Discipline and Martial Arts
How Martial Arts Can Teach Your Child Discipline
Every parent understands that it’s important to enroll their child in extracurricular activities to ensure that they develop the skills that can’t be taught in a classroom. When choosing an extracurricular for their child, many parents will toy with the idea of enrolling their son or daughter in a martial art, but worry that it’s too risky or dangerous.
The truth of the matter is that a martial art, if taught by a reputable school and instructor, is as safe as any other physical activity. Furthermore, a martial art can teach your child concepts and values that will be invaluable in your child’s development and growth, namely self control and discipline.
If you’re on the fence about enrolling your child in a martial art, then consider these ways that such an activity can help your child to develop fantastic life skills and grow into a wonderful human being.
Teaching The Importance of Consistency
Kids are naturally inclined to seek out instant gratification, a behavior that’s quite antithetical to the principles of discipline and self control. This is why little kids will throw temper tantrums at the grocery store when they’re not allowed to buy a piece of candy. They want what they want and they want it right now.
When you’re child is enrolled in a sport, they learn about the importance of consistency. You can’t become skilled at karate or baseball overnight. Instead, you have to go to practice every day if you want to see your abilities and skills improve.
This lesson is invaluable in raising a child who values hard work more than they value instant gratification. The lessons learned in these athletic extracurricular activities will spill into their academic pursuits as well, ensuring that they understand why it’s important to study a subject a bit each day in order to master it.
Teach The Importance of Setting Goals
Humans aren’t naturally inclined to want to set and achieve goals. If anything, we naturally prefer to keep on doing whatever feels safe and familiar, not what feels aspirational. However, since most of us have dreams and visions of who we’d like to be, we understand that we must create goals and work hard to achieve them.
Martial arts is wonderfully suited to teaching the importance of goal-setting. Activities like karate and tae kwon do offer students different tiers to reach, often signified by differently colored belts. By encouraging kids to try to reach these different tiers and move up in their level of achievement, you artfully teach them how to set and work towards a goal.
Again, this will be an invaluable lesson when it comes to your child’s academic excellence. By learning the importance of goal-setting and how one actually puts in the work to achieve those goals, your child will come to understand that excellence and achievement doesn’t come for free. Instead, it takes the aforementioned consistency and a passion for actually working towards what they want to achieve.
Teaching The Value of Teamwork and Respect
We’re naturally born to be quite self-absorbed. If you’ve ever been around a baby, the last word you’d use to describe that baby would be “empathetic.” We don’t naturally care for the people around us, but rather want to seek out what makes us feel happy and fulfilled, even if it’s inconvenient or displeasurable for the people around us. While this might be fine behavior for a baby, it’s horrible behavior for a young adult.
Good parenting is what teaches little children to be empathetic. Kids need to be taught concepts such as respecting their elders or working together with their peers to achieve a common goal. When your child participates in a martial art, they have to learn how to work safely and respectfully with their fellow classmates, to ensure that nobody gets hurt. Furthermore, they’re forced to listen to and respect their instructor.
When your child is taught the importance of teamwork and respect, it can help to prevent them from finding themselves in some very nasty situations. When kids become troublemakers in school, it’s often because they were never taught how to be empathetic to and respectful of the people around them. The martial arts help to ensure that your child learns and internalizes these essential life skills and values.
Give Your Child The Skills They Need To Thrive
It’s time for parents to stop worrying that the martial arts are “dangerous” or “risky.” This is not only a completely safe activity for your child, but it will teach them a level of discipline and self control that other extracurricular activities might not. Don’t be afraid to enroll your son or daughter in that karate class. You’ll be amazed at how this type of class will aid in your child’s emotional and psychological development.
The post Discipline and Martial Arts appeared first on Better Kids Institute.