Like CPR?

Awhile back I had the opportunity to attend an Outdoor Survival Course through the Northeast Ohio Primitive Living Center. Great program... everything you would see Les Stroud do on SURVIVORMAN was taught in this course. Some of the thingsw e learned to do was how to make a small fire and then wrap a blanket around yourself and create a chimney for the smoke wich would allow the small fire to heat you. or how to salvage car seat material to use as insulation. The instructor often remarked: "you can read this in any survival or primitive living book, but until you do it... its another story. You have to do this, to understand it. Its entirely experiential".

I couldn't agree more! One of the key methods of learning is through what educators call kinesthetic learning. According to Wikipedia:

Kinesthetic learning is a teaching and learning style in which learning takes place by the student actually carrying out a physical activity, rather than listening to a lecture or merely watching a demonstration. Some people are visual learners, some kinesthetic learners, and some are auditory learners.

Interestingly, the least effective learning style is most often auditory learning. Adult learners lose interest in a lecture within 30 seconds to 2 minutes. For this reason the American Heart Association stopped using an instructor driven CPR course and now uses a video driven course. This is because unless an instructor is very good at presenting the course material it likely the class will lose interest. I know, I'm an AHA Instructor.

The other aspect of the class is that you actually have to learn how to do CPR by........(drumroll) doing it! Yes, thats right, unfortunately until we develop Matrix level technology that will allow us to 'mind dream' or do simple auditory/ visual learning - CPR, outdoor survival, and self-defense skills must all be developed the old fashioned way; repetition for muscle memory.

So drawing on success from other adult learning programs I have developed the Fight Like A Girl and the Child Awareness Rapid Escape courses to work on similar principles. Thats why in my programs you will here few war stories and we will concentrate on developing YOUR Potential.

As the old saying goes; "I can show you the door, but you must go through it".

Stay Safe!

Teaching our children to fight...

When I grew up I was always taught not to get in fights, just walk away. Sound advice, if you grew up in the 1950s; unfortunately that doesn't work for today's society. Even more so it is dangerous to advise children NOT To fight. Why?

I love Bill Gates marketing slogan; "I'm a PC". Because for the most part thats very true. What we program into our heads is what we get back. Thats why I feel its very important that we need to build a defensive program into our children, one that is based on resistance and fighting back against predators. Yes I will concur with the naysayers that a 3 year old may not be able to fight back effectively against an adult predator. But giving them the building blocks (physical skills) and doing regular training on these skills that child will have developed the muscle memory to fight if they are attacked/ abducted later in life. If we tell our children they shouldn't fight but then we expect them to fight for their life at a later time when a rapist or child molester tries to abduct them - haven't we really sent them a mixed message? We teach our children safety all of the time; biking, swimming, fire, first aid, hazards, etc. The time to enable our children is when their programming is still young and when they have the time to practice and in-grain self-protection skills that will serve them later in life.

Now, please let me caveat my words - this isn't to say that we must teach them how to be cruel little monsters that go around inflicting harm on other people because we have taught them to. But rather to temper realistic self defense training with a firm moral compass. While my children have been taught to fight back, which includes where and how to strike someone to really hurt them - they are also taught and expected to know when to use the skills and in what context. This is the other end of training that parents must continue to be obligated to as well.

We ran a CARE Class last week with North Canton Community Education; where we had 15 boys and girls in the class and the parents were there as well (Thanks Mom and Dad!) - we taught them the basics of how to fight back against an abductor. Check out the video down below on some of the class material.