Eight Safety Skills Every Teen Girl Needs to Know

by Elizabeth Ambrose

From infancy to young adulthood, every stage of development offers new challenges in safety. As children begin to experience and interact more and more with their environment, parents maintain an ever-growing safety checklist and quickly learn and implement new safety strategies to keep their child safe. These initial safety concerns are mainly issues within the home, easily managed, and lessons are repeated so many times that children know what they can and cannot do.  

Then comes the day, when your middle-school child’s safety starts to go beyond your direct control. As she asks for more autonomy, such as crossing the street alone or walking to school or to a friend’s house a block away, riding bikes to the park, or walking to the corner store, your new safety concerns grow and at times, feel a little terrifying. Your child will now encounter, experience and interact with people you may not know. Parents add more safety dos and don’ts to the checklist: stranger danger, bullies, car and street safety, money safety and no-go zones.

Then high school comes along. The safety risks for teens increase dramatically, and parental anxiety skyrockets. They know that unsafe behavior at this age can have life changing physical and mental ramifications, such as greater injuries, eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse, teen suicide, sexual assault, and teen pregnancy.

Through thoughtful, non-judgmental conversations with our children about life and important teen issues, this ever-growing safety checklist is still manageable with parental foresight and persistence. Most of the new items on this safety list deal with your child’s ability to think for herself, and to make the right decisions about her personal safety when you are not around. Once you trust her judgment and ability to be safety aware, a parent can feel more at ease. Safety at this point in the lives of teens means recognizing potentially dangerous situations and staying away from them.

The first seven skills written in this article is all about prevention, awareness, and develops a young person’s Defensive Mental Skills. However, there is still a real safety, health and wellness issue not fully addressed and even left out of many parental safety conversations. Not until a parent realizes for the first time, that their daughter will be miles away from the safety of their homes do they seek the eighth skill in our Eight Safety Skills Every Teen Girl Needs to Know, that of Self-Defense.

What happens when she can’t avoid the dangerous situation or encounters aggression and violence? What safety tools or techniques does she have to help her survive? 

Is she mentally prepared, to be able to think instead of freeze? 

What efficient and effective tools does she possess to fend off an attack? 

There is a huge hole in our safety management plan, and that is Defensive Physical Skills. This final skill is the missing piece of the puzzle that makes certain safety plans complete.

1. Take two big steps back - Physical and Mental Defense

In our stranger awareness program, whenever a stranger approaches, or takes a step towards children, they must take two BIG steps back to create distance. This way, they interact with an adult from a safe distance. When a stranger approaches a young girl, not only should she physically take two big steps back, she should mentally take two steps back too. She should be thinking about the possible motivations for a stranger to approach her and not another person, specifically another adult. Creating this distance gives her time to think about what is really happening instead of reacting to it.

2. Stop, Look, and Listen 2.0 - Situational Awareness

Elementary school children have sung this song, “Stop, Look and Listen”, repeatedly until they have retained this important rule of street and car safety. This practice of stop, look and listen is still a valuable safety tool when you expand it to a fuller meaning in teen safety - Learning Situational Awareness.

                    Stop - Quickly evaluate your surroundings.
                    Look - Be aware of the people and happenings around you.
                    Listen - for any unusual changes in noise or energy levels.

Take action to ensure safety. This song asks our children to become aware but safety awareness needs plenty of practice through role-play for children to develop and retain it.

A parent can start awareness training early in life. Books are a wonderful way to start awareness training. Picture storybooks offer parents an opportunity to point to other characters and objects in the background, to linger over a page and investigate what lies in all the corners. A parent can talk about the colors or point out designs within the illustration, or ask the child to describe what else he or she sees. Soon children will do that for themselves. They will try to take in the whole picture instead of focusing only on the main singular figure or the biggest object on the page.

Nature is another wonderful way to develop awareness because it touches all five of the senses.

Stop - to notice nature. Check out the billowy clouds, feel the sun, wind or rain on their faces;  taste a snowflake, pick up a twig or blade of grace, smell a flower or the scent of the woods and streams.

Look - Ask your child to look up to notice birds or planes flying, the moon and the stars, to notice movement in the leaves of trees or the beauty of flowers.

Listen - to hear the bird chirps, rustling of leaves, or water running in a steam. Stay quiet and see how many sounds they hear at once. Teach them to be receptive to nature. (Studies have shown that being in nature benefits the body and the brain in many ways.)

Safety awareness allows a girl to look at the big picture, the motivations behind other’s actions, to recognize potentially dangerous situations, unusual actions or recognize ploys that others use to undermine her confidence and safety. It allows her to “see” her environment in totality and then, discern how best to use it to her advantage.

3. Exit Strategy - Know where all the exits are.

Physically - Whether at the mall, sitting in a restaurant, or at the movies, quickly scan the area and identify where the exits are in order to make a quick get-away, or where to find the best cover in case of trouble. I try to sit facing the main entrance. I always want to be aware of who is coming through that door and be the first to react.

Mentally – Have contingency plans in place, just in case a date isn’t going well, friends inadvertently leave her behind, or a party is getting out of control. A safety code word can be used between parent and child during a phone call. It allows her to "tell" her parent that she is uncomfortable in a situation and that she wants to be picked up. Know what your exit strategy will be in any given situation.

4. Use her voice - Make Your Boundaries Known

Her voice is another powerful safety tool. It can convey her strength and conviction. It’s how she can directly communicate, clarify and demand respect for her boundaries. She must gain the confidence to stand up for herself. Without it, it may be hard to do. The ability to communicate her needs, desires, and boundaries, while understanding and honoring the needs, desires and boundaries of others defines the idea of consent. Consent is Asking First before doing something that could affect someone else’s experience. Ask first and then respect the answer you get. When someone disregards or chooses to ignore her established boundaries, or her repeated, “No, thank you(s),” it serves as a warning sign to a potentially dangerous personality or situation.

5. Learn some “childhood” psychology. - Motivation behind Actions

It’s important to understand the conscious and unconscious reasons as to why people do the things that they do. If she can learn to understand what motivates people, she recognizes cues and “tricks” that people use to undermine her confidence and safety.  

• In childhood, a friend determines all the games and never allows your child to “name the game” (Selfishness and Controlling).
• In middle school, your child’s friends tease her for looking different or not wearing the latest fashions (Undermine self-esteem, pressure to conform).
• In high school, a friend keeps asking your child to sneak out of the house, or lie about where she is going. (Coercion, Manipulation, Negative Peer Pressure)
• A new boyfriend keeps undermining her self-esteem, is demanding, and gets angry easily making her feel that she must always pacify  or acquiesce to him and his moods. (Controlling, Abusive, Isolating)

Understanding the concepts of coercion and manipulation will allow her to recognize and disengage from people that drain her mental and physical resources. Understanding the warning signs of psychopathic and potentially dangerous behavior is a good first step in personal safety and self-defense.

6.  Decide and articulate what is her “Personal Code”.

A personal code is a contract she makes with herself, one that lays out the principles and rules she has decided to govern for herself. She determines, “What does she stand for as a woman or as a person? What are the things she will support or behaviors she refuses to tolerate in ANY relationship? When she encounters unacceptable behavior, is she strong enough to speak up or does she just let it pass?” 

What codes of conduct, in her opinion, will bring her positivity and supports her personal growth? Is integrity important to her, how about trust and loyalty in friendship? Is humor and creativity important to her? Is she dedicated to her personal growth and learning?  Does she want to inhabit a nurturing and welcoming environment? Once she defines what she wants for herself, she must exemplify the behaviors that are important to her, in order to receive them from others.

She will recognize what situations or people that uplift her most and those that bring her pain and frustration, and begin to move away from the things or people that drain her mental and emotional energy and keep her from her goals.

7.  Recognize that life is definitely not fair. - Having Grit

Moreover, sometimes life can be downright dangerous. A young person needs grit, the ability to get up from a fall or failure and seeing those setbacks as lessons that motivate her to start again, repeatedly if that is what it takes. You never know what might come along to test her resolve. She will encounter obstacles she will need to overcome, from gender bias and discrimination, sexual harassment, and lower economic equity. She must understand that she may encounter people that intimidate, are dismissive, are naturally rude, or make her feel uneasy. People of authority may use their power inappropriately. She cannot be afraid to use her voice, to be assertive and understand that others may try to “label” or minimize her, a tactic to undermine her confidence and self-esteem.

By not internalizing the negative feelings, she will learn to navigate these rough waters with courage and conviction. Realizing that the negative emotions from others, sometimes has nothing to do with her as an individual, such as a person having a very bad day and then takes it out on the first person they see. She may be reflecting talent and skills, emotional maturity, or an ease with people, making others feel envious or threatened. Learning the motivations behind the behaviors she will encounter will help in keeping her alert and safe.

8. Self Defense Skills – Final Puzzle Piece

If I could make every, middle to high school girl a butt kicker, I would. (If you are interested, go here for information on our next session – a summer day camp.) Instead, I get young women when they are about to go off to college in just a few weeks. Never enough time to instill the techniques that could help save their lives. Yes, the seven pre-emptive safety skills in this article will serve them well in recognizing and avoiding dangerous situations most of the time. Being aware and vigilant will keep many young girls and women safe and out of trouble. However, when trouble seeks them out, what effective and efficient physical skills do they possess to fight off an assailant intent on harm. Self Defense is really Crime Prevention system.

Pre-teens and teens are the perfect age to learn basic self-defense skills. They learn quickly, enjoy the spirit and camaraderie of other girls, and will benefit from new confidence and self-esteem. Without building these traits of confidence in herself and within the techniques she must employ, implementing physical self-defense skills will be hard or non-existent. That is why a program of personal safety must be comprehensive to truly be effective and that means both Mental and Physical Self-Defense training.

With the continuous stream of face book posts about missing girls and children, human trafficking, and the yearly stranger danger incidents, they spur my commitment to developing safety-centric programs for the most vulnerable in our society.  Learn more here.