Ros Hardy - The Sue Series

Volunteer Teacher's Aide: Kindergarten, Year 1, Year 2. Paid Teacher's Aide Special Needs: High School Year 7 - Year 12. Special Needs Tutor: literacy and numeracy. Devoted mother of three boys.

Self taught; story-telling, discussions and play-acting; simple, fun and practical; instinctive and intuitive!

No, but that's okay!

School Certificate (Year 10); Higher School Certificate (Year 12); My Life Experiences!

Gidday, everyone, I'm Ros Hardy and I live on the beautiful Coffs Coast of NSW (Australia) with my youngest son and our dog Molly. One of my main concerns as a young mum was whether a difficult or dangerous situation could affect my young sons. Could they identify a serious situation and act, if alone? This constantly on my mind, I'd always imagine this awful scenario: I collapse to the floor and my three-year-old finds me and stays by my side, patting me, holding my hand, crying and waiting for me to wake up... alone, frightened, worrying, waiting, not knowing that I'm in need of immediate medical attention or that my life is at risk... and then, no longer has a mother! So, instead of worrying I chose to take responsibility; to be pro-active and prepare my sons to deal with an emergency, confidently and calmly. I knew that I needed to know that my boys knew exactly what to do and why they were doing it. I needed to prepare my soft-natured sons for the real world – teach them response and reaction skills and help them to build their resilience, but I couldn’t find the right teaching tools, so I invented my own teaching technique. I visualized an emergency – noting exactly what I would need to teach my boys so they could deal with the situation and get the help. I worked out a simple teaching technique with easy-to-follow steps to help them feel comfortable with the topic and so my boys understood when, why, and how, to act. I created simple exercises to teach them the necessary physical and verbal skills, and basic checklists to check off so I knew that they could remember and action all the steps, confidently, automatically, (and without the prompting). Years on I transformed my teaching process into teaching resources to share with other parents, carers and teachers. I kept going with my project and applied my fun and simple 3-step teaching technique to a second and third topic: 'stranger danger' and 'bullying'. The main key to my teaching success as a parent was the combination of regular storytelling; discussions; fun play-acting; and plenty of reinforcement, practice, revision, and checking key learning points – always focusing on effective time use (not wasting time on things less important), teaching my young sons everything they needed to know to be able to deal with a difficult or dangerous situation if alone. My boys learnt these vital steps, (each within a few short months)... a great relief to me because I was more at ease knowing that they were capable and that I trusted them – I'd made a positive difference to the lives of my sons by helping to keep them safe and happy, because I’d taught them these essential life skills at an early age. You too can make a difference in your home, school and community 'Helping Little Kids be BIG - Teaching Children to be Brave, Smart and Strong! Kind regards (and enjoy!) Ros Hardy, author of the Sue Series eBooks