One of the biggest gripes I see on the Internet forums is the lack of other members of the family being enlightened to the dangers of the world. More often it is a wife who is afraid of guns and sees no need to be proactive about her own self-defense or the defense of her spouse or children. After all, nothing has ever happened yet. Less often it is the husband who is complacent. Almost always the children are in their own little electronic worlds going about like nothing bad can ever happen.

There is a shock when the realization comes that there is no reset button on serious events that happen in our lives. Denial is part of the process of dealing with such things. Denial happens to be the first stage in the Kübler-Ross model about dealing with grief, and it is also what many of us first go into when facing the reality of violence being able to touch us. It is also more convenient to ignore the very real and present threats that surround each of us on a daily basis. Here's what it comes down to folks, and yes you can share this with the complacent members in your family: The human herd is large and it is just a matter of time until a predator gets you in his sights.

There are simple facts about predation. The old and the weak are targeted first. However, even the strong will fall when opportunity presents itself. Opportunity is a criminal's best friend. If you are in the right place at the right time (criminal's perspective) or the wrong place at the wrong time (victim's perspective), it will happen. It doesn't have to be violent crime. It can be a stupid mistake. I see young lives ruined practically every single day on the local news because of motor vehicles being combined with speed, carelessness and alcohol. A young friend of ours was killed very recently because he was a passenger in a car being driven too fast through a construction zone. He wasn't even a legal adult yet.

How does one get over something like that?  It is usually easier for humans to deal with the loss of a loved one when there was no foreseeable way to prevent the loss. Suddenness and senselessness are devastating to those who are left behind. A long battle with an as yet incurable form of cancer allows time to go through some of the stages of grief before the loss occurs. For the dad of that teenage boy, all he heard was a voice on the other end of line when he called his son's cell phone. It wasn't his son.

Begin A Real Discussion, Not An Argument

If you are the parent of a typical teenager or the spouse of a typical citizen who goes through life not fully aware of the real dangers that are around us, a conversation probably starts out with a warning about the reality of such dangers. Then there is a retort that is something that shrugs off the warning or deflects it. My favorites are the ones that include the, “You just don't understand,” or the, “I've done it a million times and nothing's happened,” quotes. Another one I like is that, “Not everyone sees the world in the way you do.” That one is both absolutely true and a dig at the same time.

That type of comment is usually followed by a more stern comment by the concerned party such as, “I need you to respect me and listen to me on this.” Then conversations often quickly devolve into an argument. Here are some of the things included in the average arguments:

“The world is different now than when you were a kid.”

“I don't even go to dangerous places.”

“I don't drink and drive.” (From underage teens who shouldn't be drinking at all)

“I only text at traffic lights and occasionally at a stop sign.”

“I have my pepper spray in my purse.”

“I always have someone on the phone while walking to my car in case something bad happens.”

“I can see what's going on around me when I wear my earphones while jogging.”

“I'm a lot tougher than you think.”

“My friends wouldn't want to hang around me if I acted like you want me to act.”

“I work all day and take care of the kids and house when I'm home, I don't have time to learn this stuff.”

“I don't understand why you are like this.”

Conversations don't have to end in frustration or arguments. Using local facts gleaned from the news as discussion points is a good way to get started. It not only begins to open up closed eyes to the reality of the dangers around us, it also promotes discussion because of the realization it is happening in our own backyards.

Many of us have DVR capability on our cable and satellite boxes now. Even if we don't, video footage of news stories is available at the news station's website. Every family should also be subscribing to the local newspaper as well. What is happening around us is told no better by anyone than local reporters who live in the very communities we live and work in every day, and there is something tangibly more real with a newspaper in hand rather than reading an online article. Television news stations usually serve a much larger region than the local paper does. That isn't always the case, but the local paper more often serves the area closer to your home.

Clip the news stories and put them on the refrigerator or message board in your home. Every teen will be visiting the refrigerator enough times during the day. Don't let it get cluttered. Put the old ones away for reference, and post the new stuff as it happens. Sooner or later someone will ask a question. You can begin your reply with, “I love you more than you can know and I know things about personal security that you haven't learned yet.” Confidence in what you know goes a whole lot further than barking to your wife and kids how they need to learn this stuff that some guy on the Internet is talking about.

Practice What You Preach

What type of daily example are you setting. Do you practice what you preach? Do you tell your teenage daughter to drive slower while you exceed the speed limit on a regular basis? Do you tell her not to drink and drive but then drive home from a party with the smell of alcohol on your breath? It doesn't matter if you are legally drunk or not. The fact is that impairment begins with the first drink. Teach that and stick to it. Do you warn your son about avoiding fights because everyone is carrying guns nowadays only to be aggressive in public yourself? How is your road rage? Even the body language teaches a message to your kids and spouse who are with you.

Some of the most dangerous men I've met exhibit a calmness about them. I know their skills enable them to be able to kill another human being before he could even blink, but they don't grandstand and they aren't blowhards. The world could fall apart and they would get by anywhere they would happen to find themselves when it happened. On the other hand, I also know men who raise their sons and daughters to be the hoodlums that walk the fringe of our society. They get stuck in a low socio-economic status and never even give a thought to pursuing an education on anything. They refuse to work their way up and out, and they have a strong sense of entitlement that puts them only inches from crossing the line into taking what they want from others. Those poor kids don't have a chance and end up growing up to be some of the very threats the rest of us worry about.

Does your wife see you take shortcuts in your own personal and home security routines? Is it okay sometimes to forgo prudence and throw caution to the wind? Taking that skydiving course you've always wanted to do is a calculated risk reward scenario that actually has a low failure rate, otherwise the public parachuting schools would be put out of business. However, taking that shortcut through the crack-selling neighborhood on your way home from work at midnight instead of driving around is foolhardy and the risk cannot be adequately measured each time you do it. See the difference? What does your family think about some of the things you say versus what you do?

Before you begin to teach, put your own curriculum into practice. The best teaching is by example.

Altering Ideology and Mindset

Being too passive or aggressive is a problem in our society. Family members usually fall in step with trends the rest of the family follows. Even the black sheep of families retain many characteristic markers of the family group they grew up in. I have seen people decades later who still retain and act out behaviors they exhibited in their childhoods. This is good for the behaviors that are conducive to survival, but some of the behaviors are negative and are still active 25 years later. I have a couple I recognize in my own life. However, I am fully aware of them. The ones that would or did compromise my personal and home security have been altered or eradicated over time.

That probably describes the journey each reader began when there was that realization that the world can be both a beautiful and dangerous place. That quandary caused you to take precautions to avoid the danger but still take time to enjoy the beauty. I'm in a tough spot because I teach this stuff. People watch me to see if I will violate my own teaching. Even my wife has pointed out to me on occasion how something I was considering would end up being a subject of one of my articles if someone else did it.

On a fundamental level, my ideology of my place in this world and the beauty and violence it contains has been permanently altered by the things I have seen and experienced. Military and law enforcement give credit to training that makes them more continually aware. Exposure is a large part of environmental awareness. If you have no idea what cold is, I can tell you about it all day. However, if I put you outside for a few moments without adequate protection on a frigid day, you will gain an intimate understanding as to what cold actually is. Training just gives skills to use when exposed. Some citizens in war torn regions and even crime ridden urban areas have learned to be more wary and distrusting than any battle hardened soldier or inner city cop without any tactical training at all.

The goal is to protect your family and yourself from any violence, yet be experienced enough to be prepared and know what to do if it comes. This is where rote scenario training comes in. None of us is going to volunteer to be stabbed or shot in order to see how we will respond to such a situation. However, we can train our bodies and minds to know precisely when it is both legally appropriate and entirely necessary to run, hide, fight and use weapons. The thing is that it just won't be on the 'things needed to get done list' of your family members until there is a realization that violence can personally touch their own lives.

Using examples to show how close violence is to home begins to crack the armor of denial so many of our loved ones exist in. The problem with news stories is that the initial shock and awe wears off rapidly because we have become conditioned in this society to look for the next best thing even when it comes to bad news. Fortunately not all mindset and training has to come from direct exposure to life threatening violence. Martial arts and target shooting competitions teach skills that can quickly be adapted in a life or death situation. Taking a cool medical course where older teenagers actually learn how to stitch up wounds and stop bleeding can grab attention too.

If you go the route of martial arts training, don't be sucked into memberships. Take it slow. Participate as a family. Search out an instructor who teaches a self-defense component to the skills being learned. You have to decide on when your children are old enough to understand and be able to correctly learn from any instruction about self-defense. It takes a certain level of maturity that only a good parent could ascertain. If you do get everyone to agree to taking a medical course, the ones that use lots of realistic props and scenarios hold attention spans much better. Fake blood squirting from an arterial bleed from a mannequin is much more attention getting than lectures and cartoon drawings in books.

Summary

Don't give up. Be consistent in practicing what you preach even if you are tired or cranky. Don't send mixed signals. It is about impossible to undo a bad example. Don't force your family into classes they absolutely do not want to take. Encourage exploration of things outside of what the mainstream is following. Slowly begin to not follow the crowd. It doesn't happen overnight. To put it in simple terms, every family has their own survival Kung Fu. It is your responsibility as the master of those skills in your family to be sure your whole family's Kung Fu is strong.