The Sequoia Breeze

Rebecca: Welcome to the Sequoia Breeze podcast, a breath of fresh air for your homeschool. I am your host, Rebecca LaSavio. I'm grateful that you've chosen to spend a little bit of your day with us here and we are going to listen in to a conversation that I had with police sergeant and home school dad Seth Cemino. This episode is a little longer than usual, but I think it's important, so hang on. And here we go. If you're listening in the car with your kids, this is one of those episodes you might want to listen to on your own. First, a lot of times we have a lot of fun on the Sequoia Breeze, and today we're going to deal with a little bit heavier topic with the goal of empowering parents to feel confident in keeping kids safe. So I will let you know, parents, the topic that we're going to hit today is one I've been thinking about personally for a while, and that is, what do I tell my kids? How do I help them know what to do in an active shooter situation? Because my kids aren't in public school, they don't get any training about that. And one of the reasons a lot of us homeschool is to be able to shelter them from some of those dangers and remove them from that situation. And yet when I walk into a large store or a mall or a movie theater or go to a concert or even when we're just at church, our family is vulnerable to those situations because we never know where they're going to hit. What do I tell my kids? How do I help them know how to react in that situation? And so I've sought out somebody who knows way more about this topic than I do. And Seth has graciously agreed to be here to tackle this difficult topic. And before he fully introduces himself, I just want to say that we both have a really great desire that this topic you might be thinking this is not a breath fresh air for your home school, but I really, truly hope that by the end of this that you will feel differently about that. That instead of worrying about it, instead of living in fear, we feel that we have power from knowledge of actual steps we can take to help keep our kids safe. So with that said, Seth, would you introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about you and your family.

Seth: Yes, a pleasure. First of all, I'm a homeschooled dad. My wife and I have ten and eight year old sons and we've been homeschooling now for six years. We're part of Feather River. Our HST is my sister in law, which is we're keeping it obviously close in the family. Geraldine Fisher and my wife also serves on the Sequoia Grove Chapter Alliance as a board member there. I think the big thing with homeschooling for us, my wife didn't go to homeschool or wasn't homeschooled. I wasn't homeschooled as a kid. But as time goes on, and then obviously the profession that I'm in, I've kind of realized that kids in a school setting will pick up a little bit of baggage from their own home life, bring it to school, and then shed that baggage on other kids. And then you may or may not have some bad habits that get taken home into your household. Plus, also in a home school setting, you're able to present and teach a curriculum that you see fit for your thoughts and ideals and what is important to you as a family versus someone maybe thrusting information upon your child that may not fit with what's important to you. A narrative that isn't important to you. So you're able to control that setting, which is awesome. Ultimately, the goal is that the wiles of society are so great, but we feel, my wife and I feel in a home school setting, that we're able to allow our boys to be just little boys. I want them to just enjoy their youth as much as possible without having just some of the negative parts of society thrust upon them to share a little bit with you. I grew up. It was a tough home. It really was. There was some domestic violence involved, some mental health issues, some substance abuse. I was exposed to things that happened in my house that a little boy shouldn't be exposed to. That baggage stayed with me, stays with me my entire life. And if there's a way to protect my kids as much as possible, homeschooling being a setting of that, my wife and I want to be able to do that. Changing topics a little bit. I've been in law enforcement for 22 years. I work as a police sergeant here in the greater Sacramento area for an agency. I feel very fortunate to be a part of the department I'm with. We have a great relationship with our community. I've worked many various assignments in my career as a detective sergeant, was part of some task force teams over the years as a canine handler, SWAT operator. I've done a lot of different things to be as well versed as I can to be the best policing professional that I can be.

Rebecca: And you do some training in this topic in your role now?

Seth: Yeah, thank you for mentioning that. Yeah, I've been very fortunate in my career and just kind of the stars aligned where I've been able to teach and train advanced officer training to cops all over the country in certain topics officer safety topics, drug investigation topics, critical incidents, scenarios. I've been very fortunate to be able to do that. And that's another reason why we're here. When you and I first had an opportunity to meet and connect, it was because of the fact that I've had an opportunity to teach before, and it just worked out real well. For us to be able to hook up. So, again, a pleasure for a true pleasure. Thank you for allowing me to be here with you today.

Rebecca: I'm really thrilled that you're able to be here because it took me a while to figure out how to even find somebody to talk to about this topic. Briefly before we dive into nuts and bolts. One of the things that you and I talked about on the phone before this interview was that we both have a desire that people don't walk away from this feeling terrified, feeling a need to stick their kids in a cave. So talk a little bit about your sort of heart for that, that people aren't living in fear.

Seth: Yeah. And knowledge is power here, right? I had made mention before we started recording, my grandfather is one of the most influential men in my life. I loved my grandfather. Amazing man. It taught me so many wides words of wisdom. But one thing he said is, ignorance is bliss. And the older I got, the more I realized how incorrect that is. That knowledge is power, for sure. And what the goal of today is, is to be able to armor you up, our listeners up as parents, as homeschool teachers, as community members, as neighbors, to just be able to trust your gut, recognize potential dangerous situations per se, and be able to react accordingly. It is a trained skill, for sure. I think I maybe take for granted after 22 years in this job, the way my mind works now. But at the same point, the more information we can provide to not be victims of crime, the better it is. Criminals prey on those that really are defenseless. But if you find ways to armor yourself up, to recognize those danger signs, not engage or not put yourself in that path, you have a much better opportunity to keep you and your family safe.

Rebecca: The scariest piece, I think of the idea of an active shooter is that you don't know when or where, and it's correct. You can choose to stay out of the quote unquote, bad areas of town, and it might not matter. And so it's not about necessarily making good choices about where you are, what you're doing. Because I think that's the thing that's the most frightening when you really think about it is you could be in a very safe spot, and it's still something that could happen. When we go to Walmart, I have often thought, what would we do? This is where we come. My kids know it. Sometimes they go off to a different section of the store while I'm doing other shopping. It's sort of automatic because that's the store that's near us. So when we're in this familiar place, what would we do if something did happen? But I don't want my kids walking around in fear either. Not knowing much myself about what to do in this situation, I think about what I know of school trainings and that is that you sort of duck cover and hide. But I've also heard people say, oh no, get out of there. So what do we do? What's the first thing we should know about this type of a situation?

Seth: And I think the term active shooter, it focuses us on a topic and we think of someone running around with a gun firing, and that's exactly what it is. But any sort of weapon that can be used against an individual and this assailant who is assaulting people in any sort of form is continually actively doing it. That would be the active crime that's committing the act of violence that is continuing to be committed. And this unfortunately, can happen in any situation, whether it be a grocery store, a big box store, your church, a school, the mall, any public location, is really the issue where we have to focus on how do we protect ourselves and protect our families and recognizing those potential danger signs if they were to arise. And a lot of this comes down to situational awareness in an active shooter setting or where someone is actively assaulting or harming others. What we want to focus on is being able to run. Do your best to get yourself out of there and we will discuss this a little more for each one of these topics. If you cannot flee the scene immediately, find a great hiding spot. Plan for that. And if you cannot, or once you're hidden and it gets to a point where you may be put in a situation to engage an assailant, how am I going to fight? What am I going to do? This is a life or death matter at this point. But if we can look at that from a run, get ourselves out of there, if I can't, how can I hide? If it's coming to a point where I'm going to have to engage this individual because they are approaching me or wherever I'm at, how am I going to fight to survive?

Rebecca: That sounds like a different conversation for a grown man and an eight year old kid.

Seth: Absolutely right. We don't want to instill the fear, but I think we have to define it as the awareness of what we need to do. It's our responsibility as a parent to be able to do everything we can to protect our children, absolutely everything we can. So the more we know, the more we can do to protect them. I remember as a kid being a little boy, going into the local drugstore or whatever it is, and I would tell my parents or my grandparents, if you need me, I'll be in the toy section. And I would go running off right now, mind you, that's 35, 40 years ago, and I'm sure my boys still do it to this day. And I know where I'm going to find them when I go to the store, and that's okay. That's totally fine. But at the same point, I need to make sure that I am keeping a fairly close eye on them. I need to make sure that I am understanding how long it's been that I've last saw them or checking in on them. There's a lot of factors that go into that versus just kind of aimlessly doing your shopping and then I'll gather them up when I find them.

Rebecca: So would a good first step be to maybe in particularly maybe in familiar stores, just like, hey, kids, do you know where all the exits are? Would that be a good way to get started with talking through this difficult thing with them?

Seth: Yeah, absolutely, like you said, with the exits. But it's kind of playing out scenarios in your head too, and you can do it in a way that is maybe not as intense per se as maybe what you're thinking of. Kind of a little side note. Things we're trained on in law enforcement is we have a call for service to respond to a certain location. Let's just say it's a disturbance at an address, and we're headed there. Dispatch is providing us the information. But while I'm en route to that call, in my mind, I'm planning out different scenarios. I show up, and I'm immediately confronted by somebody. Is that person armed? I show up, and it's quiet. I show up, and I can hear or actively see a fight occurring amongst people. I show up, and I get to the front door, and I hear violence inside or something going on inside. I show up, and somebody flees. So I've played out all these scenarios in my brain, and it just takes fractions of seconds to play these out. So when I show up in that scenario is presented, I'm not behind the eight ball. I've already thought about this. So, yeah, your familiar stores I mean, you can't do this for every location, but your familiar stores, if something were to happen and you were to get separated from mom or dad, where would you go? What's the exit that you potentially would leave? Do we have a meeting spot at a certain location if something were to happen? Hey, if I can't find you, I need you to go to this location to wait for me. So, yeah, whatever is comfortable for you is great, but at the same point, we need to make sure that we plan for worst case scenario just so we're prepared for it if it ever occurs.

Rebecca: I could see making it a game, like, how many exits can you find in this building while we're in it? Or it's just a light hearted like, I don't think about that. I know my husband does. I don't pay attention, but I could see my kids kind of getting into that without it having to be a super scary thing, because I don't even have to say if somebody started shooting you, where would you go? That's pretty intense. But if there was smoke and you needed to get out of the building or if there was something wrong, how would you know how to get out? So let's talk about where that could be.

Seth: And that's how you could say exactly without kind of as we as adults, as we discuss this, we understand the intensity. If something really were to go wrong and there was an act of violent assailant there, but you can make it exactly as you described. If we had to get out because you saw smoke or exactly as you described, what exit would you take? There's an exit over there. I know we come in one of these two front doors, depending on that. And you're able to make it more of a challenge without adding the seriousness of the danger, to preserve a little bit of that innocence that we would still hope that we could for our children. Yeah.

Rebecca: So we would talk, know, find ways to talk. Not there might be a serious conversation that needs to happen, but it certainly isn't every time we're going to walk into Target, we're going to talk about what if something terrible happens? But the idea of if something scary happens, get out of there, run, and we're going to pay attention to where exits are. But if you can't run, how do we talk about hiding? How would we help our kids identify a safe hiding spot when, in all honesty, as parents, we're usually saying, don't hide from me, but we do need to talk about what would be a safe hiding spot if that needed to happen.

Seth: Yeah. And I think having these conversations with your kids and like I said, my boys are eight and ten, and depending on who's listening, could be much younger, much older. Everywhere in between is I've had to describe, and my wife and I have had to describe for our boys that unfortunately, there are mean and bad people out there that want to hurt other people, and that's just kind of a fact of life. And sometimes these same people, a way they could hurt mom or dad would be to do something to you. So having that in mind, I need to make sure that I keep you safe. That's my job. I remember as a kid going to department stores and hiding in the big racks of clothes in the center and like, popping up or that still could be very alive and well for something we wanted to talk about today. Or if you were to hide somewhere, what would that look like? Where would you go? I think ultimately there has to be a plan in place because if an event were to occur and you were there, chaos is exactly what's going to happen. And it's going to be an all out struggle to try to gather up. And I do not want to leave an area, we talk about running. Right. But if I don't have my group, my family with me, I don't know if I want to go. Right. I kind of want to find them. And that's where keeping our family close to us within eyeshot or an aisle over, maybe in our best interest to be able to do that. So when we do decide to flee, what does that look like? If we do decide to hide, are we hiding together? Because I don't want to bed down myself, but not know where everybody else is. I need to go find that person to make sure they're safe to bed down with me or hide with me somewhere else. So I think the first thing we have to talk about is, like, what does it mean to flee? What does it mean to run and go? And heaven forbid an assailant is there and that person has some sort of weapon or a gun. We need to be aware of what our exits are, where we came in, and like we described our alternate exits and where we need to go. You know your locations well enough. The normal places that you shop, you should be doing those quick evaluations of, okay, I'm now in the produce aisle. I know that there is an exit on the northwest side of this building right here. If I need to flee, that's my quickest way out. I'm not going to have to truck back all the way through this store to try to get to where I'm going.

Rebecca: Well, and maybe even notice, like, as you're saying that, I'm thinking, oh, you know, there's a door to the back room right there in the veggie department that I don't pay any attention to because it's not for me. But that's a way out.

Seth: It's exactly a way out. Seconds matter here. If something were to happen and there was some sort of violent event that occurred, every second, you need to account for. And the quicker you can start to move in the opposite direction of where that violence is occurring, the better it is. So if we already know where it is and we have a plan, and I know I'm here and these are my exits, those seconds absolutely matter. And the quicker you can move and the quicker you can run, the harder it is to be a potential victim or a target. Right. If we can move as fast as possible, it's great. As low as possible is good. Keep ourselves low to be able to move. It adds that concealment. But then also, the smaller target we are, the better it is for us as well. If we were successful, and I would say let's change that when we're successful, I always want to have a victorious mindset when we're successful in fleeing from that area. In this chaos, law enforcement will be coming absolutely for sure. In an active shooter or critical incident scenario, like this, where an assailant is actively assaulting and hurting people no longer. It is unacceptable for law enforcement to sit back and wait. We saw that with Columbine years ago and there's been other incidents that have occurred over the years. Our job, my job, is to immediately engage that threat, to stop it. Whether I'm the first on scene, whether me and a partner show up, whether it's me and three and four others, our job is to go in and we have to recognize in our profession that we have to slow this person down or eliminate that threat. Because if we do that, more people will be saved. And as you are fleeing and you're running out the back door, the side door, or whatever it is, all this chaos is going to be running at me because I'm going to be going in. And our job is to get as much information as possible to be able to engage that threat. But we also realize in the law enforcement profession, misinformation comes in very fast as well in terms of who a person is, how many there are, what they look like, what weapon it is. So as you're leaving, the best thing you can do for us is keep your hands visible and up so we can see you not as the threat, you are the victim who is fleeing. But you're going to get posed with questions as well. And we do this when we do our active shooter training. As we're running in and you're running out, I'm yelling at our role player scenarios. What does the suspect look like? What sort of weapon do they have? Where are they? Which way did they go? And in passing, I'm hoping to get this information from you. You yell, Red baseball cap, blue shirt, as I'm running someone else. What sort of weapon do they have? They're armed with a blank. Where did you last see them? They were running towards the gymnasium. They were running towards the sporting goods aisle or something. And you're compiling all this data in your mind. Hopefully, people are calling things in to dispatch or other information so you can decipher that down to a point where you know you need to engage or who you're looking to engage, which I think is critically important, and follow law enforcement instruction. When you leave, they're going to send you to a certain spot. And the toughest thing and here I am thinking like a cop, but the toughest thing as a parent and I know you guys will all agree who are listening, is that if I'm separated from my family and an officer tells me to continue to separate from my family and go over here where it may be safe. I'm going to really struggle with not wanting to go in and look for my family. So the closer we can keep our little family group together, the better it is, because I wouldn't begrudge any parent for wanting to go back in to find their missing loved one. And it's absolutely natural to feel that way, but then from the law enforcement point of view, it adds more to the chaos to do that.

Rebecca: Okay, so I want to take a little break here. First of all, I want to invite listeners to take a deep breath. I'm just sitting in a benign room talking to you, and I feel myself tensing up.

Seth: And as I sit across the table from you, I feel the same way. From the first responder point of view.

Rebecca: As a parent, I also feel attention, besides the very difficult topic that we're talking about, but I feel a little bit of attention of it's also my job to teach my kids to be independent of me. It's my job to teach my kids how to function. And sometimes we're just playing in a hurry. So I want to be able to say, you go to this aisle and find this, this, and this, and you go to this aisle and find these three things and bring them back to me. I want them to be able to go to the toy aisle and hang out so I can shop quickly, because that's how I parent. I don't always try to keep my kids right next to me, hanging onto the cart, and they're older. That's also been my thought of like, okay, now they're spread out all over the store. What do we do? So to me, keeping them always right next to me would be a step of living in fear. So do you have any advice sort of or anything to say to that? Maybe you're going to tell me I'm crazy and time has marched on and I can't do that anymore? Or maybe I don't know.

Seth: Not at all. And this is where we have to find the fine line and imbalance that fine line between being the helicopter parent and the free range parent. Where is that fine line? Depending on the situation, maybe. And this is the situational awareness, kind of like adaptive leadership in a sense, where you're going to lead and mentor and supervise somebody differently who has been working on an assignment for ten years and has an incredible drive and skill set. You're going to lead that person differently than you would be somebody who has been with the company or the department for a month, who's learning. So it's the same situation. Maybe I'm a little more close to the vest and a little more protective in an area where I'm not familiar with a big venue, a concert, a show.

Rebecca: Right.

Seth: A month ago we went to a show at Golden One. I'd never been to Golden One. It was absolutely packed, and the show we went to, it was Dude Perfect. For those of you that know who Dude Perfect is.

Rebecca: Right?

Seth: So what was OD is I have one of my friends who is a dad that we went with together. He's parked in the car. I have his kids and my kids, and I'm now responsible for five boys between the ages of five and ten. Do you know how many other boys were there between the ages of five.

Rebecca: And ten, all with the same haircut?

Seth: We're all walking into golden one together. We're all shuffling through a location that I've never been before together. And I'm scanning my environment. I'm looking around, like, where am I at? And then all of a sudden, as I'm trying to get myself gathered with my situational awareness, I'm trying to literally put my hands on all these boys'heads that I'm with. But then I look and there's hundreds of other boys that are exactly the same height and the same age and all the above. So I think it's that situational that is a setting where maybe we need to make sure that we are keeping folks real close versus a certain other location. There's absolutely nothing wrong, and I am 100% in support and agreement with you. We want to be able to establish that independence and help our children grow and learn. And some of the best ways to learn is from making mistakes. If I'm going to struggle and fail, I want to fail forward and learn from my mistakes. So we want to be able to allow our kids to venture out a little bit more and all these things. And there's absolutely nothing wrong absolutely nothing wrong with saying, hey, I need you to get bread, I need you to get milk, I need you to go get toilet paper. Absolutely nothing. But it's the conversation that we have ahead of time that maybe is a little more ingrained. It's kind of like if there's an earthquake or the power goes out, where's our emergency kit in the house? Or having those conversations ahead of time. Just so you know, I need you to go out and get it and come back. Bring it back.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Seth: All right. So there's a clearly defined instruction. I've asked you to go out, grab what you need to get and immediately come back. In my mind as a parent, I know that that should only take about two minutes or whatever the case. After maybe three minutes, I need to say, okay, did we maybe miss the mark on something? And maybe I need to start heading into that direction just to double check that I said toilet paper, but there's ten different brands of toilet paper and they're staring at different things. Right, right. Whatever it is. So it's having those conversations ahead of time.

Rebecca: I think we've talked a lot about sort of situational awareness, who's around you, what are they doing? Where are the exits? What do you do? How do you get out and run? We touched on Hyde. Talk more about Hyde.

Seth: Yeah. So heaven forbid, you cannot escape for seconds. Matter the doors. There's no possible way. For you to be able to flee a violent encounter. What am I going to do now with my family to be able to find a great place where I can hide? First things first, we want to be as quiet as possible. Put our phones on silent. Can someone make a very discreet and quick and quiet call to 911? If I'm in a room, is there a way for me to lock the door or barricade the door? Whatever you can throw in front of it, do. I would recommend don't stand directly behind the door if you're in that room in a law enforcement setting as we go into doors or enter doors, not to paranoia audience, but we call that the fatal funnel. Like, if you're going into a room, there's only one way in and one way out of this room, and the bad guy knows that, right? So we call that the fatal funnel as you go in the door, right. So steer clear of the door. Is there another place I can hide in that room? Because that assailant may use his or her weapon to try to open the door or however it is, and you don't want to be close to that. And while you're in there and you've done your barricade or whatever the case is and you've locked the door and you've made that call, and we have to come up with a plan at this point. We're in it. We're in the middle of the mix here and we have to come up with a defense plan for ourselves. What does that look like? I'm going to go down fighting. What am I going to do if there is some sort of engagement? And now my hiding is over. Now I have to get into a fight for my life, a fight for those people with me in that room. Loved ones or maybe even strangers. You're together. What does that look like? Now.

Rebecca: At the risk of sounding terribly ignorant, I'm going to go with the if I don't know, maybe somebody else doesn't either. Can you text 911 now or do.

Seth: You still have to call yes, you can.

Rebecca: You can text 911.

Seth: Yes. So we're in this room where we've done our very best to barricade and secure lock, and now we have to have a plan. What does that plan look like? And heaven forbid you've got to carry out that plan, but at least you have a plan. You're at a point where worst case scenario has presented itself. This is what we're going to do. And as we are there, this is our last resort. What in the room can I use as a weapon? How can I work with those in the room? Your bad guy isn't playing fair. They're not. Neither should you. And we need to get the best of our ability, a position of advantage, and that's going to be basically like a strategic ambush. I'm not going to hide in the corner and wait for this person to come in and do something to me. I'm going to engage this person understanding that, heaven forbid, something happened to me or whoever I'm engaging with, but I want to make sure that I can do my very best to keep others safe in the process. Because if I just sit there and do nothing yeah.

Rebecca: So what are we talking to our kids about when we get to this stage of the situation? Run and hide? I got my head around, and I think kids get that those are both very natural responses for kids, but what are we talking to our kids? And obviously that's different for a six year old and a teenager, but what are we talking with them about in a way of preparing them to be able to think in that situation? Because that's the point of preparation. Right. You can't figure it all out while it's happening and your adrenaline is pumping. That's why we have fire drills. Now we know how to get out of this building. So how are we preparing our kids to think? Or do we leave them out of the fight part? That's for us.

Seth: Yeah. And this is again, I'm not here to talk to you on how to parent your children. Right. I can offer best case scenario, I can speak to you as a 22 year law enforcement professional. I would do everything in my power to leave my kids out of the fight portion of this. Right. If there is one adult and a bunch of kids, I think that one adult should be the one who engages. It's our responsibility to protect our children. And if that means, heaven forbid, that means that this is it. This is a life and death matter, I'm going to do so. I'm not going to put my children in that path. If I have an older kid who may be able to assist in a way by keeping maybe the other children corralled or calm in a certain area, maybe that's the best. Instead of having the toddler squirt out and run and grab your leg as you're getting ready to do something, that may be a way to engage. But I would not at all have the kids fight in this situation, not one bit. I would have them do their very best hiding and stay hidden and leave the engagement or the fighting. And again, it's the ambush, it's the surprise. This perpetrator has come in and has done this to us, and I want to be able to meet that aggression as best as I can with something. As you and I sit in this room, there are dozens of chairs. It would not feel good to get clobbered with one of these chairs. Absolutely.

Rebecca: Not thinking what great hiding spots these tables would be turned over.

Seth: Absolutely. And what else is it? If you're at a restaurant and you're in a spot. Can you grab a wine bottle to whack somebody with, I don't know, a shard of glass? I mean, if you're in a sporting goods store and grab a bat off the shelf, I mean, you want to meet that resistance or you want to meet that violence and do everything you can from a strategic point of view to engage and fight that off. And you may be able to delay and or eliminate that potential threat by fighting back. And if you can get multiple people to fight back, someone sprays him in the face. I always say him, but someone sprays the perpetrator in the face with a fire extinguisher, gives you that delay enough to that person get clobbered with a chair, right? And that may be the seconds you need for them to drop that weapon or for them to be off balance enough or whatever it is to take that position of advantage back and be victorious in that conflict. This person isn't fighting fair, and we shouldn't either. Yeah.

Rebecca: So when I was investigating this topic a little bit, I discovered, and I know you're aware of, if you want to see how this could actually play out in a real situation, potentially a real situation, the FBI has made some little videos of run, hide and fight. They're really well done, and they're not very long. I will say it was upsetting to watch. It was hard to watch because it was like being in there.

Seth: I know exactly what videos you're talking about, and they are very well done. Yes. Because you are part of that situation. It's a first person perspective, and that victim that's in there engages with you, the watcher. And if we're talking about the same video, you feel like you're part of that scenario. I'll level with you. This this comes down to the hyper vigilance of that stress, that intensity, and what happens in the prefrontal. I mean, we're really going to physiology, but I think about this, like what happens in the brain and how we react and that fight or flight and all those certain things that happen. Yeah, you bet. And the stress levels go up as we engage and how do we react during that stress? Are we able to situationally aware, see the entire room? Have we gone into tunnel vision? What's our fight or flight like? Have I completely gone in that red zone where my body literally shuts down and I cannot do anything? I can't engage. I'm in such fear that I just cannot do anything. And you have to fight that. You have to find a level of ability to be able to fight through. And that's why in law enforcement settings, we do as much real world training as possible, scenario training as possible. Even when we train, still in 20 plus years in this profession, when we train and I know the topic we're doing, and I know we're going to engage in some sort of event. If you were to take my blood pressure, the moment I go into there, it'd be 300 over 200. Yeah.

Rebecca: And you mentioned fight or flight, but I've also heard freeze mentioned, and you talked about it's. Fight, flight, or freeze? And as you're talking, I'm feeling a little convicted in myself in that as much as I took the initiative to invite you here today, I have avoided this topic in a lot of ways. I have not allowed myself to think through clearly what would I do? And it strikes me that what I'm creating is a situation where I cannot help my kids as effectively because I'm not prepared. So if I'm not prepared, my ability to think in that situation drops dramatically. I don't have the presence of mind to give clear instructions to my kids because I'm trying to figure out what to do. And so there's too many decisions to make all at once. Whereas if I have gone to the trouble to figure out where are all the exits and where would I try to hide, or what would our meeting place be? And if I know that my kids know those things, then suddenly there's so many fewer decisions to be made that I'm dramatically more likely to be able to actually help my kids. So sticking my head in the sand is not really the best solution here. And yet I don't want to talk about this subject. I don't want my kids to have to know about it. But I think about my dad was a volunteer firefighter, and he really taught us well about what to do in case of a fire. Even turning on our families, even making the fire detector sorry, the smoke detector go off right before we woke up one morning, so that we had to in sleep, figure out, what do I do? And I really dramatically remember that moment. And, yeah, it was a little bit scary, but I'm not traumatized by it now. I know I can think. I did go up to the door. I did look for smoke. I felt it to see if it was hot. I did all those things and even thought, this is kind of funny. It's not hot. There's no smoke. What's going on here? So now I trust my ability to be able to make decisions, because I've actually done it. So I think while we are afraid sometimes of scaring our kids, they know the bad guys exist. That's not news to our kids. Kids know there are bad guys, so maybe they'll feel more empowered as well if they understand there might be a bad guy. But I know what to do.

Seth: Think of how calm your kids can be if you remain calm in that situation as well. And you talk about the flight or freeze. Freeze is we have to throw that option out. And we talked about this before. If we plan for that event, and as long as we're planned for it, and we never have to actually engage in that event happening, but we're ready for the worst case scenario as I described, going to those calls for service and planning out all those different scenarios. So when I arrive in that scenario, it hits me, I've already played it out in my mind. If we've played those out, we then have the ability to engage. And is our engagement to flee, or is our engagement and we're thrust into a situation where now we have to fight. Yeah, the freeze is real tough. I speak from my setting as a former FTO, as a field training officer, I can teach a lot to our young cops to make themselves safe, keep you safe, and be successful. But I have run into officers over the years that the profession wasn't cut out for them, and they recognized that very early on, then literally froze in the moment, and now they're a liability too. So think of yourself freezing, and now all of a sudden, you're the one who is the captain of your ship trying to control and keep your children safe, and you can't even engage to keep yourself safe more or less them. So if we've already role played these out in our head, we're in good shape, and we have to fight the complacency of just, oh, it's just another day. It's just another trip to the grocery store. I'm locked into this trance. We have to be prepared. I'm not saying be paranoid, but I'm saying be prepared and be honest with your kids right to their age level. There are people out there that would want to hurt you. There are people out there that would want to hurt mom or dad and prepare them for that. You can do that in a way to not scare them, but they need to be ready as well. And if they see you calm, here's a good example. And I think about this. We've all run into this situation, whether you're this parent or not. Your kid takes a spill and off their scooter their bike, you can see they scuffed up their knee. There may be a little blood. Hey, buddy, it's okay. That doesn't look too bad. No big deal. Let's go in and get cleaned up. Versus the parent that runs in and goes, oh, my goodness, my son or my daughter. What a horrible that must hurt so bad. And next thing you know, the waterworks start to happen, right? And I don't mean it this way. I'm trying to think of the right words to use, but if it's not as dramatic as a fall off the bike to you, it won't be that way to them, because they're looking for.

Rebecca: Your they're mirroring your reaction.

Seth: They're looking for your reaction. So if you're like, hey, if something were to happen and we needed to leave, there's an exit over here. There's an exit over here. If we needed to go, we need to go quickly, and every second counts. We need to make sure that we can get ourselves out. And if we're in this part of the store and something happens, I need you to find me immediately. Or if you're with me, we're going out this door, or whatever the situation is. There's a million in one of those scenarios that you have to play out the events. Like a good example. At our church, I sit as far over to the side in our sanctuary so I am as close to the door that leads to the children's ministry as possible. Because I know that if something happens, I need to make sure that I can do everything in my power to get to the children's ministry, to be able to be a great help to keep our kids safe.

Rebecca: So one thing that comes to mind, as you're describing these things, it is also, again, a challenge to me as a parent is that not only do my kids need to be prepared, but they also need to know how to obey me. If my child doesn't take my command to run seriously and we have to stand there and argue about it, that's not helpful either. So I heard once a parent taught me when my kids were really little, if you don't obey me, I can't keep you safe. Helping kids understand, like, I can't keep you safe unless you are cooperating with what I'm asking you to do. And we can talk about it and argue about it later. Right now, this has to happen. And so not every kid is compliant, and all kids are going to sometimes not listen, but if they can at least understand, there are certain situations where no, it is now, and that's all. There's no negotiation, right? Yeah.

Seth: And I would think you as a parent and me and all the listeners, I would think and hope when our kids are at that age where they can understand on a cognitive level when mom and dad is being serious or not. My boys know when dad is I'm trying to think happy go lucky or whatever, but the term they know when dad is being serious, and they know when they need, as you described, obey dad immediately. This isn't in. Give me a couple of minutes, dad, or I'll be there in 5 seconds. This is dad needs you here now for whatever we're going to do. And that's something that through that parent child relationship that you create and engage. And when the time comes, dad needs you here now. Mom needs you here now.

Rebecca: And we are at a time in history when it's kind of a privilege village that not all kids are sometimes forced to know that fact, where I think of almost seems like a silly example, but it was a real example of in one of the Laura Ingalls books, ma says Laura go inside now. And Laura did, and she praised her later because there was a bear. There was no chance. But there was a time when life or death was a lot closer on a regular basis.

Seth: The praising portion right on the back end. We as adults, we ask still in whatever setting we're in, but our kids ask us all the time Why? Right, okay, if you can go back and double back and explain the why, that adds so much to it. I needed you here now because, as you described from this book scenario, because there was an imminent danger to you. I need you here now because of blank whatever it is, and you can explain the why, and the kids can get the why behind what's going on that's critically important to having that immediate engagement and that obedience that specifically you need. It could be in any setting, parent, teacher, parent, kid, boss, subordinate, whatever. It is just life in general. People deserve to hear the why. They really do. People need to know. I'll follow your instruction more if you explain, because I don't understand, I may not know. Train me and teach me why your instruction is important and why you need to understand it as a whole.

Rebecca: Two more things that as we're talking about this, that come up is, one, you've run sort of now what you've talked about, the chaos, and I can imagine the getting out of the building is then like, where do I go? What do I do now? And I suspect these are happening a little bit simultaneously. Talk to me, too, about how to prepare kids to deal with the cops who are in hyper focused mode of like, we work hard for kids to see cops as friends. They may not look like a friend right at that moment. They might be decked out in protective gear. They might be yelling at you. How do we help our kids respond well to those first responders who are very focused on dealing with the issue at hand so that the kids don't become a liability.

Seth: So in a scenario like this, as a parent, you have a job to do as you teach your children and armor them up with this information, they have a job to do as a critical incident first responder, I have a job to do as well. I know what my job is, and I need to stay focused on my job, which is keeping people safe and preserving life. And part of that comes with finding that threat and engaging that threat to stop them from doing what they're doing. Those first officers are on scene, or law enforcement professionals on scene are going to be focused on that and are going to be intensely focused on that. That needed to be 100% of their focus. There will be other folks that will be there as well that will be pushed back into maybe a little bit more of a safe zone that is a perimeter. I think anybody in uniform, whether it be fire or police, is absolutely a safe person to be able to go to and be around in certain situations like that. I think the big thing we also have to think about is, which is real tough I talked about this earlier, is the separation from the family. If you happen to get separated and you're scared, rightfully so, absolutely. In a situation like this is finding that person in uniform, that first responder as a trusted person to be able to go to where you can be safe. Because as this event happens, those first few officers that are there are going to engage, but everybody is coming to that. It's going to get a lot more chaotic before it gets calmer, for sure. I mean, you think the chaos is intense, the beginning, and it absolutely is. But if something like this were to happen in the Sacramento area right now within I don't have any semblance of how long, but you will have hundreds of first responders there, not in moments, but minutes, and everybody is going to be wanting to get information. There's going to be misinformation on what's going on. If you can find someone, a first responder in uniform to be able to go to in that scenario, that would be great.

Rebecca: Which also reminds me, when do you stop hiding?

Seth: You stop hiding when a law enforcement professional comes in to tell you you need to stop hiding. You could be in that room barricaded yourself in there. I'm on the other side of the door and I'm telling you, this is Sergeant Samino. It is okay. Open the door. At that moment, it's going to be tough for you to want to go open that door to be able to do that. And officers will come into that room and those officers and those enforcement professionals will look scary. Firearms will be out. They may be in tactical gear with helmets and vests. It's intimidating, absolutely intimidating. But we're there for your safety and we will bring you out. We will tell you it is okay now to come out. And we will, again, going back to following instructions. We are going to give you a set of instructions and you're going to go to this location or go with us to that area where we would have that safe zone for sure, presumably.

Rebecca: Protecting from the scene as much as possible.

Seth: Yes. Right. You could be in that area where you're hiding for a long time.

Rebecca: Okay.

Seth: Yeah. Because we need to make sure the scene is safe to be able to bring you out. I mean, you could be in there for a long time, hours maybe, potentially, hopefully not that long. But I'm saying this isn't five minutes. Someone's going to knock on the door and say, okay, kids or family or everybody, come on out. No, we can't take you out into that hot zone until we know that our threats have been eliminated or squashed. So we can now bring you out of that area.

Rebecca: So let's go back to homeschool, dad, Seth, and maybe even more so your wife, because you can walk around all day and not be in fear because you have all this training. Does your wife walk around in fear? Do you want her to walk around in fear?

Seth: No. My wife is I married up. There's no doubt about that. She has a very strong will and dominant personality. She's awesome. But I think to a point over 20 years of marriage and me in this profession, she has heard enough from me, the boys have heard enough from me about worst case scenario and how we're going to plan for those sort of things. And it's not about being in fear. It's about being empowered by the knowledge. You have to be able to react to an event because you've already kind of role played this out of your mind. And you have to you can't be naive to this. You have to understand that this potentially could exist. And from that information that you have, you can be engaging in the community, but at the same time, you also have a cautious streak to you too. You are observing through situational awareness, certain scenarios or events that are presented to you. And you trust your gut and you're like, yeah, not a problem. A good example. And I mean, it's the stereotypical one. You're going to go get money out of the ATM and in the middle of the night, for whatever reason, you're up in the middle of the night, but you're going to bad idea. You're going to go to the ATM and you're looking around and you're like, boy, this doesn't look like the ATM I want to go to. There's somebody sitting in the car, and they're staring at me as I'm driving in and somebody else loitering over here in and out of the shadow. I'm not getting money there. Or someone who's got their face buried in their phone and they're just walking aimlessly around looking at whatever they're looking at and they're not paying attention. The people that want to victimize us see those naive traits in you and will exploit them when they have an opportunity and when they can. So if we're stronger willed and we've already were cautious and we've kind of planned, great.

Rebecca: So as a mom, I would walk away from this conversation with sort of this plan or to do list in my head of acknowledge to my kids gently with no drama, that there are bad guys out there and there's a few things we're going to do to arm ourselves so that we're not easy to get. We're going to talk in two or three places. We go a lot about where all the exits are and where we would go if we needed to get out of here. We're going to start playing a game of who can spot all the exits in this building. And I don't mean like, okay, we're on a mission, but just like, as we go about our day doing our things, like, who can spot all the exits and have a conversation or two about how to hide and what to expect if something were difficult and how to obey right away. And we'll talk about what happened and why later. Does that seem like a good list, too? Did I leave anything out?

Seth: No, it's a great list, absolutely. And again, you and I, the listeners, we all within the four walls of our home, are going to parent the way we see fit based off of our principles, our ideals, how we want to raise our families, what we want to hope to accomplish as a family, to be a productive member of society. And then we do these things just to be able to provide that. I keep on going back to the word armor, but that knowledge that we need to have just to keep ourselves safer, that's really what this comes down to. And there's a way to do it. I have had those conversations with my boys. You've had them with your family. The listeners have had them with their kids as well. It's really weird as a parent, especially with my sons at eight and ten, they'll ask me a question and I have to formulate the appropriate response that's age appropriate. And I'm taking all these things into account where I may just have that with you, right? I may just tell you what I feel. But then all of a sudden that question comes in, dad, what is blank? And you're like, how am I going to say this? And then you say it, and they're like, what does that word mean? You're like, you're pausing for a moment. But again, we need to get this information out because there are people out there that want to victimize us, and they look for the weakest of folks who are not prepared to potentially victimize. And if you are engaged and thinking ahead of time and using situational awareness and maybe another conversation for us for another day as we describe situational awareness and what that looks like to keep yourself safe, if you have those set aside already, you can say, you know what, I'm not going to park here. I'm going to park over there. Or I'll maybe come back a little later. Or we were going to go to this grocery store, but that person who is out panhandling is a little more aggressive than I, which is the thing.

Rebecca: I forgot on my list, which is verbally speaking out loud sometimes how I'm paying attention to strange behaviors to help my kids learn how to identify strange behaviors as is appropriate for the particular child. And whatever the behavior is, sometimes you don't want to call attention. To it, but sometimes you can just talk about, I'm going to keep my eye on that guy. I'm not worried about him right now, exactly, but I don't understand what he's doing. But what's interesting is, again, I'm feeling really tense imagining these terrible situations that we're talking about. But my to do list with my kids is not stressful that's easy. Let's play a game looking for exits. And it's okay to say there's lots of situations why you might need to know where the exits are. Just like on the airplane, they tell you how to get out. We don't pretend a crash would never, ever happen. We prepare everybody on the plane immediately before we take off with it. I think we're going to stop here.

Seth: Because this has been a lot of I agree. There's a lot to unpack with a lot of this stuff. And again, this is trying to drink water through a fire hose right now. Right. We have to kind of take these little nuggets of knowledge and digest them slowly for ourselves. I'm trying to think of an example to say, but what's happening in my brain after 20 plus years of this job, I'm just throwing this out as something. If you were to be a computer engineer, something that I'm not proficient very with computers, right? And you were to say you were writing code for something, I would be overwhelmed as you spoke about that. It would be overwhelming to me. But for you, who's been doing it for 20 years, you're like, oh, you do this. As you can tell, I'm speaking about it now. I have no idea what I'm talking about. Right. So if we take these little nuggets and we just think about them, maybe next time you go to the grocery store next time you're at the big box store or the mall or whatever it is, and maybe you as a parent, you stop and you look around, you're like, oh, I remember what they talked about in the podcast. And you're like, oh, there's an exit over there's. An exit over there. Hey, kids, how many exits do you see right now? And you build yourself up to that point where you're not thrusting it all upon them at once, because you're learning yourself about that situational awareness as well. And you build this knowledge level up to a certain point, and every time you build it up, it becomes more and more of the norm. If something were to happen right now and you were to get lost for Mommy or Daddy, what would you do? And just find out from them where their mindset is? Yeah, I would run out the back door. No, maybe that made a great example. Right. Who would you talk to exactly? Yeah, there's a time and place to run out the back door, but who would you talk to if you were to get lost? We were in Texas a couple years ago on vacation, and we went to a grocery store, and our son was six at the time. He was exactly where I would be if I was six. He was looking at the toy section. We were quickly shopping, and it was just I mean, we're talking a minute, two minutes at the most, as we're grabbing things, and I'm looking down the aisle. I can see him down the aisle, and then he's not down the aisle. And I'm like and I'm trying not to, like, again, I'm not trying not to overreact, because I don't want others to overreact, but I'm like, hey, hon, we need to find our son, and we're in another state and shopping in a grocery store I've never been in. I just had my eye on him. We were in the same aisle. I could see him literally 80, 90ft away from me at the end of the aisle looking at the toys, and now he's not there. Now what? Right? And I knew where I was going to go and told my wife where she was going to go, and she was going to do. I'm immediately going to the exit, the front exit or the front entrance, because I want to make sure he doesn't pass that. And I'm telling her to go engage with an employee immediately to try to figure out, get it over the air, whatever the case, because I don't want someone walking out with my son. I want to be at the exit. Well, my son did not see us. He lost sight of us, and he did the most miraculous and amazing thing possible. He went and found someone who worked there that had a little name badge on, and there he is, just having a great old time talking to the employee. Anyway, I digress, but we had trained him in that aspect of, hey, if you lose sight of mom or dad and you can't see us, immediately go find an employee. So he was standing at the cash register. He knew where there would employ an employee, would be at the cash register, and there he was standing at the cash register.

Rebecca: And most kids do feel much more secure if they know there's a plan. If something goes wrong, they want to know if their only plan is, I'm next to mom, and suddenly that's not happening, then what? Now I don't. So if they know how to kind of problem solve that, then they're going to feel so much more secure, and.

Seth: Then you want to provide them with that praise in the back end, because they did exactly what you had instructed them and had trained them to do. They were obedient to your training, and they did that. And you want to love on that. You want to praise that on the back end. Repetitive behavior through positive reinforcement. This has been what a treat. I genuinely mean that. Thank you for allowing me this opportunity. Not only as a professional but as a homeschool dad to speak to other homeschool parents. I'm so thankful. Thank you.

Rebecca: Thank you for being here and sharing all of your expertise. I sense you have a real passion for this. You want others to be safe, to know the best way to go out and to be empowered by the knowledge of best practices. And so I really appreciate you sensitively handling this very difficult topic.

Seth: And you know what? It should be a difficult topic to talk about too, because this is so out of the ordinary for what's going through your in my brain. Yeah, exactly. Right. But we need to make sure that we are prepared as much as we can to address that. And what are we going to do in certain situations, right? If we plan for the very worst and the worst never happens, but at least we've planned for it and we.

Rebecca: Have all these and maybe something totally different happens to your child, but they've thought through emergency situations and so now they can problem solve. So there's a lot of benefits, I think, to just being willing to life isn't perfect. We don't live in heaven, we live on earth. And so there will always be difficulties and sheltering our kids from those forever will only handicap them. No, sheltering our kids forever will only hinder their ability to handle those things.

Seth: And I say this in Jess, but this is very true. There's a difference between being book smart and street smart. Right? We want to be able to be smart in both. We want to be able to have the knowledge that we get from institutional learning and growing in life. But then the street smart side of it is the common sense to recognize there's issues and or problems and how do I keep myself safe and address those when they are presented to see, I'm cheating a little bit. And I see on your notes you said CS. Lewis, one of my favorite C. S. Lewis quotes. And again, it may not be exactly word for word, but he can't give me a moment here. I'm totally messing it up. I apologize. You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start right now to change the ending. Right. So what a great take that insert that in any scenario you want when you hear that quote. Okay? So today you may be listening and you'd be like, boy, I'm really behind the 8th ball. I haven't even talked about this stuff with my kids. Oh my goodness. How am I going to have this conversation? Well, you know what? Today is a great first day to start it. Today is a great first day to start it.

Rebecca: Thank you.

Seth: Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Let's do it again. I've enjoyed my time. Thank you.

Rebecca: Thank you.

Seth: Yeah.

Rebecca: Dear listeners, thank you for hanging in there for this episode. It was heavy but important. I pray that none of our families ever find ourselves dealing with this type of awful event. I sincerely hope that today's information has left you with tools to train up your children and let's face it, ourselves. For the unthinkable. This has been the Sequoia Breeze podcast. I hope it's been a breath of fresh air for your homeschool. I'm your host, Rebecca LaSavio. I'd love to hear from you. If you have any questions or concerns about this episode podcasts@sequoiagrove.org. And you can always go to your school's website, find the podcast page and click on the little button and leave me a message.