How to Raise Safety-Savvy Kids in a Complex World with Carrie Conrad 100

Listen to this episode, "How to Raise Safety-Savvy Kids in a Complex World" as self-defense expert and mother, Carrie Conrad, joins host Dori Durbin. Are you worried about your child's safety in today's world? Do you want to empower them without instilling fear? What REALLY does it take to raise confident, safety-conscious kids? In this eye-opening episode, Carrie and Dori dive into the realities of modern child safety strategies. You'll hear candid discussions about real-life scenarios and practical advice on equipping your children with life-saving skills. Listen as Carrie and Dori share more on:

• Evolving Beyond "Stranger Danger"
• Creating Personalized Safety Plans
• Empowerment vs. Fear-Based Approaches
• Self-Defense Beyond Physical Techniques
• Age-Appropriate Safety Education
• Practical Self-Defense with Everyday Items
• Addressing Bullying and School Safety
• Fostering Resilience and Confidence in Kids

This episode offers a fresh perspective on child safety, blending expert insights with real-world applications. Whether you're a new parent or raising teenagers, you'll gain valuable strategies to help your children navigate the complexities of today's world safely and confidently.

About Carrie:
Carrie Conrad is a black belt, self defense expert, weapons instructor, certified bodyguard and licensed private investigator as well as the founder of Beating Disaster, a Detroit based business offering niche in person and online content and services for women, children and families in prevention, protection and defense.

For over a decade, every training and certification received has 100% been with the intent of helping women and children be safe. She's never been anything more than a civilian and mother, and that fact has created an unmatched value in all that relates to prevention, protection and defense for the average person. 

Find Carrie:
https://www.facebook.com/beatingdisaster

Did you love this episode? Discover more here:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thats-good-parenting/id1667186115

More about Dori Durbin:
Dori Durbin is a Christian wife, mom, author, illustrator, and a kids’ book coach who after experiencing a life-changing illness, quickly switched gears to follow her dream. She creates kids’ books to provide a fun and safe passageway for kids and parents to dig deeper and experience empowered lives. Dori also coaches non-fiction authors, professionals, and aspiring authors to “kid-size” their content into informational and engaging kids’ books! Find out more here: https://www.doridurbin.com/

Follow Dori:
https://www.instagram.com/dori_durbin
https://www.facebook.com/dori.durbin.7

Intro for TDP (version 2)

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 2:07 Evolving Safety Practices for Children
• 3:52 Creating Personalized Safety Plans
• 7:58 Scenario: Parking Lot Incident
• 9:59 Empowerment vs. Fear-Based Approaches
• 12:39 Self-Defense Beyond Physical Techniques
• 20:07 Addressing Bullying and School Safety
• 21:22 Age-Appropriate Safety Education
• 23:57 Practical Self-Defense with Everyday Items

Transcript

Dori Durbin: . [00:00:00] On the show today, I have someone special and unique to the parenting help world. She's a mom, a black belt, a self defense expert, a weapons instructor, a certified bodyguard, and a licensed private investigator, as well as the founder of Beating Disaster.

Her passion is to empower women and children to be and feel safe in their lives and relationships. So welcome to the show, Carrie Conrad. 

Carrie Conrad:
Thank you so much for having me. It's an absolute privilege and pleasure to be here. 

Dori Durbin:
Thank you for being here. I was really intrigued by what you do, especially because I think as parents, and I can speak as a mom, I always taught my kids things that I learned when I was younger and I tried to pass those safety beliefs, safety practices onto them and teach them those things.

But honestly, like our world is so different. from where I was and even from where my parents [00:01:00] were to now. So I wanted to ask you just where do we take our past beliefs as far as safety goes and try to push them on? What do you see parents needing to do? 

Carrie Conrad:
Let's start with which, what kind of beliefs are you talking about?

Dori Durbin:
I think about in the store. I remember when my kids were really little, we'd be in, let's say, like a local grocery store or something. And I'd always say, hey, stay close to me, keep your eyes on me, look around for scary people, those kinds of things. And I think back to it now and I think first of all, I probably traumatized my kids, but secondly, that probably wasn't the best way to do things.

So what would you say about that now in today's time?

Carrie Conrad: I would say most of that sounds great up until the scary people. But otherwise, it's perfect. It's perfect. But the thing is while we want our kids to look around, we can teach them to look around without scaring the tar out of them. We don't need to contribute to anxiety.

We don't need to contribute to terror. We don't need to contribute to [00:02:00] nightmares like there's enough in the world that will do that for us. We can just focus on, I choose to focus on where we have power. I choose to focus on where there is safety, where we feel secure, where things work out well, who I can trust, but definitely be paying attention and looking around.

There's nothing wrong with that. 

Dori Durbin: 
So are there cues that you give parents to teach their kids? To be more aware or to make notes of things as they're experiencing them, I always think of the movies where they make the kids or the people in the story, memorize certain things in the room, those kinds of things.

Is there anything like that you have parents do? 

Carrie Conrad: 
There's nothing wrong with that, that can be helpful, but the reality is not only do different parents have different personality types, our children have different personality types. So while that might be really effective for maybe your oldest child.

Your [00:03:00] baby might not be willing or interested or care, so it's not a one size fits all solution, but we can take general concepts and personalize them to each child. I think it needs to be more fluid. We can't expect everybody to do the same thing. But yeah, like that's a fun game.

I really appreciate making gains over staying safe because like you said, instead of looking for that scary person, you're like, Hey, do you like, do you see anybody creepy? Is there anybody scary? It's like you said, like there's somebody who recommends they leave a room and they're like, how many blue hats did you see in the room?

And it's Okay. I'm sorry. For my personality type, I don't care. I'm still safe. I'm still saying, I don't know how many blue hats are in that room. I don't know. I never know either. Don't worry. It's okay. But I do think sometimes just even having kids aware of their senses of trying to be noticing people's patterns maybe or things like that.

Dori Durbin: 
That was one [00:04:00] thing that I know that with my kids, if we were, let's say in a card aisle and we were looking for a while and somebody walked by us and walked by us again and walked by us again, I would start to get nervous as a mom. And I don't know if that's something that really age appropriately I should teach them or teach them at all, like where's that line where I teach them to be leery versus just being safe.

Carrie Conrad: 
The reality is that person was probably me. Because I, I am that person where I'm like, gosh, darn it. I was just in that section and I miss it and I go back and then I'm like, and then I go back to the gosh, darn it. And I am that person that goes back and forth in the store a bunch of times you would hope I would have a better plan and be more, but if I, For me, if I impulsively go to the grocery store to grab two items, that's me.

You just described me to a T. Does that mean your kids are unsafe? Absolutely not. It means I went to the grocery store without a plan and I'm multitasking and my head is somewhere else and I gotta go [00:05:00] back to the produce again, so That's why focusing on something so specific like that, it, could it be helpful?

Yes, it could. Is it always right? No, it's not. Before we were recording, we were talking about lids on boxes, and that's one of these areas. If you tell a person to focus on something specific, then if it doesn't fit this specific scenario, It doesn't count and that's how we end up not correctly identifying danger or knowing when to do something about it.

And it's a really big deal. So we don't want to be focusing on specific stuff like that. We want to create what we call a safety plan, which try to do this. Try to explain this stuff. Like on a podcast correctly, because there's just, there's so much to it. Yes, it's simple, but like we talked about before the details [00:06:00] that fit into this framework can look very different for different families and different children within those families.

But so there's a framework that we live by that keeps it open so that we're not getting fixated on details that may or may not be appropriate or effective. 

Dori Durbin: 
Here's maybe a scenario for you. This is an older, this is my daughter I'm going to put her out there she's probably mad at me but it's okay. So she parked in a parking lot.

She went to the track. She ran. She came back and a gentleman had parked her in. She was the only car in the whole parking lot, but he parked in front of her bumper and was in his car waiting. And when she came home, she was retelling us the story. And I said, did you see him pull up? Did you see this? Did you see that?

And she's I was on the track, mom. I was running. When she decided to go to her car, She had her phone, she got on her phone, and she had a plan of action, but [00:07:00] he was in the car. She got into her car and she peeled out and took off and luckily was safe. But there are so many variables within that one episode, that one event that could have gone wrong.

poorly in so many different ways. And I, as a parent have been racking my brain, like how could I have had to respond differently had that not worked out? Or how do I protect her more so that doesn't become something that happens again? Now, I will say she doesn't go there anymore, but beyond that, those are some of the things that kind of parents run into or situational things like that too.

So what would you suggest? 

Carrie Conrad: 
I would suggest investing in something that makes you feel like you have more power. Both for you and your daughter. Because like you said, you've been racking your brain. How many times have you ran that through your head? How many times have you obsessed on that? Your daughter's safe.

Nothing happened. Don't get me wrong. Like it's an opportunity to reassess our safety plan. It's an opportunity to reassess where we feel insecure, where we [00:08:00] feel like we're lacking and to go invest in those. But how much of your life have you spent playing over a scenario where to be frank, nothing went wrong.

Like she's went home and slept in her bed safely. She didn't accrue trauma. She doesn't need a new therapist, I said, it's an opportunity to take action, but it's also an opportunity to look at how much time the average mom, it's not just you, how much time the average mom spends playing it over and over and over and worrying about our powerlessness and all that we can.

You could be reading a book, you could be taking a bubble bath, you could be, there's things that you could be doing. What mom isn't exhausted? What mom doesn't have more to do than they have time to do. Think of what you could have done with that time instead. And by investing in the solution by investing in patent and empowerment by investing in like having a working plan with your daughter, a moment like that.[00:09:00] 

could be an opportunity of celebration and empowerment. Look, you can handle yourself. You got out of that just fine. Let's go. What can we do so that you feel better about that? Would you like to take a self defense class? 

Would you like to carry a tool that helps you feel more prepared and more safe? Look, you made it home safe. Look at you. Look at you growing up. You didn't need your mom. I'm so proud of you. We don't do that. And it's not just you. Our society, we don't do that. We're like, this could have been really bad.

I'm going to post about on Facebook. I'm gonna scare the crap out of every mom. Everybody's going to freak out. Nobody's going to go run at that track anymore. And it's this is the culture that we live in. We live in a terror filled culture. We do. How much of my life am I spending spinning my wheels in fear?

Dori Durbin: 
Yeah. So do you suggest having a plan post event or do you think there's a way to do it pre event? [00:10:00] 

Carrie Conrad: 
Always pre event, it's called prevention. Yeah, that's what I figured, but It's always pre event, always prevention. That's what I do, is I train people in prevention. Unfortunately, the reality is nobody wants to invest in prevention unless and until something terrible happens, because that's just, we're just human beings.

It's just what it is. I tried to appeal to people before. But it takes what it takes, and it is what it is, and I just, like I said, it's a privilege and a pleasure to get to serve women in this way, especially moms. Because I want you to get that type, I want you to get your life back. I want you to get your mental space back.

I want you to get, I want you to feel empowered. I want you to feel proud of the mother you are. I want you to feel proud of the daughter that you've raised, who can handle herself. Because you can have that too. That's the difference with just a small investment of time and energy. Don't get me wrong.

This investment has to go in the right place. And what happens is we touched [00:11:00] on this before. What happens is some of us, we go spend a bunch of money on karate and we're like, that did not do what I wanted it to do that, or we go spend a bunch of money on weapons and weapons training.

You're like, I don't feel good about this. I've never, so we start to take action and we might, Yeah. Decide that. Yeah, that's not what I had in mind, but that's where I'd like to be helpful. I'd love to point people in other directions, but like we talked about before I just don't know where to point you, there's a lot of confidence coaches and empowerment coaches and that stuff's really helpful.

There's self defense classes, some of which are helpful, but the the scenario that you talked about is people are afraid of strangers. Punching and kicking is great on a stranger, so if you take a self defense class and they taught you punching and kicking, awesome, you're good for a stranger.

Should that be something you're willing to use, but most trauma. For women and Children comes at the hands of people we know. So if you're not willing to punch and kick your pastor, your [00:12:00] chiropractor, your husband's your best friend's husband, then we need more than just punching and kicking. So if your self defense plan only includes punching and kicking, you're prepared for this much.

There's so much more out there where we need tools that we're willing to use. It's unfortunate that it takes scary events for people to get there, but that's when it's so you have that, you've already given up this much of your life worrying. You can take a class or you can have, I have online content that teaches you all the ways that you can be prepared without even realizing that you're prepared.

I can reframe, just like that story that you gave, I can reframe things so that we're celebrating our power instead of running around in terror, worrying, waiting for the person to jump out of the other side of the grocery store aisle. You know what I mean? Because we are. We are because that's what we're programmed to do.

But the people that [00:13:00] are programming us don't, I think they really underestimate women. Especially a mother. We will mess you up. We will. Through mama bears, right? Yeah. I literally teach people how to use a coffee mug. Whatever you have, I will teach you to use it. You're more prepared than you realized.

And we really want to focus on where we have power. And then where we feel insecure, go find a solution for that. So that you can continue to build up and feel more power. We have tremendous power. 

Dori Durbin: 
Tremendous. Can you tell us a little bit why you got into this area? 

Carrie Conrad: 
Yeah, I'm happy to do terrible things.

That's I like most people who help other people be and feel safe. I had some pretty terrible life experiences. I'm sure you're surprised to hear it at the hands of people I know. No way! Because that's where the reality is. And most people don't talk [00:14:00] about it. And I'm not going to out people and I'm not going to.

I don't do that. We talk about solutions, but the thing is I had these terrible bad things happen as a black belt. So most people have bad things happen. So they go get a black belt. I had a black belt and bad things happen. So I can tell you where and how karate is helpful.

Remember that punching and kicking is great for strangers. But if you're not willing to punch and kick your teacher or an authority figure or somebody who's giving you your paycheck, that's where the problem lies. This might be a bit much for a podcast, but I guess this is what it is we choose to let people hurt us because it's the best option we have.

It's the best option. It's in our best interest to let people hurt us because the alternative is not we lose our livelihood. We lose our jobs, we, the education's down the drain you're looking at legal issues, it's their [00:15:00] word against mine it's the easier, softer way to just suck it up. And it's terrible.

My goal in life is to make sure that every woman has tons and tons of options. I want children and women to have options, you have so many options, so that your best option isn't to let somebody hurt you. 

Dori Durbin:
No. Oh, gosh your story. There's so many people who would feel exactly what you're talking about, too, because I think you're right.

It's so much easier just to fold than to go to the next thing. I think people worry about what if so and so finds out I did that or what if I get in trouble for doing this, whatever the trouble means adult wise or kid wise. And so that's really a different kind of mindset than probably most people come to you with.

They have the mindset of, I'm gonna get in trouble, I'm not, I shouldn't fight back, I shouldn't do these things unless they've had the experience where they have gotten injured or they've experienced some sort of [00:16:00] trauma. 

Carrie Conrad: 
I, throughout the content that I have online and plus in my classes and how I work with people, it's constantly about asking questions because I want to find out where you have power because it might be news to you.

It's not news to me. We all have tremendous power. We just need to find it and dust it off. And again, like I said, I was like, Ooh, on a podcast. Here we go. Oh finding out like just, we're talking about working through a lot of terrible, like trauma and stuff, but finding out that it's wow, I did choose to let that happen because it was the best choice.

That is empowering. It also sucks. Because there's we can be a victim, but victims don't have any power. It's okay. And I want to clarify it because I don't know who's gonna listen to this. It's okay to be a victim. I was a victim for a lot of my life, but I needed to be. [00:17:00] I was. I was victimized.

It was. But at some point in time, after I've played that out and I don't want that anymore, I can't take it anymore. It's not serving me anymore. There are more choices. I found more choices and I get to empower people with more choices. Like I said choices. I'm not here to tell you how to live.

I'm not here to tell you what's right and wrong. I'm not here to tell you what's acceptable and unacceptable to you. I'm here to ask questions to help you find where you're at and what you need to be empowered moving forward so that you can be proud of yourself, so that you can move on, so that you can prove to yourself that you're actually, and I hope it's okay to say this on your podcast, but you're actually a badass.

I have never met a woman who was not a bandit in some way, shape, or form. Been there somewhere. But it's hard, some of us can't find it because we've just experienced too much. And yeah, it's terrible when it happens at the hands of strangers. And, I don't [00:18:00] really believe in the comparison game.

It's a different kind of terrible when it happens at the hands of people, so people were like, self defense, let's talk about punching and kicking and be like, Oh, I bring a little more reality to the table than that. So it can be heavy, but that's why if you go on the website, if you watch any, like I have a group where you can join, I go live every Wednesday with tips and tools on prevention.

Hooray for prevention. You might care now. So the prevention, you'll see, there's a lot of humor. It's lighthearted. It's empowering. We don't focus on the dark and scary and the heavy, like we talked about here. It's so heavy. No, we talk about. Defending yourself with a mug or being more prepared than you realize or how to set and uphold boundaries in relationships, how to prove to yourself that you can say no and feel good about it.

That's a skill. We develop skills. How do you feel good about saying no? It's not the first time you say no. I promise you that you got to say no. A lot of different times in a lot of different ways before you start to feel good about it. Like you have to have [00:19:00] experience trial and error. Who says no.

If you don't, if. You want to be able to say no, that's something that people look for whether they know you or they don't know you. People look for people who can't say no. Yeah. What if you have a kid at school, and there are situations where they're maybe feeling unsafe, maybe they, they can't say no they're getting bullied whatever the situation is, would you have some.

DoriDurbin:
I know it depends on the kid and the situation but do you have some quick hits that parents can teach their kids. Absolutely. One, bullying is a whole thing and I would be happy to coach any person who's struggling with bullying because when you go to the school, you most likely are not getting the support that you need.

Carrie Conrad: 
It's, if you live in the United States, it's a huge issue and there's very few schools who are doing well. On that note, some quick things that we can do today right now. I'll share a link and there's a bunch of kids books on my website and these [00:20:00] books are to help empower our children making decisions about values and boundaries and creating a safety plan so that they can be empowered and find their power in their real life experiences.

We don't pretend that life doesn't happen. I can't tell you that the predators are going to disappear and I don't know. World peace and all of that. Of course, everybody hopes for that. But the reality is we can develop tools that allow us to find our power to feel powerful to be proud of ourselves and our abilities and to see how capable we are because you can absolutely be safe in an unsafe situation with the right skill set.

That's all we want to develop skills. We just want to develop skills. So there's a bunch of kids books, ideal for kids, eight and under. You can start at two. I started two with kids even earlier for being real, like the conversations really start around two. That's when you can start to ask questions.

And like I said, that's a lot about asking questions. It's a lot about asking the right questions. What do you ask [00:21:00] a two year old? I'm curious. It depends on the book. It depends on their response. So there's these books, right? You can, I have a whole bunch of books that I use with my kids, which is why they're, that's how that came about.

And then my friends were like, Hey, your kids have skills. Will you teach my kids? And then the next thing you know, I'm, Being paid to teach groups. And then today I teach moms. I teach moms how to teach their kids. Because you're going to follow through. Whereas me, I'm going to spend, five sessions with your kids and they're going to have skills that mom's probably not so hot at.

So it creates a little conflict. So mom can be learning these skills with her kids too. On where are your values, when to say no, how to uphold boundaries, when to walk away, when to get help, when to, these are things that we discover. It's a journey. It's a journey. So you've got the books.

There's a guide that you can buy that will give you those questions on like how to navigate that with your kids so that you are asking. And it's how to read the books with your kids because if we're talking at our kids. We don't know what they know we don't know [00:22:00] what they're retaining we don't know what they understand.

It's about the questions that we asked so we can find out where our kids are so we can help them work their way towards a better life. a perspective of reality that helps them to be safe so that we know that they're making safe choices. Again, if I tell my kids what to do, yeah, I don't know about that.

I don't know how that's going to work out. But if I ask them, what would you do in this scenario? And I hear what they say. Just, since this is on video, the wrong answer is, oh, dear God don't say that. It might shock you, and it might be terrible, but don't poker face! If you've ever played, if you want a poker face, just listen.

Listen to them, and ask more questions to help them consider more things that your kids just never considered, because they're children, and they lack life experience. That's a huge thing, isn't it? The experiences. If they don't, yeah. 

Dori Durbin:
Yeah. Okay, can I ask you one self defense question? Sure. [00:23:00] All right, most of us as moms carry our phones or our purse. So if for some reason we were in a bad situation where we had to defend ourselves, Could we and what could we do with using either of those two things the phone? 

Carrie Conrad:
So you're going to go to the link in the free group, right? You're going to join this free group and you're going to get free 10 days trial and you can check out this online community that I have and I have a short video on how to use your person self defense and I have a short video on how to use your phone in self defense because anything that we carry can be used to defend ourselves.

Anything that we carry. So that's easy peasy. Easy peasy and it's more than just that. There's a section on just random items and then there's reviews on stuff that's marketed to moms because we're scared. People make money off of that. They want you to be scared because they want you to buy their stuff.

So I do reviews and all the stuff that's marketed to moms and women and on how it's practical or impractical, what's [00:24:00] good about it, what's not good about it. Like I had like things that you want to know. There's these Buddha beads that were really cool. You can use them as a weapon. They are really heavy.

So I, I buy self defense stuff. I get to play with it. My kids kept getting their hair stuck in it. That's important to know. You know what I mean? Moms want to know that. So yes, you're walking around with Buddha beads. You can take them anywhere you go. They're really nasty to use in self defense.

But, your children, if you want your children to hug you Keep your hair gets caught. Their hair gets caught in these beads. It's stuff like that, the practicality and the reality of it. Because things sound good in theory. Let me tell you, their sales page makes it sound great. And then you try it out and you're like, yeah, that's dumb.

That did not do what I thought it, that's not. Like I said, a lot of people who market these stuff, like who write the books they write the books, they make the products. None of them have kids. Or they're not moms. They just, they're missing information. Yeah. That's great that's just a free resource on your website.

[00:25:00] Which one? The the products. So you can have a 10 day free trial of a like a community, like a membership. It's filled with videos. It's filled with different videos. So you can check it out for 10 days if you want to stick around. That's great. Or some people, they go in, they take what they want and that's that.

But there's way more than 10 days of awesomeness in there. Awesome. No, sounds great. So if a parent's listening right now and they want to do something about this, they're either experienced a trauma want to prevent the traumas or just coming into awareness that this needs to happen for them.

Dori Durbin:
What are a few things that they can do as soon as they get off the podcast to make steps towards making these changes for their kids and themselves really? Like I said, join that free group, join that free group. There are questions in there that will help you reframe how you see things in that group.

Like I said, there's 10 days for you can try it, try out this, it's called Den [00:26:00] Access. It's Mama Bear Den, right? So you can check out Den Access with all these videos and all sorts of stuff. There's tons in there. There's more too. If you want to join a community of moms that I support and coach on a regular basis.

We do that too, but you can start with a free group right now. You can just start with a free group and check out, like I said a link in there for free 10 days. Den Perfect. Perfect. And could you give us your website again one more time and where else they can find you, Carrie?

Yeah, you can go to beatingdisaster. com. However, this online content for moms is called Mama Bear Prepared. So you're going to want to click the Mama Bear Prepared and it's going to take you to another site. But it's a lot easier to just tell you beatingdisaster. com. Awesome. And is the one on one coaching there as well?

At Mama Bear Prepared. Yeah, all that is it's online content, coaching, and community for moms for protecting kids and raising kids to be safe in today's world. 

Dori Durbin:
And if they have questions for you, can they contact you there as [00:27:00] well? Absolutely. Fabulous. Keri, you have given us so much great information.

Carrie Conrad:
And honestly, I hope moms are starting to think about what is my power? What am I really strong at? And what am I capable of? And they'll check out your website as well. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. 

Dori Durbin:
Thank you for your time today. Carrie.