For Mattapoisett resident Beth Oleson the importance of CPR training became all too real when, years ago, her seven-month-old daughter began to choke.

Oleson, who had been working in health education with Harvard Vanguard, recalled her training and was able to stop her daughter from choking. Afterward, Oleson said she and her husband Peter realized how lucky they were that they knew how to help their daughter.

“My daughter was fine and she was crawling around but my husband and I were shaking,” Oleson said. “He looked at me and said ‘one minute we have it all and the next minute it wouldn’t have mattered.’ I decided I needed to know it, inside and out.”

After this scare, Oleson said she began taking more CPR and first aid classes while expanding her business of health education.

Thirty years ago, she became an instructor traveling around the state teaching nurses, babysitters, parents and anyone else who wants to know how it’s done.

“There’s a need for it,” Oleson said. “I’m a big proponent that everyone should know CPR. It might be mandated by your job, but if someone you love drops, you need to know it.”

Oleson has continued her clinical research work with both Harvard Vanguard and Brigham and Women’s Dana Farber Cancer Center. Eight years ago she expanded her lessons.

In her “Home Alone” course Oleson works with children and their caregivers on safety in the house and how to deal with strangers.

Her first rule for kids: “Never tell anyone you are home alone because it’s nobody’s business that you are home alone.”

“Parents in ‘Home Alone’ want their kids to know not to open doors to anyone,” Oleson said. “There’s no right age to be home alone. It’s when you’re comfortable with it and your parents are comfortable with it. If you’re not comfortable doing something, just don’t do it.”

Oleson said she advises parents to have a “contact person’” someone who their children can go to so that they feel safe. This, she said, can be a neighbor who can walk the kids home from the bus stop when their parents are working or just someone the kids can turn to if they feel scared.

“I love working with the children,” Oleson said. “Everyone comes in with a different plan. I don’t like to scare them that things could happen, but we can’t control everything that happens.”

“I’ve been teaching over 30 years and that’s a long time and a lot of changes,” she said. “When we grew up we always said yes to an adult but these kids today can’t.”

Along with safety, Oleson says manners are something we could all use.

In “Manners Matter Most,” Oleson teaches kids ages 7 to 13 the importance of first impressions, being respectful in someone else’s home, and above all, to lay-off on the texting.

“In my house manners were very important growing up and I hoped to pass that on to my own children,” she said. “Cell phones and texting are just rude to do when you’re supposed to be in a conversation with someone.”

Oleson also offers first aid and American Heart Association Heart Saver certification for healthcare providers.

The courses, she said, seem to go over well with both the parents and the kids.

“I think they go home feeling empowered,” she said. “Nothing I say is inventive, it’s just reinforcing. I enjoy teaching. I enjoy interacting with the public and the parents. I love it when kids come up to me and say ‘you taught my brother, or my cousin and now I can do it’. It’s a rite of passage to know how to be safe.”