Escaping a Lapel Grab: Self-Defense for Kids

Video Transcript

"For kids' safety today, I'd like to discuss a lapel grab or somebody grabbing you by your clothing. An important thing to remember is, it is only clothing. You are more important than any shirt, jacket, what have you, whatever. So you need to remember that you may have a torn shirt or you may actually have to lose your shirt. If you are being grabbed by the clothing -- and that's all that they have, they don't have any other part of you -- your only escape might be just to take the shirt off and go. But, before you do that, you might want to try an escape where you're going to duck underneath the arm and you're going to use your hands and pull it off. Pull it off, yank it off, however you want to do it, but you need to get them off of you. Your goal is to escape. Your goal is to get away from this person as fast as you can. So, once they grab you, you need to escape quickly. They're grabbing you because they might be trying to kick you. They might be trying to hit you. Maybe they're going to try to drag you somewhere, or maybe they're just yelling at you. So, you want to get out of here as quickly as you can. So, what you need to do, is you're going to duck underneath, take those hands and yank that off and escape that direction. So, keeping yourself safe from a lapel grab requires you just to react quickly, ducking and twisting and escaping as quickly as you can."