully - This bully uses taunts, name-calling, and rumors to attack your child and provoke a response. This is the most frequently reported form of bullying. Your child's confidence will let them see that the names don't mean anything. You can enforce this by teaching your child that if they don't believe what the others are saying than it's simply them babbling like babies. It's "stick-and-stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me." Words only mean anything if your child accepts them. For example, if your child is called four-eyes, your child should believe he doesn't look stupid, that his accuser is just acting like a baby.

To help deal with these bullies, I teach the kids how to make a personal garbage disposal. Garbage disposals collect all the rotten stuff we leave behind and grind it all up until it's gone. The garbage is just like the things said by teasers. Your child would never eat the stuff out of the garbage disposal, so he shouldn't "eat" the names being thrown at him. Your child can make a personal garbage disposal by making a fist with one hand. He can then imagine pushing all the garbage words into it with his thumb and move his fingers to make them all get munched away. Again, if you don't give the bullies what they want, a reaction, then they'll move on to someone else.

Pick-And-Nag Bully - The "Pick-and-Nag" bully is the type that pushes your child or flicks his ear. His whole focus seems to be just to torture your child. This bully is attempting to gain personal "power" by showing he can control what another does. I can go on-and-on about how to deal with bullies and have done so in other articles. In short, this type of bully is defeated by not giving him what he wants, attention. Bullies only attack those that respond to them and they enjoy the response. If you don't give them their response by ignoring them, they will typically move on. It's easier said than done, but the more attention you give them, the more torture they inflict.

Give-It-To-Me Bully - This type of bully is the kind that forces your child to give them something or to give in to their demands. Here's where your child's confidence is key. He must keep his head up high and say "I'd like to give you ____, but I can't" and leave it at that. He doesn't have to say anything else or even explain what he means. If the bully takes the item or performs the action by force, your child should merely ask for it back. See the "Keep-Away-Bully" for more information on this.

Keep-Away Bully - This type of bully takes something that your child has and plays games to keep it away from him. The biggest thrill for this type of bully is to watch your child dance around him, trying to get what he wants. Again, your child has to simply not give the bully what he wants -- don't dance around grabbing for the item. Simply stand tall and ask for it back. After asking 3 times, turn and walk away. If the bully keeps the item, it's considered stealing and your child should go to an adult to get it back. Generally, the bully will grudgingly give the item back.

Defense Against Sexual Offenses

"Stranger" Danger

Often times when we think of crimes committed against children, we think of some stranger attacking them. Unfortunately that is not the norm. As you see from the statistics above, the truth actually hurts: 62% of kidnappings and 85% of sex crimes are perpetrated by family members and acquaintances.

The "problem" people are generally people that are known; family members, relatives, soccer coaches, piano teachers, priests, and God help us even martial arts instructors. These are people that we've taught our children to trust and generally scold them when they don't act as if they trust them. You need your children to interact with other adults. Unfortunately, there's no tattoo on their head saying that they're bad. In fact, child molestors are generally very good with children, other than their crime of course.

But still, I know there are strangers that do bad things to kids. Kid's do have to understand that to be safe they have to stay away from certain people. Unfortunately, just telling them to stay away from "strangers" doesn't work.

Ask your kids what a "stranger" is and they'll probably tell you of some dark and scary guy. Their description isn't anything like the coach or piano teacher that they interact with. It's nothing like the adults they see and play with on the playground. It's nothing like the guy that walks his dog past them every day. To a child, these aren't strangers; they're friendly people. A dark evil man wouldn't walk a friendly dog and allow you to pet it.

When I teach self defense to kids, I define a "stranger" as anyone that MOM and DAD doesn't know. It's not that the child knows them or not, it's that YOU don't know them and haven't given explicit approval for your child to be with them. Children often see child molestors as friends because they're always around, even though they really are strangers. Child molestors play with them on the playground, give them treats in the park. They do things that make children trust them and want to be with them.

So what do you do?

#1 - Ask First Rule

First off, children should be told not to accept gifts OF ANY KIND from an adult without you giving permission FIRST. They should also not be allowed to play with an adult without your permission FIRST. No exceptions. This will at least limit access other adults have with your children and should give you information about who they're with. Child molestors use both gifts and playing in order to make your child comfortable with them, to help make them seem friendly. Yes an adult can give your child a piece of candy, but ONLY IF you know about it beforehand. Yes an adult can play at the park with your child, but ONLY IF you know about it, again, BEFOREHAND.

You can also limit the chances of a strange adult appearing to know your child by making sure your child's name is not in plain sight. That means write your child's name inconspicuously on your child's jacket and books. Child molestors will talk to your child by name in order to appear to know them or your family and thus whittle their way past your child's defenses.

#2 - No Bad Secrets Rule

Along with the "Ask First" rule, there is one defense against stranger and non-stranger molestion that will ALWAYS work. Your child has to be able to tell you things. They have to know that there are NO SECRETS between them and you. If they feel uneasy about a person, they have a right to express it to you and not be with that person. You also want them to trust you enough so that if they break the rule about playing with adults, they will AT LEAST tell you about it afterwards.

Child molesters will make your child promise to keep what happened a secret. They might suggest that it was an accident, that you'd be mad at your child, that not keeping a secret is bad, whatever... Keeping it a secret is what allows it to continue. Your job is to let your child know that it is not a promise worth keeping because it's a "bad" secret.

Secrets are a normal part of life. We all have them. I teach that there are "good" secrets and "bad" secrets. A "good" secret is like a Christmas present being bought for mommy. It's defined as "good" only because it will come out soon. It's not something that will be held back forever. A child usually feels excitement about a "good" secret. They bubble over wanting to tell you. A "bad" secret is one that the child is NEVER supposed to tell. It's usually something that is very bad and makes your child feel awful about keeping.

A healthy dose of good dialog with your child, one without bad secrets, will help keep harm from your child.

Telling versus Tattling

Another area that confuses children and keeps them from coming forward with vital information is tattling. Children tattle a lot. And who knows why... maybe it's to get attention, maybe to exert some control... I don't know. But we adults often scold them not to tattle on so and so. They're labeled a "tattle-tale" by other kids. Kids learn not to tell things to adults that are potentially important because they believe they're not supposed to tell. "You won't tattle on me will you?" the child-molestor asks.

In my classes I teach the difference between "tattling" and "telling." Telling is the child letting you know information that will help keep someone from getting hurt. A child is telling on her brother if he's playing too near the street. A child is telling on his sister if she's playing with the liquid drain cleaner bottle.

"Tattling", on the other hand, is giving you information for the sake of just getting another in trouble. A child tattle's on her brother if he took an extra cookie. A child tattle's on his sister if she took a drink of his pop without asking.

Sit down with your child and discuss the differences. Teach them that "tattling" isn't nice (it's not wrong just probably improper) but that "telling" is very important. "Telling" you things is being brave and being a hero. If it's something regarding an adult, it's "telling" rather than "tattling" -- kids usually only "tattle" on other kids.

Inappropriate Touching

One of the biggest violent-crime problem that kids have is inappropriate touching, sexual assault, and rape. As we saw before, more than 70% of reported sex offenses involve juvenile victims (victims under 18). For women, 22% of rapes occur before age 12. For men, 48% of all rapes occur before age 12.

So how do we deal with this problem? Well, there are really two approaches. The first is to know who your child is with. I don't believe you leave your child with a perfect stranger, but what about people he meets on the playground or at the park? Is your child playing with a teen or adult? I know it probably sounds bad, but you should always find it suspicious if an adult is playing with a child that is not their own. Especially males, since 97% of child molestors are male.

Unfortunately, even people you trust can be child molestors. There's pretty much little you can do to stop them from doing it up front. I mean, you HAVE to trust other people with your child and there's always a first-time offender. But, our second approach makes sure they're caught and never do it again. That is where the dialog with your child is important.

First off, I teach children where it's appropriate to touch or be touched and where it is inappropriate (notice it goes both ways, to touch or be touched). I tell them that anywhere a bathing suite covers is inappropriate. If ANYONE touches them in an inappropriate place, they are to tell the person to stop and to make sure they ALWAYS tell you about it. If ANYONE asks them to touch in an inappropriate place, they do the same thing. It doesn't matter what they promise the person, what the person promises them, or how innocent or accidental it may seem. It doesn't matter if they were forced to go along with it or if it was someone they know and see all the time. They should ALWAYS tell you about it. The only people that a child should believe are allowed to touch them are their doctor and you. ABSOLUTELY NO ONE ELSE.

And since a high proportion of convicted men molested their own children, mother's need to be alert to problems between their children and their spouse to try to catch it early enough. Usually the signs are there if your eyes are open. The solution usually goes back to an open dialog with your child.

Granted, the contact can truly be accidental. For example, in class I teach kids how to defend against a bear hug grab. That's close contact and they are likely to be accidentally touched in what I've described as an inappropriate place. To be safe, *I* generally won't perform the grab myself, leaving that to the kids, AND it's in full view of everyone including parents. My point is, there are things that kids will do that may involve truly accidental, "inappropriate" contact. Even if it really is appropriate for the situation, they should NEVER be told to keep it a secret and in fact should tell you it happened. YOU can then decide if it was appropriate and decide what action to take. That's not for your child nor the offender to decide.

Defense Against Kidnapping

Child kidnappings make a lot of big news. We've heard a lot about it in the past few years. Unfortunately it is over-hyped. Of all crimes against juveniles, less than 1% are kidnappings. Of children missing, 45% were runaways/throwaways (not my terminology). only 9% were abductions with only about 2% being abductions by strangers.

Again, as much as we'd like to think that only "strangers" are commiting crimes against our kids, the truth hurts. The only defense I know of against kidnapping by family members is to always know where your children are and who they're with. In general, a rocky relationship with an intimate is a warning indicator. I don't teach kids 12 and under to fight against their parents, even if I thought they could actually succeed. Kids 13 and older should learn the same techniques as adults, since they are more likely to be abducted by a stranger.

When dealing with an adult, children have a difficult time. They are taught to obey adults and to not hit. If it's a parent or family member, in general their only recourse is to tell the other parent or another adult they trust what happened. I don't care how much "martial arts" they learn, they will not defeat a determined adult, so I'm not going to give them a false sense of security. They have to understand that they HAVE to learn other ways to be safe, such as travelling with a friend and always getting parental permission for things.

Typical Lures

Kids also desire to be helpful to adults. They want to help find lost puppies or go with the nice man that tells them he's a police officer. In these cases, kids have to learn two scary facts:

• Some adults do lie
• Some adults do want to hurt them

I don't mean to suggest that you scare your children, just make them understand that the should be more reserved with their trust.

When a adult stranger attempts to kidnap a child, they usually use a ploy to get them to drop their guard and get them into a position where they can be taken quickly. In self defense, this is called a second location. Here are the typical lures used.

Help in finding a lost puppy or child - This is a very common ploy because kids really like to help. The person will usually have all the props, too, such as an empty leash or a picture. Everything will look legitimate to a child. There will be an urgency that makes your child need to go now, before it's too late. Once the child goes with them, they're easy to kidnap.

Authority figure like a plain-clothes policeman or fireman - In this ploy, the offender attepts to convince your child that you're hurt and he's there to take your child to you. He may also ask your child to help at an accident or problem down the road. Again, it's playing on your child's desire to help. It also plays on your child's implanted belief that all police and firemen are to be trusted implicitely. Once your child goes with them, they're easy to kidnap.

Help with Loading/Unloading - In this ploy, the offender will have some sort of disability, such as a broken leg, and needs help putting something into his car or taking it out of his car. What usually happens is the child gets close enough for the offender to grab them and push them into the car.

Give a Ride / Ask for Directions - This ploy is similar to the previous one in that the offender is in or near his car. He offers to give your child a ride or asks him to come over and give directions some place. The goal is to try to lure your child close enough to the car so that he is pushed into it and then taken.

Photographer for modelling agency or sport scout - This ploy works on your child's vanity. I don't believe it's a common ploy for kids under 12, but I'll add it to the list anyways. The offender will whip off a couple of camera shots or watch them play some ball and attempt to convince your child that they'll be famous with just a little help. Their goal is to convince your child to come to them for this help.

Defeating Any Lure

Children have to learn to think a little bit and have rules to help them through these problems. Adults DON'T ask kids for help, especially kids 11 and under; adults ask another adult. If your child is asked by an adult for help, they need to have a rule to ALWAYS get your permission FIRST. If it's a lost puppy or their child is missing, they must ask YOU if they can help, BEFORE they do it. NO EXCEPTIONS.

When asked, all they have to say in response is "Let me get my mom's permission first. I'll be right back."

The second thing they need to think about is what a real police or fireman looks like. It doesn't matter if he has a badge... it doesn't matter if he's dressed in a uniform. A real policeman will generally have a marked car with lights, a gun, and a badge. A real fireman will have the uniform and a marked car or truck. Your child should know to contact a trusted adult BEFORE going anywhere with an adult. This is where additional contacts are important. Your child should know how to reach you AND how to reach another trusted adult such as a neighbor.

There is one caveat when dealing with strangers. If your child is in danger himself, such as in a burning house or lost in the woods, they should allow a stranger to help them. I don't mean to imply they should hitchhike or something, but in an emergency situation they may have to rely on strangers and not shy away from them.

Physical Defense Against Adults

There are two, simple, physical "techniques" I teach kids when dealing with an adult. The first is to run... run to some place where there are people. Run to a woman, especially one with kids and tell her that you're scared and you need help. Attackers do not want the attention of others and women are generally safer to go to than men (more men attack kids than do women, remember?). Kids that run and use obstacles are difficult to get a hold of. If the adult is in a car, run in the opposite direction.

When running with stuff in his hands or a backpack, teach your child to drop it on the ground. Your child's safety is far more important than purchasing another school book. Even if it was an innocent incident, praise your child on their thinking as you go and retrieve the items. If your child has a bike and the adult grabs them, teach them to hold onto the bike. Putting the child AND the bike into a car will be very difficult.

The second "technique" is to squirm. If they're caught and held, a squirming kid is very hard to control, as I'm sure you well know.

In both cases, they should use their voice to tell everyone that this is not their parent. Saying just "No" is not enough. Molesters and kidnappers will try to make it seem like this is just another one of those unruly children you see at the store. Your child needs to convince witnesses that that is not the case. They should yell "You're not my daddy!"

If they're hard to catch, hard to hold, and create too much attention they'll be considered too much trouble. Think your kids can learn to do that... I thought so! They seem to be naturals at it, don't they?

Physical Defense Against Kids

Nowadays, all schools have a zero-tolerance policy for fighting. That means, whether your child started the attack or not, BOTH students will be punished. In most cases I agree with this policy, simply because most of the time the altercations are simply fights, not self-defense situations, especially with kids 12 and under. They fight over things we think are pretty stupid; their place in line, their tennis shoes, their favorite football team. The suspension will give both some time to cool off.

I know it seems unfair. I mean your little angel was attacked by the devil himself and both got the same punishment. Unfortunately, most schools don't want to take the time to determine fault, even if it could be established. It's best if everyone learns that this is not the way to settle disputes and give them both time to reflect on what happened. The best thing, from a self-defense perspective, is that your child is safe. If you think something truly viscious was done to your child, take it to the courts; that's what they're there for.

When I teach self defense to kids, I try to refrain from teaching them to punch and kick in self defense simply because they have a very hard time knowing when it's appropriate to use. It's sending a very mixed signal to teach them to use something violent and then punish them when they think they used it appropriatly. I mean to many kids, punching someone that called them a name is considered "self defense." There are some adults I know that hold that belief sometimes. There are a two techniques I teach kids for defending themselves against other kids, clinching (I call it hugging for them) and ground-fighting techniques (general wrestling). Both of these techniques keep them from striking another child in anger and help your child learn to diffuse the danger.

Clinching

Clinching is very similar to hugging. The goal of your child is to grab the attacker in such a way as to dimish his capacity to strike them. Clinching for kids will keep both children from getting hurt and will generally not make one child so much more angry at the other that they feel a need to retaliate.

There are 2 clinches that are preferred for kids. The first is the rear clinch in which your child wraps his arms around the attacker's waist and holds his own wrist. His ear is plastered right between the attacker's shoulder blades. His legs are spread a little wider than shoulder width with the knees bent to allow full movement.

The second is a side clinch. Your child's right hand is again around the attacker's waist, under his left arm, but this time his ear is pressed into the attacker's chest. Your child's left hand grabs the attacker's free arm and holds onto it.

In both cases, this position is a delay tactic. It leads to the attacker moving about trying to disengage and generally leads to both being forced onto the ground. Even on the ground, the clinch can be maintained. Often help arrives soon, so the delay works.

Ground Fighting

In ground fighting, similar to wrestling, your child's goal is to find a position of dominance in which they keep the other person from being able to strike them. There are three positions that are favored for this, the first being the back. In this position, your child wraps both his legs and arms around the attacker while sitting on his back. They can then hang on. This position can be obtained in many ways while grappling. It doesn't matter if your child is on top or not.

The second position of dominance that your child can obtain is the mount position. In this position, the attacker is lying on his back. Your child is sitting on his stomach with his hands holding the attackers arms or on the floor far out to the sides. Your child's knees should be spread wide apart with his feet firmly planted in the attacker's hips to keep from being thrown off. This is called "having a good base." His feet and hands can also be used to stop him from falling sideways off the attacker's stomach, and is called "posting."

The third position is the closed guard. This is similar to the back position above, but your child is on the attacker's chest instead. In this position, your child should also seek to grab one of the attacker's arms and force his head on your child's shoulder, away from the attacker's free arm in order to keep from being punched.

In my classes, I let the kids grapple a bit on the mats. In the match, their entire goal is to get to one of the two positions of dominance and use other movement, such as the guard, to keep their opponent from getting a dominant position. Once the mount is achieved, I count down from 15. Once I reach 0, the match is over and the child on top is the winner, unless the child on the bottom forces the other off. If one child reaches the back of the other, the count starts at 8. There's no kicking, no punching, no biting... just wrestling for a dominant position. It's a great drill that you can play with at home, too.

General Information

Your children should quickly learn the following information to help them when they're away from you:

• their own full name
• both parents' first and last names
• their own phone number
• their own address
• another contact person's first and last name (e.g., neighbor or aunt)
• the contact's phone number
• how to dial 911 and ask for help

Conclusion

In children's self defense, it is generally the parents' responsibility to keep their children safe. Children are unable to clearly determine the intent or veracity of an offender's actions. Only through a clear dialog with their parents and firm rules to dictate their behaviors will children maintain their safety in dangerous situations.

There are only a few situations that a child must protect against, typically just child-on-child bullying or assault situations. Having confidence and a few simple tricks up their sleeves will help alleviate problems like this. The more insidious crimes of kidnaping and sexual violence will take a little learning and a few rules to handle.

If you have any questions regarding this article, please drop me an email at LVWhiteBir@aol.com. I'll answer as fully as I can.