Close Quarter Dad

Let's talk about understanding the difference between improvisational training and functional training and how we should approach working with our children to give them a clear understanding and skill set of for personal protection.

How can they really take ownership of the lessons you teach them, and do so in a way that they don't get discouraged?

Training by nature comes with risk, and the risk exists in both functional and improvisational models of training. Understanding that first, (before I get into the differences between the two approaches to training) is important.

Danger exists physically and mentally in training. Mentally can be space or experience where someone gets discouraged iand they quit. We don't want them to do that, we want them to stay motivated, to enjoy the experience.

But we also want the experience to be garnished with reality. We want the experience experience to be at sometimes shocking, but of course not traumatic.

We want them to understand the experience and to slowly, gradually increase their threshold for fear and discomfort.

Full article, visit: https://www.closequarterdad.com/blog/functional-improvisational-training

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We can empower our kids with the best techniques to stay safe if someone grabs them, or teach them how to prevent a bully from hurting them 

… or we can show them what to do if a group of kids tries jumping them 

… or we can even show them how to get out of the trunk of a car they're locked inside.

The scenarios go on and on.

But the reality is, if your children don't know how to manage and cope with stress properly, they will be at much greater statistical risk throughout their lives, to encounter suffering or self imposed violence. Read that again. 

In a previous episode I shared some basic exercises, tools and discussions we can have with our kids about stress and anxiety. 

I think even more important is making sure they model how you manage stress, as that's what it's going to come down to. The are watching how you manage it, during each stage of their life, and carrying that reflection with them as a reference.

How do they cope with this? Well, that’s up to you. 

If you're the you're the kind of dad who expresses himself with, “F**k! I'm so stressed out … leave me alone right now I’m in the middle of doing … too many things going on at work … “ and you're referencing all this tension, all the time, your kids are going to respond in that exact same way. 

Let’s take a step back, and consider a more mindful approach. 

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Over the last few days, I've been handling a situation with my oldest son. He's 18 years old and he's dealing with a fight that happened here in our community that involved his friends. 

My son called me from somewhere in about 12:30 am the other evening and explained to me that a group of his friends had been jumped.

I dug into the details a little bit more.

His friends had gone to meet a another group of kids to watch a one on one fight to settle something that had escalated at a McDonald’s parking lot earlier that evening; one of these stupid teenage dramas that sadly escalated to a point of no return.

His friends showed up at the designated fight location, and apparently all of them ended up getting jumped by a large(r) group of kids. 

The situation turned pretty bad. 

A baseball baseball bat had hit a kid’s head, a knife was involved in a stabbing, someone got hit with a hammer with the claw side of a framing hammer and these boys got beat down. 

Painfully and unnecessarily, group of kids ended up in the hospital. 

This situation escalated quick went beyond the point of no return. 

Young people got severely injured. 

When I heard about this for my son, I asked him calmly, 

How can I help you? 

After I listened to his confused answer, I followed with,

How do you feel about this?

He went on to explain that he had been playing basketball that afternoon with a group of the kids that were involved in jumping his friends. So now I could see the dilemma he's trying to figure out how to navigate. 

Well, the police got involved and are currently investigating, so we're sort of past that point. And like most dads, I would say Well, don't get involved. 

That's the first thing that comes to mind, right?

Not now. I’m not so certain that's what my son wanted to hear from his dad. 

He was sharing his anxiety with me over the situation. He had certain feelings. He wanted to lash out. He wanted seek retribution for what had happened to his friends. 

My response to him was simple and a bit unexpected, 

‘This is the outcome. If you want to be involved in violence… even as a witness, then you're opening the door to trauma. You are opening a door to allowing yourself to suffer.’

He’s just going to see a shoulder shrug for me, and that's about it. 

I've raised my son to understand this. He knows that I'm not a fan of violence. 

He knows that I understand what the outcome is. 

I don't really believe in the glorification of it. 

I don't believe in the monkey dancing.

But (in his paradigm) telling him to leave it alone is no different than telling him to not stick up for his friends. You've got to stick up for your friends, always. But how?

Those boys went looking for a fight and they got a fight. End of story. That's it. Go back to playing basketball. 

It's terrible what happened. The outcome was terrible. 

Young people got hurt. 

Young people were also involved in hurting other young people. And that's going to stay with them for the rest of their lives.

As mentioned, there’s a current investigation going on. It will affect family finances, college plans, future career potential even. 

Most of these boys are seniors in high school, good kids, from good families, getting ready to go off to College. Now what?

When you distill it down to the most basic level, in my opinion and the message that I had to my son was that, if you want to play with violence if it's you feel cultural pressure, social pressure, influenced by entertainment … to take it to that level because of some stupid incident that happened in a parking lot.

Well, guess what? 

Read the rest of this article at My Son Wants Revenge, at Close Quarter Dad

In this episode I want to challenge you to ask yourself what I call threatening questions. 

These are questions that as a parent, we don't want to face … they are dark. They are questions we may not even know to ask ourselves. 

We could go on and on with these with these examples. What’s important right now is that you simply take some time and think of one question that truly puts you in a place of fear.

What is that one question you just never would want to face. 

Do you know the answer to that question? 

The reality is that if I put 20 men in one room and I asked them to write down the answer to any one of the questions that I just gave examples up, the strong likelihood is that I will receive 20 different answers.

There's usually gonna be no more than three appropriate answers given the situation. 

So if there were a couple questions that you had a challenge with don't worry, it's totally natural. 

You are invited into close quarter dad, our community of other fathers like yourself who are answering those questions and asking many more. 

We're addressing topics of, 

There's a free program called the Core Conflict Concepts, where I really break down the difference between the topics of personal protection and martial arts and why sending your child to a martial arts school may not be the solution for keeping your child safe.

You see, too many people, unfortunately, go forward with thinking, 

“if I put my kid into a martial arts school, they're gonna be able to keep themselves safe, able to fight off a bully” … or all this nonsense. 

It's just not true. 

Interested in joining our group of Dad’s?

Join us at Close Quarter Dad for more information on our courses and access our library of tactical parenting videos and articles. See you on the next episode.

As a professional martial artist, I've made it a career for more than a decade to teach people from all walks of life, young and old, how to remain safe. Discovery of self preservation and safety is not merely about learning a technique to apply against a bad guy, although most martial arts systems today are systemized like this. This type of approach is shortsighted at best, lacking the critical principles of escalation and de-escalation, both of which rely on the practitioners deeper understanding and exposure to reality based training at many more levels than is what is popular in most academies today. Easy to teach techniques make money, but very, very rarely equip a student to survive.

From my perspective, the study of true martial arts has nothing to do with sport. It even has little to do with neutralizing an enemy combatant in the field of battle. True martial arts has everything to do with developing the skills to remain in control especially under dire circumstances. Of course the skills and proficiencies of my students mature as their time spent training stacks up, but more important is the maturity of their ability to remain in control as anxiety, fear, shock, trauma or loss of life become extremely real within moments. Due to the constant exposure of survive at all costs simulation in the Dojo, my students can become more adapt to these circumstances and quell the physiological changed during escalation. It is about self control. These are the things of battle and being able to demonstrate control under horrible conditions is the hallmark of a warrior.

Any brute can cut another down with a blade or bullet, but the warrior will complete the battle before it escalates into chaos. They will survive and if they do not, the legacy they've left will certainly allow those remaining to share a higher standard of living. This is how I've come to know the meaning of martial arts and the ultimate reason we train them in the west. In Japanese, it is known as the Bushido.

The arts that I've dedicated much of my life to understanding have remained relatively unchanged since the Warring States Period in Japanese history, yet have adapted in many interesting ways to the times and technology of the present day. We still retain the old protocol and wear the old attire. Our Dojo smells of a myriad of incense, wood walls and sweat. In the winter the Dojo is frigidly cold and in the summer it is like working out inside an oven. Yet still, each day we are able to step our bare feet onto the tatami matted floor of the Dojo and begin to practice in formats shared by previous generations of warriors. The simulation of death and survival occurs over and over again, day after day, year after year. We are dedicated to preserving this tradition and these ways with all that we have while applying the principles of cause and effect found into our modern day routines and relationships.

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In this video, I challenge you to ask your child a question. Try it out and see what they say.

I discuss some first steps you can teach your child in case they become separated from you or a group they may be with - and suddenly find themselves alone and lost.

Let’s discuss an observation I've made over the last 20 years of teaching martial arts, engaging with parents and working with their children; the massive impact a dad has on their child when they actually participate in that activity.

It doesn't necessarily have to be martial arts. It can be any sports activity, artistic program or challenging interest your child has. But you can no longer stand on the sidelines, barking commands. I am challenging you to actually sharing the path they are on.

Whether it's at a coaching level, or it's actually participating in classes with your child, actually ‘doing the work’ makes an incredibly huge impact on how they view you.

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Check out the full article here: 

Why every parent should share a path with their kids 

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Close Quarter Dad

Today I want to share with you an answer to a question I get asked a lot; can I recommend a book that would help immerse myself into the study of self-defense and personal protection?

Oftentimes I might get asked by a parent who doesn't want to get himself involved in martial arts. Whether they don't have the time or the interest, but they still want to be able to equip their self, armed with good information, so that they can pass that information onto their children.

They can help strengthen their children, give them a better understanding of personal protection and safety, as well as family protection.

One of the books that I couldn't recommend more, whether you're a martial artist or not, is the book by Rory Miller called Meditations on Violence.

This book, for me, it was life changing.

I've been doing martial arts almost all of my life. I've been teaching martial arts pretty much my entire adult life. I know it pretty well.

What I can tell you is that this book will shatter most misconceptions that you have about violence, about understanding fighting. A lot of times if you were to say,

"Oh, I want to take my kids to a martial arts school because I want them to learn how to stick up for him or herself, or I want to learn how to fight, I want to get some skills or that won't work in the street."

Or any of these different paradigms and ideas and concepts.

This book is going to super align them, to truly look into the mind and the actions of a predator, and anybody who is going to potentially target your child, why are they going to target your child. What is it that your child is doing to motivate them to target your child?

The author Rory Miller has not only been involved in teaching and training use of force programs to military law enforcement all over the world, but he was also in corrections for his career, and he has a lot of authority when it comes to speaking on this topic.

As well, he's a martial artist. He talks very clearly about his experience and thoughts on martial arts, so he is able to look at this with a very holistic perspective.

So once again, the book is Meditations on Violence, couldn't recommend it more.

If you're interested in the topic, the life cycle of violence, realities of violence, being able to go beyond a lot of popular myths and misunderstandings about violence... Then this is the book for you.

In fact, if you're a martial artist, I would say this is mandatory reading. It's mandatory reading for all my adult students. So Meditations on Violence by Rory Miller, a Comparison of Martial Arts Training and Real World Violence. Highly, highly recommended. 

Other works by Rory Miller that you'll enjoy include: 

Facing Violence, Preparing for the Unexpected

Training for Sudden Violence: 72 Practical Drills

Conflict Communication

Are you having discussions with your children about the topic of violence and where violence is may happen in their life, how they're going to be able to manage it, what happens when they see it, how to make basic sense of it?

Well, in this episode, I will introduce you to a couple of tactics you can use to have those very important discussions with your children about violence.

Let's get started.

First, why is it that we don't have those discussions with our children about the topic of violence? Meanwhile, violence is all around them, whether it be in entertainment, in media, at school, in music…  they're constantly exposed to high, high levels of violence all around them.

How often do we have those discussions so they make sense of it and they're able to manage it inside their heads for the rest of their lives?

Let’s look back at when we were kids. When I was a young child, the actual discussion of emotional-based topics such as sexuality was just something completely taboo. It was barely discussed in schools. When it was, it was in specific 15 minute classes that were for some reason taught by our gym teacher. 

To watch the video or access the full transcript, go to: 

How to speak with your kids about violence