Speaking as someone whose home WAS broken into (thankfully not home) and now live rural where it takes any response quite a while to get to us: I’ll give you the advice police gave us, and practical advice as a mom who stays at home with little people and used to have literal nightmares about waking up to someone assaulting me while my child napped next to me.

The name of the game is to lessen yourself as a target. Secure your doors and windows. Most burglars will test windows/kick in doors, and they definitely want to minimize noise. If you can, always leave a car at home when away on vacation. Secure doors and windows. On our doors, we opted for barred security doors, and where we had a porch, we barred across the front. I ended up loving this, because I could open up the doors while cleaning without dogs and children running out. You could also watch solicitors walk towards our house and immediately walk away, lol. It would definitely cause an intruder to look for an easier target. On the windows, we opted for solar screens. Not really security, per se, but made it harder to mess with windows, and obvious if they had been tampered with or cut. Loud noises will scare away most would be burglers, and there are some great, cheap, wifi kits nowadays that you attach sensors to all your windows/doors, if you remotely arm the system, it screams through the house if a door or window is opened. Same with professional alarm systems, but we also had glass break alarms, the sound of glass breaking will set off the alarm, and yes, we did accidentally set it off a few times by breaking a glass or dropping something loud, lol. When we lived in town, we had a speaker attached to the outside of our house, so if the alarm system was set off it not only notified police, but every neighbor for a half mile could hear it. Secure your closets and run family emergency drills on what to do in case of an intruder (or fire, or tornado!). We had heavy duty locks and shored up frames on bedroom closets. If an alarm were to sound in the middle of the night, each family member could quickly get in their closet, lock it, and it would take a battering Ram to get through. Even the most determined home invader set on doing physical harm would have a hard time getting through, and calls to police would have already been made. We kept one of our safes in our bedroom, so it would give us time to also arm ourselves. I know you don’t have that option, but you CAN have some self defense items squirreled away, so in the unlikely event you have to defend yourself, you’re able to collect yourself, gather your gear, and mount an attack to get to your kids. I’m well aware that their safety is priority #1!! Even if you don’t do any of the above, teach your family how to hide themselves in the event of a home invasion. Get in a toy box and burrow under, in a closet and toss a bunch of things on top of you, etc. Do NOT just crawl under the bed. Unless you have a lot of crap you can hide behind (which would be my kid, hah!). 😬

As far as self defense - get creative! It’s not illegal to have a baseball bat, or even better a golf driver. Practice your swing and learn to get some real power behind it. If you’re gonna opt for something more close range like knives, a baton, a blackjack, you NEED self defense courses. I’d like to say that adrenaline and fear will take over, but training will win every time. We like to think that when the need arises, we’ll fight like hell, but seriously, knowing how to hurt someone without hurting yourself is invaluable. I tend to be super passive, I don’t enjoy kickboxing, martial arts, but my husband has a black belt in BJJ and he was ADAMANT that I know how to properly throw punches, kicks, how to scrap against bigger opponents, basic grappling moves, and how to defend against them. 20 years later, and he still randomly puts me in some type of arm bar or chokehold and yells ‘DEFEND!!’ to make sure no one can surprise me, lol. There are a lot of great family gyms out there and you can make it a bonding thing. Plus, you’ll all improve your fitness. 🙂 You can opt for things like mace, bear spray, but in close quarters, it can get you as bad as it does your opponent. Things like that are good for keeping people and animals at a solid distance away from you. Definitely have their uses, when I used to jog our neighborhood at 4/5 am, I always carried mace in a holster as it was much lighter than my EDC sidearm.

While I’m on the topic: practice these same things when out and about in your every day life. Women, especially those with small children are SUPER vulnerable just running to the grocery store. I’m a bear about this with the women in my real life. Situational awareness ALWAYS. Stay off your phone, keep a protective hand on your purse, never leave your kids for a second. Predators look for distracted people. Make eye contact with strangers as you pass, that tells them ‘I see you, I’m taking note of you, and can identify you’. If someone was does accost you, you SCREAM BLOODY MURDER and try to draw as much attention as possible. Don’t get small, don’t get quiet. The last thing a predator wants is attention. I used to travel abroad a LOT, either solo or with my mom, and the number of times I’ve had men approach me, lay hands on me, try to distract me while a buddy moves behind me is nuts. The second I get a little loud and crazy is the second they back off with their hands up saying they don’t want trouble. Never be afraid to kick up a fuss and loudly state that you feel unsafe.