Women's Safety Information

As Women, We Like

As women, we like to help others. We like to be liked. We like to be successful. We like to feel empowered and that we make a difference in the world. We are perfectly capable of raising a family, having a career and making our own decisions.

However, few of us realize how much our decisions are influenced by our self-esteem at the time a decision is made. If you are having an off day, chances are good that you will make a different choice that you would on a day when you feel awesome about yourself.

For example: I thought about relationship mistakes I have made in the past. After tracing them back to their origin, they all resulted from my low self-esteem at the time. The good relationship (and I am referring to friends, co-workers and family as well as dates) decisions I have made tend to stem from feeling confident.

Let Me Go One Step Further

One of my relationship decisions resulted in a date rape. If you have read my article series on “Women’s Personal Safety Secrets,” you already know I state the fact that no one deserves to be attacked and that the blame always lies with the attacker. But when I asked myself why I went out with this person even though I had a bad gut feeling, I realized it was because I wasn’t feeling too terribly great about myself. I was just thankful that someone had asked me out. The bad gut feelings multiplied and intensified during the evening. But I stayed because “I wanted someone to like me.” Since I wasn’t so thrilled with myself, that would mean I was worthwhile.

That situation was one of several which led me to the work I currently enjoy as a personal safety trainer, speaker, author and self-defense instructor. In the long run, the lesson that was learned (and there is one in every situation) was that even something bad can send you in a whole new direction to make a difference in the world. However, it took healthy self-esteem to make the choice to create something good from it instead of continuing to live as a victim.

Tracing my good relationship decisions back showed me that I have chosen the right friends, let go of the wrong friends and picked my battles wisely. These “confident day” decisions have had a dramatically different affect on my life than those made on an “off day.”

YOU are Most Important

Although you probably have a bazillion things on your “To Do” list, I ask you to pay close attention to yourself prior to making decisions. It only takes a second. If you are not feeling fantastic about yourself, think about the decision you would make if you were and then decide. It is similar to establishing and enforcing personal boundaries with a clear head (“Women’s Personal Safety Secret #4″).

Self-Esteem

You know that self-esteem is an inside job and as much as we’d love to think as much of ourselves as our loved ones think of us, we rarely do. When we feel vulnerable, the slightest off-hand comment can dim our light. When we feel strong, it takes a lot to rock us. Sometimes, a single day can feel like a ride on the self-esteem roller coaster. It may not seem fair but realize you are not alone.

Women have greater intuitive sensitivity, which is great in most situations and detrimental in others. We tend to take things more personally than men do and we attempt to read between the lines when there is often nothing there. This is why our self-esteem can be delicate and why we must take extra good care of ourselves in order to be there for our loved ones. This is how self-esteem plays such a huge role in personal safety for women.

By: Kelly Rudolph

About the Author:

Hi again. In the first article we discussed the HOW, WHEN, WHERE, WHY and WHO – the 5 important questions for self defense.

This article looks at the importance awareness for your personal safety.

Women call it their intuition; men are a little less elegant and have a “gut feeling”. The reality is that we get these signals all the time; it’s just a question of listening and trusting this feeling.

Does this place feel safe? Do I feel OK with these people? Should I drive or walk this way home?
If you listen, you will feel an answer. It may be subtle, such as a feeling of slight discomfort, or as obvious as a chill, or the hairs standing up on your arm.

Have you ever looked at someone, and feel they that give you the creeps? Have you ever walked into as room and felt the energy was just a bit off.

Do you know why you would buy something, or are attracted to one person and not another?

We are constantly picking up on signals, but we can be fooled. We are also more likely to trust an attractive person, than someone we consider to be unattractive. This is a big trap. There have been several interesting psychological studies, which show how we can be manipulated by certain people.

So where does this leave your intuition? It’s just a matter of stepping back for a moment and notice if your intuition is overriding your initial thought. After all most conman and dodgy types rely on us to be impulsive.

So what do you do if your friend agrees to jump in a car with some new guys and you have a bad feeling about it? This is a tricky situation, you don’t want to abandon your friend, but it just feels bad.

You have to take care of yourself. Your friend for some reason has thrown caution to the wind. Remember that jumping in to save a drowning person isn’t a good idea if you can’t swim! If you refuse to go she may change her mind. It’s better for your friend to be angry than one or both of you finding yourselves in a tricky situation.

You must also use your conscious awareness. Notice who is around, do they look threatening? Do they appear out of place?

Here is an awareness challenge for you. Turn the lights off in your home and learn to move around without crashing into walls, tables etc. If you can do this successfully, you may just be able to quietly evade an intruder. Treat it as a game, it’s kind of fun.

The 2 big impediments to awareness and intuition are intoxication and not being in the present. If you are waiting for a bus, how will you be aware of people around you if you are day dreaming? If you are drunk how will you make good decisions?

Relax, enjoy yourself, Stay Safe.

By: Ian Newton

About the Author:

Fellow women, listen up!

We know that everyone needs safety right? Women are often the ones who promote safety at work, at home and with friends. Teens and kids don’t always know they need safety measures and men feel safer than we usually do because of their gender. The truth is, attackers and victims are both male and female.

We can all be approximately 95% safer from creeps and criminals just by learning these Top 5 Women’s Personal Safety Secrets. How? Prevention is 90% awareness. So if you know the five secrets, you can’t help but be at least 5% safer!

The 3 main reasons you haven not heard “The Secrets” before:

The secrets are simple and we tend to make things much more complicated than they need to be – When everyone learns how simple personal safety is, there will be far fewer victims. Most people avoid the topic of personal safety due to fear of acknowledging their vulnerability to crime – Burying our heads in the sand and hoping the subject of crime disappears makes us more likely targets of attackers. The focus of most safety information is negative, random safety tips and ineffective self-defense techniques – Safety must be taught in the positive what to do manner!
Top 5 Women’s Personal Safety Secrets (to share with loved ones)

Understand the “attacker” mindset – The key to knowing where someone is going is to know where they are coming from. Confident body language – Speaking this language can save your life. Your voice is your #1 weapon – Knowing the power in your own voice and how to use it effectively is vital to preventing yourself from becoming a victim. Establish and enforce personal boundaries – Knowing what is acceptable and unacceptable to you before something happens allows you to protect your personal space. Trust your gut feelings above all else – The job of these survival instincts is to keep you alive.

As you can see, each of these five personal safety secrets is very important and may, individually, repel attackers. However, putting them all together and practicing them into habits can provide you with a tremendous amount of safety, peace of mind and empowerment in your daily life.

By: Kelly Rudolph

About the Author:

Women are often targeted by attackers because we make a few common mistakes about personal safety that present us as easy crime victim prospects.

We tend to be accommodating, to a fault We ignore our gut feelings Automatic trust is common with women

A few things to remember as we get into more detail about the common mistakes we make that put us in danger.

Attackers are insecure, have low self-esteem, feel out of control of their own lives and choose to control someone or something else in order to feel powerful again. Attackers look for those who appear weaker than they are (mentally, physically) to attack. Attacks may be verbal, mental, emotional or physical.
Too Accommodating

Women tend to be accommodating because we want people to like us and we enjoy being helpful. Although these traits are not bad they may allow us to be taken advantage of and pushed too far. This is where an attacker, known or unknown to you sees weakness and opportunity.

Solution: Establish and enforce personal boundaries. Know what distance you are willing to go and go no further. This will keep you from giving your power away to someone else.

Ignoring Gut Feelings

As women, we are generally much more in tune with our intuition or gut feelings than men are. However, we also tend to overlook, ignore and justify actions that are not in line with our gut feelings in order to be liked and to be nice.

Solution: Realize gut feelings are survival instincts you were born with. They will always lead you the right way. Follow them.

Automatic Trust

Because women have been raised to be nice and do good things for others, we often trust untrustworthy people automatically. We can all think back to a time we trusted someone and should not have.

Solution: Trust you gut feeling (intuition) without questioning or trying to justify it. It doesn’t have to be logical to be right. You will “feel” if someone is trustworthy or not. A good personal boundary to establish and enforce is, “If it feels wrong, avoid it.”

Although women may be targeted by attackers, these safety tips will help all of us avoid the personal safety mistakes that portray us as good victim prospects.

By: Kelly Rudolph

About the Author:

Confident men, colleagues and friends are attracted to women with confidence and attackers are repelled by them. Confidence, hmmm, seems simple enough but is it? Self-image is what we think of ourselves. Self-esteem is how we feel about ourselves and self-confidence is how we act.

Can confidence be faked? Temporarily yes, but if it comes across as arrogance, it can attract attackers rather than repel them.

I address confident body language in my article, “Women’s Personal Safety Secret #2,” which is important in repelling attackers. Below is another way you can become more confident, attracting the right people – repelling the wrong ones.

“What Would You Do?” Can Repel Attackers and May Save Your Life!

We hear about crime and often do nothing to prevent it from happening to us. A good habit to get into is thinking about what you would do if the same situation occurred in your life. Although a bit scary, thinking it through has several benefits.

You’ve acknowledged your vulnerability therefore, you don’t look oblivious like most people do (attackers love oblivious people) You have a plan of action which gives you confidence (attackers are repelled by confident people because they themselves are weak). You are more aware of your surroundings and therefore may avoid situations of vulnerability (attackers **** aware people). When you have thought things through, you walk more confidently and body language is the most common way attackers select victims.

So there you go. Just by simply thinking through a situation with you at the center, you benefit by being safer immediately attracting people who are confident themselves and repelling weak ones who will drag you down and or victimize you. Just being dragged down is a form of attack because it weakens you mentally and emotionally, which in turn, weakens you physically.

Gross Seekers and Arrogance

Although gross curiosity gives birth to rubber-neckers at crash and crime scenes, the magnitude of the situation seems to bounce off of those same people who very likely have their heads in the sand, ignoring their own vulnerability. The “head buried in the sand” syndrome causes those buried to look insecure in a dangerous situation or arrogant if they try to fake confidence. Arrogance is insecurity personified and looks opposite of confident.

As a paramedic in my early 20′s, I still get asked, “What is the worst thing you ever saw?” Obviously, the question begs for therapy rather than an answer but the people who ask it are usually careless in their lives and know little about avoiding dangerous situations. Although unfortunate for them (and hopefully not tragic) this makes it easy for us to set ourselves apart from the general public by looking and being confident. Just the knowledge of what you would do in a certain situation makes your body language stronger without you even knowing it. Well, now you know it!

Remember:

Attackers may be male or female of any age Attacks may be verbal, mental, emotional or physical Attackers have a plan of attack – do you have a plan of escape?
Confident or Insecure?

Confidence can keep you out of dangerous situations and improves your physical health as well. It is obvious how confidence attracts confident people, friends, significant others and great coworkers, isn’t it?

If you are a person who attracts people who are insecure, remember that your own confidence has to be in place to attract a different kind of person. You can only help an insecure person so much because self-image, self-esteem and self-confidence are all inside jobs. If you get dragged down, your self-confidence will suffer.

The concept of personal safety being quite dependent on confidence may be new to you but I’m sure you’ll agree it makes sense. Remember that confident men, colleagues and friends are attracted and attackers are repelled by a confident woman.

By: Kelly Rudolph

About the Author:

Women are familiar with intuition. We often just know things without any background support information. Sometimes we visualize an outcome, sometimes we hear what seems to be a silent answer to a question, sometimes we physically feel the correct thing to do and sometimes we just know without knowing how we know.

Intuition is also called gut feelings and the good news is that men, teens and kids can use gut feelings just as women do, to be safer and make good choices. Since women are the biggest cheerleaders for the safety of their loved ones, let’s make sure we are clear about how gut feelings work and how to use them to our advantage.

About Gut Feelings

Survival instincts we were born with Their job is to keep us alive They are personal to each individual No need to compare as they may be opposite of someone else’s gut feelings What may be safe for you may not be for your friend, co-worker and vice versa They are either good or bad (indifferent can be put in the good category) You have them about every person, place and situation in your life The key is to listen, feel, see and follow them when they are strongest Following them always is a great idea but rarely done
Examples of Gut Feelings

You meet someone for the first time and like them instantly You meet someone for the first time and dislike them without knowing why Someone tells you something and you have a feeling it is untrue You have a decision to make and although info points to one choice, you feel the other is best You know something is going to turn out a certain way without evidence to support it You get a creepy feeling about someone and know they are unsafe for you to be near
Acknowledging Your Gut Feelings

You may not have realized that you always have gut feelings about everything in your life. To prove this, think of someone you love and notice the first feeling or sense you have about that person. Next, think of someone who is dis-empowering or weakens you and notice what you feel, hear or sense. Although these feelings may come from already knowing these people, this exercise demonstrates how opposite gut feelings feel.

A vital part of living safely emotionally is knowing what and who strengthens you and what or who weakens you. Obviously, you cannot live your best life by immersing yourself in that which weakens you. Gut feelings are the perfect way to determine where you should be, what you should be doing and who you should allow in your life. My article on the #4 Personal Safety Secret for Women on Personal Boundaries is a must read if this interests you.

How Using Gut Feelings Creates Your Safer Future

By acknowledging gut feelings and realizing how often you have them, yours will become finely tuned. This is the absolute best way to live safer but you have to also follow them!

Example: You and your daughter are walking into the grocery store. A woman in the store prompts a bad gut feeling in you and you can tell that your daughter is uncomfortable as well. The woman asks you a question. Do you ignore your bad gut feeling so as not to offend her and answer her question against your better judgment? Remember, although she may not be an axe murdered, your gut feelings are survival instincts you were born with! Besides, if someone gives you the creeps, if anyone should be offended, it should be you.

So what should you do? Pretend you did not hear the question or excuse yourself and walk away quickly, pretend to get a phone call, etc. Your safety and that of your daughter are most important, period.

It could be that you answer the woman’s question and nothing bad happens. That’s great, but what about next time? What did you just demonstrate for your daughter to model later? Probably that it is important to be polite at any cost and that other people are more important than you are. These are subliminal messages, for the most part, but crucial to personal safety. Consider that this situation was a quiz, preparing you or your daughter for a bigger test in the future. Will you pass? Will she?

Why We Often Ignore Our Gut Feelings

The above example illustrates the very reason we so often put ourselves into dangerous situations emotionally and physically by ignoring our gut feelings. We, as women, are taught to always be polite and help others. That’s great but we make ourselves so vulnerable that we have no protection at all! We become so concerned that people won’t like us or that we will offend someone that we gloss over our survival instincts in favor of our delicate self-esteem.

By: Kelly Rudolph

About the Author:

Although everyone needs personal boundaries, women are the caretakers of the world and ironically, we allow ourselves to be vulnerable to a point of being drained until we can no longer take care of anyone, including us. We must care for ourselves first in order to be there for others, right?

Great News!

There is a happy medium between being selfish and being selfless and I’m going to show you what it is!

At one time or another, we have all felt less than empowered by something someone else said or did. Wouldn’t you agree? What do you do when someone is disrespectful to you? What do you do when being around someone gives you the creeps? Have you repeatedly put yourself in a situation where you emerged feeling worse that you did beforehand? Did you know it would happen but “didn’t want to offend anyone,” by making waves or backing out?

We’ve all been there and if you are ready to create a more empowered future with more respect from yourself and others, greater self-esteem and much more peace of mind and laughter, you will definitely need to establish and enforce personal boundaries! They are the keys to much of our happiness yet so often overlooked.

How to Establish Personal Boundaries

First of all, let’s determine what is okay with you and what isn’t. That would be acceptable people, places and situations and unacceptable people, places and situations. You probably know several of them already. Decide what empowers you and what weakens you by picturing a person, place or certain situation and noticing the feeling in your gut. This is the quickest way to know if something or someone is beneficial or detrimental to you as a woman.

We will get into gut feelings in depth in the #5 Personal Safety Secret for Women but for right now, the first thing you feel is what you want to go with, good or bad. If you have an indifferent feeling, put it in the “good” category. If you have a good gut feeling about the person, place or situation it is put on the acceptable list. If you have a bad gut feeling, that person, place or situation is put on the unacceptable list.

Where to Put Personal Boundaries

You now have an acceptable list and an unacceptable list. Next, picture yourself in the middle of a circle. The line of the circle extends approximately 18-24 inches from your body. Picture the acceptable people, places and situations inside the circle with you and all of the unacceptable people, places and situations outside the circle.

You might have heard or said something like, “He got in my space,” or “She stepped over the line,” right? The space is the space inside your circle. It is your personal space and I am giving you permission to protect it. The line is your personal boundary line between what is acceptable and unacceptable to you. So, now you will have a visual the next time someone talks about “the line” or “my space” though if is more of a saying than actually understood my the person speaking it.

About Enforcing Personal Boundaries

First of all, enforcement of personal boundaries is easiest when you first meet someone because they don’t have to change their behavior. When someone you have known for a long time suddenly learns that you will not be putting up with the disrespectful way they speak to you anymore they are not happy. However, you may have had people like this in your life at one time or another and it is impossible to reach your true potential with them knocking you down all the time. Some of them will leave your life, others will respect you and stay.

Sore Losers vs. Those Who Truly Care

Why would someone you’ve known forever leave your life just because you choose not to be mistreated by them anymore? Because they are in the attacker mindset (Personal Safety Secrets #1) and you just stopped playing their game. People who care about you will be happy to adjust their behavior so that you feel better and many will appreciate the heads up; not realizing they had been inconsiderate in the past.

As you can see, establishing personal boundaries is a breeze compared to enforcing them. It takes guts to stand up for yourself and others will either respect it or resent your ability to do so.

How to Enforce Personal Boundaries

If someone speaks to you disrespectfully and you have just deemed it as unacceptable, you need to determine what you will say or do the next time it happens. Here are some options (none of which include guarantees):

“When you speak to me in that tone of voice I feel like you don’t respect me. Is that how you wanted me to feel?”

In this response, you are putting the ball in the other person’s court. They have two options: confirm they wanted you to feel bad or apologize and change their behavior.

Note: Remember that you are not saying, “You make me feel…” because no one can make you feel a certain way without your permission. That means they can inspire or threaten you into feeling a certain way but you are in control of your own feelings. (This is uncomfortable for some people to swallow because it means taking responsibility for their thoughts, behavior and current situation in life.)

If your teen is speaking to you disrespectfully, you may choose to be more forceful in saying something like, “Speak to me with respect. Anything else is unacceptable.”

The key is determining what you will do or say ahead of time. This is how we protect ourselves. Establishing personal boundaries includes figuring out how we handle the boundary breakers. The best part is that since you know what is acceptable and unacceptable, you can see when someone is getting close to “getting in your space” or “crossing the line” so that you can prevent it!

If you determine that an annual holiday party gets wild each year by 11:00 pm, your personal boundary may be to attend until 10:30 pm.

Maybe a person at work tells you an uncomfortable amount of personal information so you tell him or her that you appreciate that they consider you a friend to share their life with but that you will feel more comfortable keeping your relationship on more of a business level. Realize that the person who shares too much personal info seeks attention and will probably be mad at you and may even talk behind your back after you enforce your personal boundary. Why would he or she do this? Because it will get them attention. Consider the source and the reason people are pushing your buttons in the first place. There is always more to it than meets the eye. Trust your gut feelings above all else.

Where is the Empowering Part of Personal Boundaries?

I’m glad you asked! When you are treated with the respect you deserve and treat others in kind, you will be amazed at how long you allowed yourself to live without this natural high! How you see yourself improves. How others see you improves. You feel stronger knowing you have the right to protect yourself from verbal, mental, emotional and physical attacks. Your life gets much simpler because there are rules and those who choose not to abide by them are not a problem for you anymore. Remember, you have to have your own back before you can expect anyone else to. You must nourish and care gently for yourself before you can care deeply for others. You deserve to be happy. Do you lose some “friends,” acquaintances and others in your life? Yes. But were they friends if they mistreated you? No. Do family relationships get an overhaul? Many times, yes but refer to the answer to the previous question.

Live the Life You Deserve

In order to be who you need and want to be; in order to accomplish your life purpose, you need to feel whole, important and qualified to live your best life. This means protecting yourself from attack. Unclear about your life’s purpose? You will see how much more clearly you see after you respect yourself enough to establish and enforce personal boundaries. It is the #4 personal safety secret for women!

By: Kelly Rudolph

About the Author:

Women, children and the elderly are the most common victim prospects for attackers but everyone of every age is vulnerable. That is the bad news but there is plenty of good news too!

Something as simple as using your voice correctly and knowing the correct things to yell make your voice your #1 weapon.

It’s as simple as that.

If you are like me, you learned what to scream if you were in danger, right? This was good in theory but far too ineffective for reality.

Here’s the deal:

Screaming is weak and defensive Yelling is strong and offensive Most of the things we were taught to scream don’t work I’ll tell you what does work
Screaming vs. Yelling

When screaming is heard, it is thought to be either playing or too dangerous a situation to get involved in. Most people want to avoid “helping” for fear of getting hurt. (They are smart!)

When yelling is heard, it sounds like something is about to happen but hasn’t yet. It is strong and gets a completely different kind of attention than screaming does. Most people are interested in helping to prevent something.

What To Yell

Stop! Back Off! 911!

These are the most effective things to yell. We won’t go over the others we have heard all our lives because there is no reason to fill our minds further with things that don’t work.

How To Yell

Inhale to fill your lungs and tummy Deepen your voice by putting your tongue low in your mouth Yell until you are out of air, inhale, yell again Yell so that people blocks away can hear you
Benefits Of Yelling

Startles the attacker – catching the attacker off-guard puts you in control temporarily Calls attention to your situation – the last thing an attacker wants is everyone looking his or her way Makes you stronger – gets your adrenaline flowing in order to help you think clearly, strike harder and run faster
When To Yell

When you have a bad gut feeling about someone who is approaching (usually after they have disregarded your stern “Stop”) When someone grabs a hold of you without your permission When someone is taking you with them against your will As you are running to safety

You are now capable of scaring off most attackers before they approach, during an approach and in the third phase of attack – physical contact. Women, please share this information with kids, teens and men as everyone needs to know how to use their voice as their #1 weapon. As women, we are more likely to seek safety information than men so it is great when we can share it with loved ones and coworkers of both genders and all ages.

By: Kelly Rudolph

About the Author:

It is impossible to be a woman today and not to worry about your personal safety or think about self defense products at some point. Women need to take their personal safety seriously. We live in a violent world. A world, where one in six women are victims of rape or an attempted rape. One in which there were over one million four hundred thousand violent crimes in America in the year 2006 alone. It is imperative that women become proactive in their own protection. This is possible by investing in affordable self defense products.

There are many self defense products available to help women feel safe and defend themselves against potential attackers. Whether at home or running in the park women can have personal protection items to not only give them peace of mind but also give them a means to get out of any situation that is threatening their personal safety. Self defense products define any item that you have readily available to use to defend your life and person from attack or injury at the hands of another.

Personal protection products do not need to be elaborate or bulky. They are no longer too expensive for anyone to obtain. These products come in numerous shapes, sizes and forms. There is a perfect self defense product out there for everyone.

Women have the choice of pepper spray containers in the shape of lipstick tubes, personal alarms and whistles, stun guns, and tasers of different forms. Having a combination of some of these items is the best plan for women of any age, in any situation to make sure that they are safe from potential attackers.

Each of these items come in various forms as well. You can get whistles and alarms that attach to your key chain or are hand held. Pepper spray (or OC) comes in canisters that fit in your purse. Some are disguised as lipstick tubes or have a casing that attaches to a belt or strap or larger containers that are easy to use and will fit in a pocket or hand bag.

A personal alarm or whistle will bring attention to you by emitting a loud sound. This will often scare away a potential attacker. The last thing they want is to be apprehended and if you are drawing attention to them they are most likely going to run away.

Pepper spray is an extremely effective self defense item that is non-lethal and will cause the attackers skin and eyes to experience an intense burning sensation. Eyes will involuntarily slam closed, begin to water and become irritated. This will give the victim time and opportunity to escape. Some pepper sprays also contain dye making it easier for the attacker to be identified even if they flee.

Stun guns and tasers will debilitate the attacker. Tasers can be used from up to 15 feet away delivering a thirty second burst of energy and causing the dangerous attacker to be unable to continue his offensive intent. Stun guns will also cause a surge of energy to be dispersed through the attackers body which will stop them in their tracks but because the voltage is low it does not cause permanent damage to them, just enough to allow their victim to get free and away from danger.

All of these items can be the difference between an attempted attack and becoming another victim of a violent crime. They are all effective and affordable ways to be safer in a world of potential danger. Women need to learn how to use and make sure that they have self defense products on hand to protect themselves from danger.

By: Ken Potter

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As women, we are usually the “safety monitors” for our families and teaching kids and teens about safety is easier than you might think.

Here’s the deal. Attackers are insecure, out of control (of their own life) people with low self-esteem looking for someone weaker to control. Pretty simple, eh? They can be either gender, any age and may attack verbally, mentally, emotionally or physically.

So all your child or teen needs to do is to repel the majority of attackers is portray themselves as confident and in control of their life. This is because the motive of every attacker is a power fix. Common sense tells them to pick someone weaker in order to control them. Note: this doesn’t mean the victim selected is weak, just that he or she looks weak.

For example: You can be the captain of the football team and have a bazillion friends but if you’re walking around distracted by a cell phone conversation, you look weak.

So here’s what to teach your kids and teens:
ALWAYS trust your gut feelings; they are always right regardless of whether they make sense or not. ALWAYS look around to notice your surroundings; prevention is 90% awareness. ALWAYS have a plan; what to do if things go your way and what to do if they don’t.

Moms, delete the words “no” and “don’t” from your vocabulary if you want to teach your family effective safety skills; or anything else for that matter. Only say what to do if you want it to stick.

Your kids and teens are responsible for their own safety so let them know you trust them by saying two things when you part: “I love you” and “choose wisely.”

Enjoy teaching your kids and teens about safety with strictly positive lingo. Remember, any time you use a negative when speaking to someone, you’re instantly in opposition. Is that really what you want when communicating with your kids and teens about safety?

By: Kelly Rudolph

About the Author: