Han Mi Martial Arts - Damascus
How can I tell if my child is improving?
So, how can you tell if your child's improving in class?
It's a pretty common thing parents want to know. How's my kid doing in class? When I get asked this question, I'm reminded of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They're trying to figure out the meaning of life. They commissioned two of their brightest and best to design and build a stupendous supercomputer to calculate the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Put that question to it and it answers back: the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is 42. Useless answer.
The quality of your answer a lot of times depends on the quality of the question. If you really want to know how your kid's doing, unless you yourself have a martial arts education, it's going to be hard to tell. And with that I think we should also say, what are your goals? What is an improvement? A lot of people come to martial arts for different reasons. Sometimes they just want a fun activity. Sometimes their kid's getting bullied. Sometimes their kid maybe got ADHD or some other challenges and they're learning how to just regulate themselves. In that case, you're going to have to ask questions.
If it's just a fun activity and you want to see if they're improving, that's pretty easy. You want to ask simple questions like: What is it that my son or daughter is working on right now? What's the one thing that's really challenging them and holding them back? What could I be doing with them at home to help them be better? Those are really great questions. And if you ask most instructors, they'll be excited. That's what I've been waiting for. Because you're helping them to succeed.
If your son or daughter has problems paying attention in class, then you're going to have to have a different rapport with that instructor. And you have to have an instructor who's also going to be a little bit more proactive in terms of paying attention to how that kid's behaving. So then when they're talking to you they're saying things like, they were able to sit still and pay attention today. Or, they weren't doing headstands in the middle of my lesson while I was trying to explain a technique.
But just to go up to them and ask, how's my kid doing, you're going to get fine. Because the only reason the instructor is going to say anything else is if there's a real problem and your son or daughter is breaking down the flow of class. And if I ever have those kinds of problems, I tend to reach out first.
You want to think about crafting those questions so that you're getting that instructor to give you the best information possible. Most instructors, when they get asked these questions, there's a little bit of defensiveness, because we don't want to disappoint anyone. We also like having students in the class, and we don't like the idea of somebody quitting on us or giving us a bad Google review or a Yelp review. So if you can build a rapport with them where they feel comfortable just telling you what they really think, that's useful. Doesn't bother me so much. I pretty much will just say this is what I think and try my best to be useful to the parents.
Now when you get that answer, the other thing is really act on it. Let's take something simple like taekwondo. They're doing a roundhouse kick. The problem is that their foot on the floor is not pivoting, so when they go to do that kick they're going to be wrenching their knee if they're not careful. That foot on the floor has to turn. So if the instructor says one of the things they're having trouble with is on their side kicks, on the roundhouse kicks, maybe the first six months they're really working on those. They have to pivot on the front ball of the foot, not their heel. And then if you're working with them and that improves, and you go back to the instructor and go, I've been working with them, is that improving? You're going to be that instructor's favorite person on the face of the earth. And yes, of course, you're paying them. You might be thinking, I should get this sort of treatment regardless. Yeah. But still human beings, right?
The quality of your questions, your ability to be a leader in this whole thing, really helps quite a lot. The instructor is going to do their best, but the parents are the ones who are really steering the ship. They're the final decision makers on where they're going to study, what they're going to study, what time they're going to get there. So don't be afraid of taking that ownership.
Watch the full conversation
Watch "How can I tell if my child is improving?" on YouTube
First class free with a loaner uniform, then a 10-day trial. Book your free class
