CULLMAN – The radKIDS Summer Safety Camp is underway at the Cullman Civic Center where roughly 40 children are learning about protecting their personal space, gun safety, dog attacks, how to escape a house fire and many other potentially lifesaving techniques from Cullman Police Officer Cindy Rohrscheib, who is being aided by several local teen volunteers.
The five-day safety camp, based on the national radKIDS curriculum, began on Monday and will conclude on Friday. Currently, the camp is only offered during one week in the summer, although it had previously been included in the elementary schools’ special programs. However, due to the officers’ patrol schedule, this is no longer an option.
Rohrscheib described the curriculum, “radKIDS stands for resisting aggression defensively. We try to cover several avenues and aspects of safety. We do gun safety by staying away from guns and learn about dog attacks to teach how to protect themselves and their vital organs if a dog attacks them and also how to communicate with a dog so as not to make it aggressive. We do fire drills and teach them how to crawl under the smoke and to cover their mouths with the back of their hand, so how to escape a house fire. We teach them self-defense and how to escape, as a little person, if a stranger picks them up. The biggest thing is all around personal safety.
“This is a balanced program for both boys and girls. This allows for young boys to learn that their space needs to be protected too because it doesn’t need to be just little girls. It needs to be all little children. Something that I’ve seen is, when the kids come through here, they’re shy and reserved. When they leave, they’re confident, and I think that when they’re more confident, it helps them not to be bullied so much and peer pressured so much because they’re confident in their self. I think it’s important to teach them to stand up for themselves in every aspect. We also talk about bullying.”
Recognizing that some of the topics she covers can be awkward to present to young children, Rohrscheib has a way of discussing inappropriate touching in a manner that is not offensive to the little ones or their parents.
“The way that I cover good touch/bad touch is anything that a bathing suit covers. That way it’s not uncomfortable to say or talk about. I teach them that they have an invisible bubble and nothing is to come into that invisible bubble without their permission especially where a bathing suit covers. That’s something they can all understand.”
Locally, radKIDS is usually taught during the last week of June each summer. For more information on radKIDS and their curriculum, visit www.radkids.org.
