Transcript for
Talking to children and young people about the consequences of violence

Narrator (00:02): 

Welcome to the Emerging Minds Families podcast. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (00:05): 

Hi, I’m Alicia Randford and you are listening to an Emerging Minds Families podcast. Before we start today’s episode, we would like to pay respect to the traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast is recorded, the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains. We also pay respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, their ancestors, and Elders past, present, and emerging from the different First Nations across Australia. 

(00:33): 

In today’s episode, we are going to be talking about teaching children that using violence can have irreversible consequences. And within this conversation, you will hear a true story of how life-altering those consequences can be. If you feel this topic may bring up difficult feelings for you, perhaps give this week a miss and join us next fortnight, or you can find resources for support in our show notes. 

(00:56): 

Teaching children to speak up for themselves is a really important part of developing their confidence and problem-solving skills, as well as helping them to learn how to set personal boundaries. Today, I am delighted to be speaking with Neil Davis from the Sammy D Foundation who has an important message about how to help children really learn to advocate for themselves. Welcome, Neil, and thank you for making the time to come in and join us today. 

Neil Davis (Guest) (01:21): 

Thanks for having me in. It’s a pleasure to be here. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (01:24): 

At Emerging Minds, we acknowledge that families come in many different forms, so I was wondering if we could start today by you telling us a little bit about who makes up your family. 

Neil Davis (Guest) (01:34): 

Yeah, well, our family might be a little bit different to most families. I have a daughter, she’s 39, but our youngest is 12, so there’s a big age gap there. We had a son that passed away. He would’ve been 35 this year. And we’re also lucky enough to have a foster child that came to live with us in 2012, and he’s 23 now, so he was 11 when he came to live with us. So a bit of a varied age gap in our families, but it keeps us on our toes and it’s always good to have young people in the house. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (02:04): 

And I bet you have some great family dynamics with that mix as well. 

Neil Davis (Guest) (02:07): 

Oh yes, great family dynamics, good times and bad times. It’s a struggle sometimes, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (02:13): 

That’s fantastic to hear, Neil. Thank you. Neil, for those listeners who are not familiar with the Sammy D Foundation here in South Australia, could you tell us a little bit about what you do and how it came about? 

Neil Davis (Guest) (02:24): 

We started the Sammy D Foundation 16 and a half years ago. I like to think it started a long time before that when I first met my wife 39, 40 years ago. Don’t tell her I said that, tell her I knew the exact date. But in 1990, we were lucky enough to have a son together and his name was Sam. I always thought any son of mine would be an AFL footballer, but things don’t always work out the way we plan. Sam ended up being a state soccer player, an A-grade cricketer, and when he was 15, he did change to SANFL football, and the year that he passed away, he got asked to go into the draught for the AFL. So he was living his best life. He was 17 and a half, he was 195 centimetres, and 95 kilogrammes. 

(03:01): 

He went out to a party one night and some gatecrashers came to the party and were picking on his friends. He jumped in the middle and tried to stop the fight, and he got coward punched from behind and never came home. That night in the hospital, we said, “We have to do something to make a difference. We don’t want this to happen to any other family.” It took us a long time before we could talk about what happened to Sam, but the seeds were sown that night. A month later, we’d registered the charity, the Sammy D Foundation, not sure what we were going to do, but we knew we just had to do something. So from two grieving parents sitting under a pergola saying, “What are we going to do to make a difference?” 

(03:38): 

Now the Sammy D Foundation has about 13 full-time staff, anywhere between 30 and 50 casuals. We speak to young people. We’re going to schools, community clubs. We speak to young people about the consequences of violence, how one punch can change someone’s life. And not just the people that get hit, the person that hit Sam, it’s changed his life forever. We know he didn’t mean to kill Sam. And most people that hit someone aren’t doing it thinking they’re going to kill someone, but that’s what can happen. Since the year 2000, it’s happened to over 250 families across the nation, 250 families, grieving parents. After Sam died, we slept in his bedroom for a month because we just wanted to be close to him. 

(04:15): 

We’re really proud of where the Sammy D Foundation has got to now. As I said, we spoke to over 42,000 people last year about the impacts of violence. Not just the impacts of violence. We do varied programs now. We talk about alcohol and other drugs. We do What’s the Story? for young men, say, 14, 15-year-old, more like a respectful relationship, what it’s like for a man to be growing up in today’s world and how they can be better people. We do Adulting 101 for young people moving out of home for the first time. We do an eight-week anti-bullying course aimed at primary school kids. But the thing we’re most proud of is last year we mentored over 110 young people, young people that probably haven’t got the best start in life, young people that just need someone that they can talk to, somewhere where they can feel safe. 

(05:00): 

And for a few hours a week, we give them that somewhere that they can feel safe and someone that they can talk to when something’s going wrong in their lives. Young people that, hopefully, we change their lives. To our mentors that mentor for us, I say, “If you’re doing it for thanks, you’re probably not going to get any thanks, but 10 years later, you might meet those young people down the street and they’ll say, ‘You changed my life.'” I do what I do because it makes me feel good inside. So really, you could say, I do it because I’m selfish. 

(05:25): 

But just seeing those change in those young people that we talk to, the change in attitudes when we’re going to schools and talk to schools, the change in attitudes of parents when we go to sporting clubs and talk about their behaviour while they’re watching their children play, their behaviour on the way home in their car and they’re telling their kids what they’ve done wrong, when really, kids just want to know what they’ve done right. They’ve got coaches that will tell them what they do wrong. And we started off, we called it Monkey See Monkey Do because the way you behave when you watch your kids do something, is the way you’d expect them to behave? 

Alica Ranford (Host) (05:55): 

What an absolutely incredible message and also story, and thank you for sharing that with us. I’ve got a 19-year-old son myself, and I’m really sorry that this is the experience that your family’s had. What an incredible journey you’ve been on since then. So thank you for sharing that with us. 

Neil Davis (Guest) (06:14): 

Thank you. That’s my job. I share Sam’s story just about every day. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (06:17): 

And from your experience about the children and parents that you engage with, what are the messages that children are getting from an early age that can be detrimental? 

Neil Davis (Guest) (06:27): 

It’s funny, when we’re going to primary schools and we speak to kids, it’s not funny, it’s sad actually, but at one stage we’re talking about violence and we ended up having workshops with them, and I say, “Put your hand up if your parents have said to you, ‘If someone hits you, you can hit them back.'” And to see the look on the teachers’ faces when about anywhere between 80% and 90% of the kids will say, “Yeah, my parents or my uncle or my auntie, someone in my life has said it’s okay to hit someone back.” 

Alica Ranford (Host) (06:53): 

That’s an incredible statistic, isn’t it? 

Neil Davis (Guest) (06:56): 

It is. And it’s what we have to fight against as well because when I speak to the kids, I say, “I’m never going to change your parents’ minds because that’s what they got told all of their lives, if someone hits you, you hit them back.” But I want to change their minds, the young people’s minds, so when they grow up and have kids, they’re not saying, “It’s okay to hit someone,” because we know the worst thing that could happen if you do hit someone. 

(07:16): 

And how would you feel as a parent if you told your kids, it’s okay to hit someone and your child hits someone and the same thing happened that happened to Sam? Most people that die from one punch isn’t from the punch, it’s from when their head hits the ground. Sam wasn’t like that. Sam died from the one punch, but the doctor’s words were, “The punch wasn’t that hard, a child could have thrown it. It just hit him in the wrong spot.” How would you feel as a parent if you said it’s okay for your child to hit someone and the worst thing happened? 

Alica Ranford (Host) (07:40): 

It’s life changing. As you said in the introduction, it’s life-changing for both parties, isn’t it? 

Neil Davis (Guest) (07:45): 

Yes. I get rang up or emailed or messaged at least once a month from parents that have lost a child saying, “How do you get through this?” And there’s no right or wrong way to get through it. You could curl up in a ball and be on the lounge. You could stand on the steps of Parliament saying, “What’s going on? Why aren’t you doing more about this?” Or as Nat and I did, my wife and I, we said, “We are going to go out and make a difference.” There’s no right or wrong way for any person to deal with grief and grief comes in many different forms, but we know that what you do has to be right for you. It’s having that friendship group around you. But the boy that hit Sam, it’s changed his life forever. 

(08:20): 

And if you say to your kids, “It’s okay to hit someone,” and the worst thing happened, or you had to go to court. We have anywhere between 50, 60 people work for the foundation, everyone that works for the foundation, they come for a job, yeah, sure, they give us their CV, they give us a resume. We also look at their social media, but we also Google their names. And what do you think would come up if the boy that killed Sam, if you Googled his name? He’d still be finding it hard to get a job today. It’s changed his life forever. Not only has it changed his life, when he has a family and he’s not going to be able to get a good job and help provide for his family, it’s going to change his kids’ lives as well. Just this long- 

Alica Ranford (Host) (08:54): 

It’s really those lasting consequences, isn’t it? 

Neil Davis (Guest) (08:56): 

Yes. And people don’t think about that when they just say to their kids, “Oh, it’s okay to hit someone.” It’s really hard to walk away. We know that. And we are trying to tell young people that they should be the ones grabbing their peers, grabbing their mates, and say, “Come on, let’s walk away.” When you hear stories from people when they’re out and they say, “Oh, we saw this group of lads going to get into a fight, and someone grabbed one of their friends and said, ‘Come on, let’s go. Don’t you remember what happened to that Sammy D kid?'” You’ve done your job. As a parent, I know it’s really hard if your child’s getting picked on and your child’s getting bullied. I know how hard it is, but you have to go through the right channels. You have to speak to the schools. It’s no use saying, “You hit them back.” 

(09:32): 

If you keep on saying that, sooner or later something’s going to happen. And if something does happen, it’s something that you will have to live with for the rest of your life, something that you are going to carry the scars for. And I know as a family, the person that hits someone, the whole family’s tarnished by that one punch. You might not have brought your children up to do something like that, or if you have and you have to carry that guilt with you for the rest of your life, you’ll lose friendships. And we know not all parents are doing something wrong, but I could never live with that guilt. I have to tell my child, my 12-year-old, “You have to walk away.” I remember when he was about five or six and he used to come to us crying and I’ll go, “What’s going on?” 

(10:08): 

He goes, “I miss Sam.” I go, “But you never met Sam.” And he goes, “I know, but he’s still my brother. Why would someone hit someone?” It’s not in most children that they’ll hit someone. It’s the environment that they’re brought up in. And if young people are being told it’s okay to do this, the more you say it’s okay to do it, the more it’s going to happen. And that’s when we speak to young people. Young people say, “This is the third or fourth time I’ve heard you speak now.” When we go into a school and we speak to young people, and it doesn’t matter if it’s the worst school or the best school, I’ve never seen the kids be so quiet for so long. There’s tears, there’s hugs, there’s crying, but you know you’re getting through it. That’s what makes you get out of bed in the morning and do what you do. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (10:46): 

So for parents of young children, what’s your advice for helping them to teach children from a really young age that it’s not okay to use any form of violence? What can parents do practically in the home? 

Neil Davis (Guest) (10:59): 

You have to set that good example yourself, and it’s just keep on reinforcing that it’s never okay. If you put it like an athlete, they do that muscle training, so they just do that training again and again and again, so when they hear that starting pistol, they’re off like a shot because that’s what they’ve been taught and that’s what they work on day in, day out. As parents to young people, we just have to keep on reinforcing that message. Sure, it might get boring after a while, but if you keep on hearing that same message. Most people that commit domestic violence grew up in a domestic violence household. 

(11:29): 

Most people that bully someone have been bullied before in their lives, which I find amazing because if you know how bad it makes you feel, why would you want to do it to someone else? And sometimes it’s that power that they want to feel, but we never know what’s going on in a young person’s life. And this is what we talk to young people when we talk to them about bullying, we never know what’s going on in that young person’s life. We don’t know what happens at home. And they might be experiencing that at home. As the Sammy D Foundation, we want to open up our arms and wrap our arms around young people and teach them a better way to do something. 

(12:01): 

If everyone could do that for their children, we wouldn’t have to worry when people like the media will ring me up and go, “Oh, do you want mandatory sentencing for young people or for people that hit people? Do you want this? Do you want that?” No, I just want to educate more young people. If we can educate more young people and we can teach them the right way to do it, and as I said, it’s again and again and again, it’s not just that one-off talk, then it’s a better life for everyone. I don’t want parents, when their kids get older, to be worried about if they’re going to come home tonight. 

(12:28): 

People say to me, what about when our youngest, Sid, “What about when he grows up? Will you let him go out?” Of course we’re going to let him go out. We’ll be worried. But if we can teach our young child from an early age, “You have to walk away.” It’s really hard, but if we can teach young people that you have to walk away and instead of young people saying, “I can’t believe you walked away, you are weak,” you should be glad that they walked away because you’ve got your friend for another day. If you encourage your friends to fight, if you encourage anyone to hit someone, and the worst thing happens, and we know the worst thing that can happen, and I’ve spoken to lots and lots of families where the worst thing has happened, as I said, that guilt that you would have to live with for the rest of your life. You don’t know if you’ve saved someone’s life, but you know for sure that your child hasn’t been that person that’s taken someone’s life. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (13:15): 

And I love the thought that in primary school we’re saying, “Walk away. Go and tell a teacher. If you’re in the schoolyard, come home and tell us, but just walk away,” that simple message right from an early age, then when they get to the age that Sammy was and he’s at a party and if his muscle memory is to just walk away, then, as you said, it can save lives. 

Neil Davis (Guest) (13:37): 

Yeah. Well, I think it’s that muscle memory also for the boy that hit him. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (13:41): 

Yes, true. Very true. 

Neil Davis (Guest) (13:42): 

And his mates who are with him, maybe should have been grabbing their mate and saying, “Come on, let’s walk away.” This would be so much easier if peers can look after their peers. And we’re not saying, “I can’t believe you walked away. You are weak.” We’re saying, “I’m really glad you walked away.” 

Alica Ranford (Host) (13:56): 

That is the strong thing to do.

Neil Davis (Guest) (13:58): 

Yeah. And as parents should be saying, “I’m really glad you walked away. I’m really glad that you’ve come home and told me.” As your children get older and they’re really drunk or something and they ring you up and ask you to pick them up, don’t have a go at them because they’ve done that. Be a parent that says, “I’ll be there anytime. You just have to ring me and I’ll come and pick you up,” because life is precious and I don’t want to go to another young person’s funeral. I’ve been to enough young people’s funerals. And as a parent, you should be saying, “I want to mould my child to be the best version of that person that they can be.” 

(14:29): 

If you do everything in your power to help mould that child, think about your grandkids because they’ll be bringing their kids up the same way you brought them up. And if you want your grandkids to have their best lives, and I know not all people have kids, but people have cousins, brothers, sisters, and there’s grandparents. And it’s not just for us to do. It’s a whole-of-community approach. As I say, it takes a village to raise a child. If we can get everyone on the same page, a really huge task, but if we can get everyone on the same page, our corner of the world is going to be a lot better place to live in. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (15:00): 

Yeah, we’re going to change that generational message aren’t we- 

Neil Davis (Guest) (15:03): 

Yeah. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (15:03): 

… from, “You need to be tough,” or, “To be a real man, you stand up, you fight.” We are wanting to change that message so that children grow up and know that walking away is what shows strength and courage. 

Neil Davis (Guest) (15:14): 

Yes. And it’s not just boys, it’s girls that we aim at as well because as the years change, it’s not just boys that are doing this, it’s girls that are doing this as well. So it’s a whole-of-school approach. It’s not just our respectful relationship thing is just aimed at boys, but it’s a whole-of-school approach. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (15:31): 

And interesting. Do you get a different response from girls and boys or is it very similar when you go into schools and teach this? 

Neil Davis (Guest) (15:38): 

It’s very similar. The amount of times I go into a school when a young person comes up and goes, “I used to be like that,” or, “I am like that and I’m going to try not to be now,” or, “This is the second or third time I’ve heard you talk and since you’ve spoken to me, I’ve changed how I deal with my anger now. I’ll go up and speak to a teacher and tell them I’m not in the best place and they allow me to walk away and cool down.” I go, “This is why we get out of bed. This is why we get up and put one foot in front of another.” And some schools get us in at night and they do a session for the parents. And the amount of parents who will say, “You’ve made me change my way of thinking.” I’ll keep on saying, it just makes you feel good. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (16:19): 

What is your main message for parents to teach those foundations of walking away and that using violence doesn’t pay? 

Neil Davis (Guest) (16:29): 

The main message is we know it’s going to be hard for the parents because that’s what their parents told them. But if we tell them Sam’s story and what happened to our son, we tell them what happens to the families of the perpetrators, but most of all, what happens to the perpetrator as well. So if we can get that through to the parents saying, “Would you like your child to be in jail? Would you like to be the cause of your child to be in jail?” And it’s not just killing someone, it’s what about the person that is brain injured permanently for the rest of their lives? They said from the time that Sam got hit until the end of the court case costs $1 million of government money 

Alica Ranford (Host) (17:02): 

That’s staggering, isn’t it? 

Neil Davis (Guest) (17:03): 

Through 18 months of police, medical, coroner, and then the judiciary process, $1 million. But if he had been brain injured, and seriously brain injured, and I remember that night in hospital when he was on life support, I said, “Can we leave him like this, and I’ll come and sit with him every day?” They said, “Well, unfortunately, we can’t. We’re pumping him full of drugs so he could be an organ donor and he’s not going to last.” But if he had been brain injured, and seriously brain injured, it would cost anywhere between 25 and $30 million to keep him alive for the rest of his life. And there’s people like that. And it’s the cost on the community. 

(17:35): 

And then as parents, we have to pay more taxes because who pays for the hospitals, the doctors? Even if they’re not seriously injured and they have to go to the hospital or the doctors, we have to pay for that. The more money the government needs, the more taxes you pay. Don’t do it because it’s the right thing to do, do it because you’re selfish, do it because you don’t want to pay more taxes. Do it because you want to see less people have to go into hospital. So when people do have to go into hospital, they’re not ramped. They’re not waiting for a bed. If you can do it in your little bit, just your family, you’re making where we live a lot better place for everyone. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (18:08): 

It’s a whole-of-community, even though you talk about doing it in your little space in your home, but actually, the consequences are so far-reaching, aren’t they? 

Neil Davis (Guest) (18:19): 

As I said before, it does affect the whole community and it’s not going to happen overnight. It’s a generational change, and we know that. We know it’s going to be a slow process, and we know it’s going to be a generational change. When we first started the Sammy D Foundation, we worked with young people in care, and we were going to those group homes and working with them. We’d set up homework clubs for those young people in care. And it was Sam’s friends, but we were showing those young people in care that there’s someone that cares about them. Anyone that’s got a foster child, we know it’s hard work. We know that some of these people have seen so much trauma in their lives. 

(18:54): 

When our foster child came to live with us, it was a really hard time in our lives. Sid was just born, he was three months old, and our foster child came to live with us at the same time. And he’d been through a bit of trauma as well. Well, a lot of trauma. But I look back now and I go, “He’s working. He’s not in jail. He’s a functioning member of the community.” So we’ve changed his life just from one family putting up their hand and saying, “What can we do to make a difference?” We know that’s not for everyone, and it is a really hard lot. If we hadn’t had the Sammy D Foundation, if we hadn’t been working with these young people in care, maybe we wouldn’t have made it as foster parents. 

(19:30): 

But because we work with these young people, we see what they go through, and we know that we can make a difference in a young person. If you can make a difference in a young person’s life, it’s something that you’re going to have with you in your heart for the rest of your lives. I can see why people foster children again and again and again because you are changing that young person’s life. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (19:48): 

And until you see that impact, it’s very hard to imagine, isn’t it? 

Neil Davis (Guest) (19:52): 

Yeah, that’s right. And people sometimes complain about schools and teachers, but I can tell you, the teachers and schools that our foster child went to, they worked with us, and they worked so hard. And instead of, as parents, when the school rings up and says, “Little Johnny or Little Mary’s done this,” and then the parents saying, “Well, what have you done wrong as teachers?” We were the people that said, “Well, what can we do together to make a difference?” If I can work on it from home and we can help you work on it from school as well, we know we can change him. It’s really hard being a teacher. I go into lots of schools and being a teacher is something that I wouldn’t want to do. And as parents, it’s not just childcare. They’re not there to raise your children, they’re there to teach your children. But if you’re not teaching them from home as well, that makes it a whole lot harder. 

(20:36): 

So we always hear, “You should be reading to your child from a young age because that helps when they go to school.” You should be teaching them everything from a young age. Teaching them that violence isn’t the answer. Teaching them to walk away. Don’t let your child be the one. And parents do speak and there’s WhatsApp groups for all classes and that now, you don’t want your child to be the one that the parents talk about and say to other kids, “Don’t hang around with that person.” And when we go into schools, we’re telling young people we should try and drag those people into our friendship groups, saying, as I said before, we don’t know what’s going on in a young person’s life, and if you can say to those people, “What can we do to help you?” As peers, and we do this as a group, people are more likely to change the way they do it. If a whole group says, “Look, we don’t like what you’re doing, but how can we help you change?” that person’s more likely to change than one person trying to stand up to them. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (21:24): 

And it’s that vital connection point, isn’t it, where someone who feels maybe disconnected and so in their behaviour, they’re doing things that are not desirable to the other kids. 

Neil Davis (Guest) (21:35): 

Yeah. And some young people have been pushed away all their lives. And there’s a lot of young people that we mentor and our mentors to start off with. And when they’re feeling themselves getting close, they push that person away because they’ve been pushed away all their lives and then they think they’ll have that control, it’s, “You didn’t push me away, I pushed you away.” So if we can get onto those young people and go, “I don’t care. You’re still going to be part of our group.” 

Alica Ranford (Host) (21:59): 

That’s really powerful, isn’t it? 

Neil Davis (Guest) (22:01): 

Isn’t it? Because our foster child, I just remember one time, one of his mates said, “Oh yeah, but that’s just him. But he’s not lucky like me.” He said, “I’ve got great parents and you guys do a lot for him, but he didn’t have that from a younger age.” And as his friendship group said, “We know that, so sometimes we just have to put up with his little tantrums.” And I went, “How insightful for a young person to say that.” 

Alica Ranford (Host) (22:22): 

That’s wonderful. 

Neil Davis (Guest) (22:24): 

Wouldn’t it be great if it was your child that was saying that? You’d be just so proud of him. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (22:28): 

What do you say to parents who respond with, “We need to be able to teach our kids to defend themselves”? 

Neil Davis (Guest) (22:35): 

Sometimes they do have to defend themselves if someone just keeps on hitting them and hitting them. But we try and teach warning signs when we know that person’s getting that angry to walk away before that happens. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (22:46): 

So what would be those warning signs that you would have people look out for? 

Neil Davis (Guest) (22:50): 

Most of the time in a school we know when something’s going to happen. We know when that person’s angry with us. It might be, “We were talking behind their back.” It might be many different reasons. And what do we look for in warning signs? What changes do we see in a person? They go red in the face, they clench their fists, they puff themselves up. And we’re teaching young people not to copy those actions back at them. They raise their voice, they yell. 

(23:09): 

It’s the hands up, so if they do go to hit, you’re there ready to block that, but it’s walking away, walking backwards as you do it. And then we’re trying to teach the peers, If it’s your friend that’s the one that’s getting angry, you should be there pulling your friend away. If it’s happening to your friend, you should be the one getting help because you’ve seen it’s going to happen. But there’s a lot of time in schools when we can see that this is going to happen. And if we can teach young people to walk away before it escalates to that time, then it’s not going to happen. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (23:36): 

I love that looking for the body language and teaching them the body language of when someone is getting upset, the red face, the stance, the clenched fists. What a beautiful way to teach children those are the signs when you should walk away. 

Neil Davis (Guest) (23:52): 

Yeah. And get away early. And don’t antagonise. Don’t raise your voice back. Don’t you show in your body language that you’re angry as well. I’ll say it again and again, it is really, really hard to walk away, but if we can get your peers to say, “I’m glad you walked away. How good was it that you walked away?” then more people will start to walk away. And if we can get peers to go, “I can’t believe that you get angry all the time and you’re hitting someone,” then they’re less likely to start getting angry all the time and start hitting people as well. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (24:20): 

We talk a lot here at Emerging Minds Families about emotions that are behind behaviours. And it’s really interesting to me in this conversation with you, Neil, that we’re saying initially look at the behaviour and choose your actions based on the behaviour that you’re seeing, but then later on, you can think about what might be behind that person’s aggressive stance. And you mentioned perhaps someone was talking behind their back or they’re having problems at home. So yeah, I really like the way that you describe the behaviours, but also what’s behind those behaviours and what do we want our kids to be thinking about with their friends that might be going on. 

Neil Davis (Guest) (24:58): 

In our workshops, we get the young people to come up with those answers. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (25:02): 

I bet you’ve had some interesting ones. 

Neil Davis (Guest) (25:03): 

Yeah, we have had some interesting ones, but all young people are different, and there’s no bad young kids. It’s just some that need to be steered into that right direction. When I was younger, I used to be that person, “Oh, they had a bad childhood.” I had a bad childhood, dragged up and down to Port Adelaide and my stepfather worked on the wharves and he’s down at the pub every night and aggressive when he got home. 

(25:24): 

Some of these people that we work with, and I see the background of some of those kids, I can fully understand how they’re angry people because compared to them, I had a great childhood. But we have to keep on working with those young people and helping them to change their ways because when they have their kids… Someone said it to me when my foster child was 14 years old, he said, “Imagine what you’ve done for his kids.” I said, “He’s 14, he hasn’t got any kids.” He goes, “No, but when he grows up and has kids, he won’t treat his kids the way he was when he was younger because you’ve shown him a different way.” 

Alica Ranford (Host) (25:54): 

That’s pretty powerful, isn’t it? 

Neil Davis (Guest) (25:55): 

Yeah, but everyone has to be that parent that shows their kids the right way to do things. If we, as parents, could go, “I want my child to be a footballer, a cricketer, a netballer,” whatever, and we spend that time and go out and have a kick with them or we go out and throw the netball, do whatever with them, why can’t we spend that time teaching them the right and wrong way to do things as well? And we don’t go out and have a kick with them once and show them how to kick a football once and expect them to know how to do it, we do it again and again and again. And that’s what we have to do as parents. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (26:23): 

Builds that muscle memory- 

Neil Davis (Guest) (26:24): 

Yeah, that’s it. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (26:24): 

… like you talked about before. Yeah, it’s a very powerful message. And I was thinking back to when my own kids were little. I don’t know that I necessarily thought about talking to them about violence from a young age. We don’t have a home where we display violence. Sure, my husband and I might get annoyed or angry about something that’s happened, but our children won’t have seen that violence. So I think it’s also particularly important for those kids who aren’t raised in a household where they experienced violence to talk to them about it and have those conversations. I’m wondering whether you thought, before what happened to Sam occurred, you had had those conversations with him before? 

Neil Davis (Guest) (27:05): 

We were lucky with our son, and we had had those conversations. Our son was really, really well liked. As I said, 6 foot 5, 95 kilogrammes, but he would have two or three parties to go to every Friday and Saturday night. 1,700 people came to his funeral. And that was before Facebook. So he was just a well-liked young man. And we’ve taught him from a young age, it’s nice to be nice. He wouldn’t have that many friends or people that would come to his funeral if he was that type of person. 

(27:35): 

So we do teach our young people. We don’t remember doing it, but it might be at childcare when someone hits someone and you go, “No, that’s the wrong thing to do.” Or when they are that young and as toddlers hit someone, you would’ve said, “No, that’s the wrong thing to do.” So you are teaching your kids from a young age. And believe it or not, your kids look up to you. I know sometimes it’s hard to believe, but you are the example that they live by. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (27:59): 

It’s very true. Neil, if someone wants to get in touch with the Sammy D Foundation or become involved or even donate, what can they do? 

Neil Davis (Guest) (28:07): 

Go to our website, Sammy D. If you look at Google, Sammy D Foundation, obviously, we’ll be the first thing that comes up. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (28:13): 

Neil, what would be the one thing you would want people to take away from our conversation today? 

Neil Davis (Guest) (28:18): 

There’s probably two things that they should take away. First thing would be, it’s nice to be nice. And the second thing would be, you’ve got to teach your kids from an early age to do the right thing. It’s all about harm prevention. If we can stop this happening to one other family, we’ve done our job. But as parents, and as a whole community, if we are teaching our kids from a young age to do the right thing, we are stopping it happening to our kids. We’re stopping it happening to our kids’ friends. Violence is never the answer. 

(28:48): 

It is okay to walk away. You’re not weak if you walk away. If your child comes home and says, “Someone hit me today,” and you go, “What did you do?” And they say, “I walked away.” Give your kid a hug. I don’t want people to be worried if their kids are going to come home safe at night. I want you as parents to be able to say, “We’ve taught our kids the right way to do things. When they have kids, our grandkids will be taught the right way to do things because we’ve taught our kids the right way.” Just be nice. Teach your kids to be nice. Teach your kids to walk away. If they walk away, you have your kids for another day. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (29:29): 

What a great legacy. 

Neil Davis (Guest) (29:30): 

That’s it. 

Alica Ranford (Host) (29:31): 

Thank you so much for joining us today, Neil. It’s been such a pleasure having you in our podcast studio. 

Neil Davis (Guest) (29:35): 

Thank you very much for having me in here. 

Narrator (29:39): 

Visit our website at www.emergingminds.com.au/families for a wide range of free information and resources to help support child and family mental health. Emerging Minds leads the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health. The National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care, under the National Support for Child and Youth Mental Health Program.