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kids and martial arts?
shmokes:
--- Quote from: Grasshopper on October 30, 2009, 06:59:41 pm ---
Well that's fine if the kid already has an interest in those sports. But if you're asking the kid to do things he's not really interested in, or doesn't even like, just to fit in and minimise the possibility of being bullied then that's sending out a really bad message.
--- End quote ---
Not really. They're important skills, and when your kid gets into high school and looks like a retard in gym class and is constantly embarrassed he will very much regret that you were so kind and understanding and left everything up to him as a kid. When he gets into college and his friends are playing rec softball or soccer and need another player but he is too embarrassed to get on the team he will wish he had a little bit of encouragement when he was just a dumb kid. Your kid very likely would just as soon not learn math or grammar either, but you're not going to let him just play videogames instead simply because he enjoys one and not the other.
In the beginning my daughter hated her swimming classes. Should I have found something that she liked better rather than insisting that she continue with it (she absolutely loves them now, btw)?
ChadTower:
There is a lot of ground between being the star running back and being "a retard in gym class", shmokes.
Am I the only one who finds his phrasing more revealing than anything else?
SavannahLion:
Shmokes, while I agree with you on a lot of points. Martial arts isn't truly interesting until they get to be adults, the thing I'm after is that I want my kid to come home at the end of the day. The oldest only has to travel four blocks to get to school but those four blocks are far more harrowing than the ten miles it took for me to travel from my old home to my old school.
Jaycee Dugard's kidnapping wasn't that far from my old home and it's precisely the sort of thing I want to avoid. Especially since the kid just doesn't get it. To her, Dugard is just a character on TV, like Hanna Montana. :banghead:
After a lot of thought, maybe martial arts isn't the answer. Perhaps urban survival training of some sort?
edit: fixed bad code
shmokes:
--- Quote from: ChadTower on October 31, 2009, 10:02:27 am ---
There is a lot of ground between being the star running back and being "a retard in gym class", shmokes.
--- End quote ---
Maybe, but there's a helluva lot more ground between air punch/kick dances and putting that stuff to use in real life the way it is portrayed in movies. An infinite amount of ground, in fact, because your kid may just as well aspire to become as powerful as Dumbledore. Your kids don't realize that no matter how much they train, even if they become the best in the world, they will never fight like the people in The Matrix and Bloodsport, etc..
Although I thought it would be awesome to be able to fight like Van Damm as a kid, I've never been in a martial arts class. I did know a few kids who were, though, and all of them were the types who were completely inept at recess and later at gym class.
And Savannah, if martial arts is unlikely to keep your kid from being bullied by other kids (it is), it's not going to stop an adult from abducting her. Do you really think that 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard would have been fine if only she knew karate? Are you joking?
ChadTower:
...of course, there is a whole lot more to martial arts than the ability to fight, as people keep saying over and over again.
I don't know what kids who have been studying a martial art well don't have carryover. Every kid I knew grewing up that did was stronger, had strong flexibility, strong balance, and strong focus. They were usually really good teammates, too, because they had respect for the sport.
Exactly what part of physical training made up of coordination, flexibility, and focus makes one inept at kickball, shmokes?
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