A couple of years ago we signed the girls up for karate lessons. Friends of ours had enrolled their son in Tae Kwon Do classes specifically so he would be able to defend himself against a physical threat which they believed would more than likely present itself at some point in his life. I remember thinking that he’d have to be very unlucky to get attacked, and that they were perhaps being a little paranoid. And yet you hear these stories of young men getting themselves into fights by walking past the wrong nightclub at the wrong time and getting in the way of the wrong guy coming out of the club, and you can understand why they might want their son to be able to fend off that kind of attention. Still, he’s only a kid, surely that was years away?

We signed our two girls up for karate because we would like them to be able to defend themselves against an attack, but mostly because we wanted them to have the confidence that comes from knowing you could defend yourself. I don’t know if it’s an urban myth, but there was a young girl, about 11 years old, who was grabbed from behind by a man who then tried to get her into the back of his car. It happened in broad daylight at the local shopping centre. The girl had been practicing Tae Kwon Do since she was about five years old. Apparently, that’s long enough to learn how to escape a man’s clutches, spin around, and kick him square in the face and render him unconscious. Apparently he started to come round as the police were handcuffing him.

Great story.

Our neighbour’s TKD teacher instructs his students to run away at the first sign of trouble; if you feel threatened, then get out of there. If you can’t get away, then you must defend yourself, NOT attack the other person. A skilled TKD practitioner can actually block a punch so effectively that they can break the attacker’s arm. Apparently.  According to the teacher, only if the situation disintegrates into a full-on fight should you actually strike the other person. And if you’re as good as your training has taught you to be, it should only take one hit. Which is why you should warn your foe three times that you want them to stop.

Our neighbour’s son - who is 11, and let’s call him Joe - was being bullied at school by a kid two years older. To cut a long story short (though I should add that Joe had already tried running away) Joe found himself in a corner with this kid who was threatening to beat him up. Joe told him three times that he didn’t want to get into a fight with him. The 13 year old took a step forward and aimed a punch at Joe’s head.  Joe had steadied himself in a TKD stance, blocked the punch, then delivered a swift kick to the 13 year old’s sternum. The kid dropped straight to the floor, completely winded. Joe said something about not wanting to fight, and left.

When word got out about the first confrontation, everyone in Joe’s class thought he was a bit of a hero. That night, one of the girls in his class who has a 13 year old brother got onto MSN and sent messages to all 13 year old boys she could contact, letting them know that Joe could beat up anyone, and would happily fight every kid who wanted to have a go at him.

The next day, Joe was confronted by three 13 year old boys, including the kid from the day before who was no doubt feeling a bit bruised.  Again, Joe warned them that he didn’t want to fight. The warning was ignored, and the kid with the bruised chest got another swift kick to the sternum. His two mates - who were no doubt there as much for moral support as to see if it was true that Joe could kick like that - were rendered speechless.

The school, to their credit, dealt with the situation extremely well. The three boys were given weekend detention, and the girl behind the MSN campaign was given a strongly-worded warning as well as weekend detention. There’s a zero-tolerance policy toward bullying, especially cyber-bullying. Her explanation? “I just wanted to see what would happen.”

And here’s where my thoughts turn back to my two daughters. We have them enrolled in karate classes but really, where is the biggest threat going to come from? They are more likely to be attacked by other girls than by boys, and the attacks wont be physical, they’ll be personal. How do you defend your daughters against that sort of thing?

The neighbours, my husband and I were talking about how boys and girls settle disputes; boys will confront one another in the locker room after lunch, girls will get online and send white-anting messages to everyone with a computer.  I suspect the messages are repeated via their mobile (cell) phones.

One of my husband’s good friends is a Phys-Ed teacher at a local high school, and also the Year Coordinator, meaning he has some responsibility for the welfare of the kids in one year - in his case, it’s the Year Eight class (sophomore year).  He says that there are a few troublesome boys in the year who get into regular fights, but the disagreements are over and done with pretty quickly, and it usually only takes a bit of a push-and-shove rather than an all-in brawl to settle the dispute.  He says that he spends the vast majority of his time dealing with the Year Eight girls; they bitch and gossip and manipulate and verbally abuse and tease and bully and undermine each other and then the next week they’re all best friends again.  The typical disagreement takes several days and countless emails and text-messages to resolve.  Imagine the pain and suffering that can be inflicted over such a period of time.

I almost wish, if my girls were ever in a situation where another girl came at them with a fully loaded cell phone, that they would hit back with a well-aimed foot to the sternum, and be done with it.  I almost wish.

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