The Truth About Children and Self-Defense

The truth about children learning self-defense is simple. They are not able to fight off an adult, even with years of martial arts training.
Self-defense for a child is not about striking a bag, performing kicks, breaking boards, or winning a trophy in a tournament. A child is the softest of targets. A child under twelve years old is not going to be able to fight off an adult attacker, which generally is going to be a male attacker.
Except in the rarest of occasions, children will not be able to punch or kick their way out of an abduction or attack. I teach children martial arts, but I am also a veteran police officer and this conclusion is the result off testing this over and over in our organization, the COBRA Self-Defense Program.
When a child punches or kicks you anywhere about the body, it generally does not hurt. The exception can be the groin. However, we’ve discovered that under the stress of an attack that is a difficult target to strike with any power. Remember that to a child the groin of most adults is still an upper body kick to them. Attackers are even more immune once they have intent and motive to kidnap or beat the child.
That said, there are many things children can do to defend themselves. However, if there is ever a teacher or instructor out there that sells you on the point that if a child punches a full-grown male in the stomach they will stop, if you kick them in their knee they will back off – it just does not happen. Not only is it physically unreasonable to expect, but once an abductor has crossed the mental line of following through on their devious plan, some resistance from the child is expected. The attacker is not hurt or thrown off path.
Next month we will debut a revolutionary new Self-defense Program that has a completely different approach to teaching children how to deal with abduction and attack attempts. We have methods of “turning the tables” on the attacker to quickly demotivate them to continue.
That said, this training recognizes that most kids are not by nature aggressive. Adults intimidate them and they are conditioned often to be obedient to adults. This Defense Program has specific proven methods to help them overcome that mental programming and to take action to prevent their abduction on the spot without being taken to a secondary location.
Save the martial arts strikes for the school yard bully. When it comes to an adult attempting to abduct or beat a child, that requires an entirely different set of strategies, tactics, and skills, just like we will show you next month.