To Mom and Dad: Your Child and the Martial Arts

I took my first martial arts lesson at the age of 9 (in 1971), received my first degree black belt at 19, and this year I will celebrate my 30th year of teaching the martial arts. My goal is to give what I have learned as a result of my training, and what I know your child will learn, should you decide to make the martial arts a part of his or her life.

In some ways, martial arts schools are all the same. Each is contained in some kind of space, like a shopping mall, free-standing building, room in a gym, in an office building, a garage, or maybe in a backyard. What makes a martial school great is not the space it is in, what makes or breaks a martial arts school is the people that fill that space. Here lies the primary reason to enroll your child in martial arts lessons, from the moment they first meet the age requirements of a school, until they leave your nest: The people.

The teachers and senior students in a martial arts school become leaders, heroes, role models, and friends to your child. While martial arts teachers, like every kind of teacher, have their strengths and weaknesses, their influence and friendship is worth every penny you will ever spend on tuition, times 10.

I remember my teachers, the senior students in my classes; I remember my classmates and the students who joined after me. I remember when I was 12-years-old and a red belt student, a man in his mid 20s, told me, nonchalantly, that "practice was the key to being a great martial artist or a great anything." The advice has shaped my life. My father probably told me the same thing a 1000 times, but who listens to their parents?

A martial arts teacher is a real man or woman. They are not heroes fabricated by the entertainment industry. These are real people that will be there, in their classes, day after day, patient, persistent, and persuasive. Their message is about effort, perseverance, focus, goals, and self-control. Even teachers who cannot speak English can, somehow, impart values and powerful, life-changing ideas to their students.

The kind of education a good martial arts teacher provides is different from anything they will learn in grade school, from parents, or from football, soccer, or gymnastics coaches. The magic that forms in the long term relationship between a martial arts teacher and his or her students makes them a valuable, but all too often unacknowledged part of the village that can help raise your child to be confident, self-disciplined, resilient, and resourceful.

I owe my teachers a huge debt of gratitude for helping me develop respect for myself and others, for helping me build by body, develop my coping skills, and for the confidence their attention and direction gave me. It took me a long time to understand the value of their friendship, but now I completely get it. I would hope that every child would have the chance to interact with teachers like I had, men and women who coached and fixed and taught and laughed and yelled and, as I now understand, loved.

The second most valuable reason to have your child studying the martial arts, any style, any method, is the philosophy that goes with the training. Every teacher has something positive to teach your child. Some, of course, do it much better than others, but whether they know it or not, they are imparting wisdom of the most extraordinary kind, and at a time in a child's life that they really need it.

Mom, Dad, every lesson is important and it is worth every penny, every minute you spend convincing your son or daughter that going to class that day is better than watching TV, it is worth every bump, bruise, stubbed toe, and every tear. If you can swing it, get your child into a martial arts school and keep them there, even when they do not recognize the value of what they are doing. They will, someday.

Seed Newsvine

Bookmark this article in your preferred program

Comments

Add Comment

Popular Articles in this cathegory

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.