Being aware is how we avoid danger to our children, keep our families safe, and even prevent unnecessary expenses from accidents, injuries, and crime. The trouble is creating and maintaining habits of being aware when life and our kids are demanding our attention in every direction. Today's show is about how to fix that problem. Dawn Armstrong teaches children, adults, and groups about situational awareness for real people. She bases her Think Safe Seminars on her personal experience in the field and years of martial arts training, applying them to real life circumstances. In this video, she shares ways to turn your normal habits into habits of awareness, how to teach those techniques to our children, and the different kinds of awareness we can expect from kids, tweens, teens, and young adults.
KIM's Game for Situational Awareness
Episode 110: Build the Ultimate Family First Aid Kit
In our first LOADOUT episode, we talk with Steve Mullins. Steve has been a medic for decades, working in every environment you can imagine. His trade lives and breathes by what he remembers to bring with him, and how well he knows how to use it.
Steve was kind enough to send me the parts list for a perfect family first aid kit. The kind you keep in the closet and use for everything that doesn't require an ER visit. In this video, we go through those items piece by piece. Steve explains what they're for, how to use them, and the most common mistakes and misconceptions for each.
Episode 109: Full Circle Self-Defense with Martial Arts Icon Tom Callos
Tom Callos spent his entire life in service to the martial arts, and by extension to the world. From a stint in the famous Ernie Reyes demo team, to running a multimillion dollar martial arts school, to decades working on how to expand the scope of martial arts into wide-spectrum safety, and contributing to the community, he has influenced the martial arts industry for the better as much as any other individual.
He took time out to chat about self-defense beyond just kicking and punching, about home and personal safety from a holistic standpoint, and about teaching our children by example on and off the mat.
Episode 108: How Criminals Choose Their Victims with Defense Investigator Linda Sanderson
Linda Sanderson spent years as a crime and police journalist, then decades as an investigator for a public defender's office in one of the most violent communities in the United States. She knows what criminals do, and why they do it, because she worked for them again and again. In this episode she shares with us what she learned about how criminals choose their victims, and some of the most common ways they victimize...and how to make both far less likely.
Episode 107: Situational Awareness for Busy Parents with US Attorney Prosecutor Jim Alsup
Situational awareness is not just for police, military, and others who put themselves in harm's way as part of their professions. It's also the most important self-defense tool for any parent. By remaining situationally aware, you can see potential problems coming in time to avoid them...or at least to form a plan for mitigating their risks.
Jim Alsup has served his country for decades, in capacities of signal intelligence, federal-level prosecution, and undercover investigation. His application of situational awareness in the field has saved his life, and the lives of civilians, many times over. Today,
Jim shares what he learned in training and on the street, and shows us how to apply that knowledge in our daily lives. Even better, he shares with us games and techniques we can use to teach our kids about awareness, and get them involved in a not-scary way in paying attention while out in the world.
Episode 106: Product Safety Info and Action (Part I) with Consumer Journalist Rita R Robison
Rita R. Robison has worked in consumer journalism since print papers were still our primary source of news and information. In that journey, she has found the most important things parents and families should pay attention to, ranging from bad credit traps, to smart consumer moves...to safety issues endangering our children.
Today she sits with us to discuss how to access product recall information, and about the most surprisingly dangerous items we find in our homes, and of course what we can do to make them safer.
Episode 105: Handheld Device Safety with Cybersecurity Expert Kevin Jarvis
Kevin Jarvis keeps the bad guys away from good guys' computers all work day, every work day. He knows the weaknesses in our systems, and how predators try to exploit them...and ways to reduce the risk.
He joins us to talk about all-too-common parental fails in this department, and things we can do to strike that balance between cutting our families off from the grid too much, and leaving them open to the dangers of the internet.
Episode 104: Communication in Conflict with Verbal Judo Instructor Alex Bromley
Verbal Judo was developed to help police talk with drunk and angry people, to resolve conflict without violence. The difference between your average toddler or teen and a drunk person is pretty minimal, so many of these techniques work great when navigating conflict with our kids. Alex brings us the basic philosophy, guiding lights, and specific techniques from this great communication system.
Episode 103 Make Your Home a Harder Target with SWAT Officer John Riddle
Officer John Riddle has been through the door on over 1,000 no-knock warrants. From that experience, and his prior work in burglary and home invasion investigations, he has more first-hand experience than most in what makes a home easy to break into, and hard to break into…and what makes bad guys think twice (and a third time) about which home to target. In this video he shares that information with us.