Signs Your Child Is Ready for Martial Arts Classes

How to know when your kid is ready to start taking martial arts classes? Let's talk about it.

When is the right age, or when do I know that my kid's ready for classes? It's never about the age. I've hammered that home. It's not about their age. I've had kids at two and a half. They could come in here and do our Little Dragons program, no problem. Others at five. I've had them at ten that they can't do anything. They're just too wild, too rambunctious.

So the first thing they have to be able to do is: can they follow directions and converse?

That sounds like low-hanging fruit. It's not always. Some parents I don't think are always aware of maybe some of the struggles their kid's having. Their kid may behave differently at home than they do out with other people.

If I'm talking to my son, I'm trying to figure out when is he ready. He's about not quite two and a half. I'd say, "Mark, go wake your mom up." I'm making breakfast. If he goes, "Okay," darts off, wakes his mom up, comes back, "I did it, Dad." Okay. That's the first thing. Can you just understand what I'm saying, do it, and come back and just follow directions.

Can they pay attention at least long enough to like if I'm sitting with my son at home and I'm saying, "Mark, catch the ball." And he tries to catch it with one hand and it's a basket, like a kid's basketball. I was like, "Buddy, use two hands." Like this? Okay. So he has enough just fundamental, rudimentary coordination. Great.

The other one is if you're reading stories to the kid — we're talking little kids. If you're reading stories and they're able to sit and listen through the story, you're golden. Those are the things you want to really look for. They can do those things: green light.

Sometimes when they're older, you would be surprised. I know some of the students here — if you try to sit and read a story to them, unless you had a screen playing a lot of visuals and things, I think they would just get lost. So you have to, even at all the different ages, sit down and just do a quick assessment. Can I sit down and have a conversation?

Parents get busy. I'm not trying to be rough with the parents, but it's true. Sometimes it's like they don't know. So just sit down and have a conversation with them. What did you do at school today?

What will really help as a parent is listen. Really listen to what they say. Do they stay on topic? Are they having trouble even sharing how they feel about things? Maybe they're ready for classes, but at least then you'll have a better way of setting goals for what to look for, what to encourage them to start doing.

So all those things are important. It's less about age and size, believe it or not. Especially if the school has age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate classes.

If you have a two-and-a-half-year-old and you're having them do some Taekwondo games — like we have one thing that's called zombie kick. You hold your hands out like a zombie. Then the kid takes their straight leg up and drops it on the hand. What's called an axe kick, nado chagi in Korean. So the leg comes up, hits the target. Hooray, they got it. They can sit and practice that easily and they get the reps in. Then by the time they age out of that little kids class — normally in our regular Taekwondo class they have to at least be eight, but some of those kids they're like five and they've no problem. I can do forms now. I know what I can pay attention. It's no big deal.

That's the thing. And then having setting goals and getting them to achieve those goals, that's the bigger thing that's going to really make stuff work.

Mom and dad, that's an easy assessment to do. You can do that right now. And once you do, you'll know very easily if they can handle class or not.

And then with that, make sure you have an instructor that you have a good rapport with. So if something's not working, they can easily say something to you and you guys can get things back on track. If you understand developmentally where your kid is at and you know the coach you're going to put him with, you can get started surprisingly early raising a warrior.

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