Will my kid be a better person?

Will my kid be a better person?

Is martial arts training going to definitely make your kid a better person?

I go outside sometimes. Big dogs chase me. Seemed appropriate for the topic.

You're going to have instructors who are great, grand, wonderful martial arts instructors. And sometimes, not so great.

If you just focus on a great technical school, they're going to learn sportsmanship. They're going to learn how to be challenged, how to rise to the occasion. And those are all important things. Then you're going to have other martial arts schools. Lot of accolades. You pay a lot of money. They take your money and give you some fancy colored belts. And that's great if that's your thing. But if the goal is to build better humans, that's not going to come from the martial arts school by itself. It's going to mean mom and dad have yet another job to do. The martial arts school is there to help you, but not do it for you.

I'm just going to be honest with you. Most school owners I think are decent people. But I'm not delusional. There are so many cases of bad behavior from martial arts school owners. Especially the real big ones. The big affiliate programs. A lot of stuff in the news lately. Not good. Brazilian jiu-jitsu stuff. But taekwondo has it too. Haven't heard anything with kendo. Smaller community. But hey, people are people. People be peopling.

You're the final arbiter of what's going to happen. You're going to help your son or daughter digest what's going on in the school, what their experience is. If you have it in your head that there are certain qualities you want them to get out of their martial arts experience, you have to be clear about that with yourself, with them, and probably with the martial arts instructor. If it's a good martial arts instructor, they're going to be able to really help you to that end.

One of the things would be falling in love with what I sometimes nickname the process. You perform some sort of a game or match against another person. You look at the results. Win, lose, draw, whatever. Figure out what worked. Figure out what didn't. What didn't work, correct it. Improve it. Then go out and do it again. That other match is really just a giant mirror telling you what you do well and don't do well. And falling in love with that process of self-exploration, because when you have that process, whatever field you're in, if you do that long enough, you can become quite the force.