What to do with natural talent

Today's question: how can I tell if my kid is coasting on natural talent or if they're genuinely being challenged? Such a good one. Let's talk about it.

Matt Thompson, Raising a Warrior.

We're talking about the whole idea of how can I tell if my kid is just naturally athletic. It happens.

Earlier today, I was teaching my Little Dragons class. Kids like seven and under. I got a bunch of kids in there. Two of them, it's their first day. One little boy is on the spectrum. He's just smiling, having a great time. And the dad's looking at me going, is this okay? I'm like, your autistic kid is beaming right now. I think we're great. What he's doing is great. His little sister's running around. She's doing great.

And I got this one kid. Cool parents, cool kid. He's crazy tall for his age. And as I say it once, this kid just does it. Boom. Hey, can you learn to do back falls? Kid, bam. Pop up. Did I do a good job? I'm like, kid, you're killing it, man. Keep moving.

We do a little obstacle course some days. One area is dancing. He just gets there and he's getting down. Starts kicking the target. I'm like, this kid's awesome. He's not working hard. He's just having a ball. At that age, it's fine. Don't care. Doesn't matter.

When they clear seven — and when I say seven, it's a developmental thing, it depends on the kid — then yeah.

First off, if you're not sure if they're doing it because they're just talented. Do you have any special talents?

Again, just like when we talk about kids, a kid on the spectrum, let's say. They're going to have other obstacles. And so when they're doing the process — that's the perform, assess, theorize, drill, and then repeat — what their goals are going to be is going to be very different.

If I have a kid who has something that's in the way of their learning, some kind of a disability, let's say. Then maybe their goal is, can I sit here and pay attention in this uncomfortable uniform to what this dude's telling me to do and execute it. That might be enough. Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?

Well, just in that same regard, a kid who has a natural aptitude, you have to challenge them. It's not about, my kid is really naturally talented, so how can I tell? I think what it is is it doesn't matter. You push them until something's tough to do. You keep engaging them.

So if that means, okay, you're really good at rolling here in your jiu-jitsu class, so let's take it to tournaments. Let's do it. Oh, that sounds hard. It is. That's right. You're good. So we do hard things when we're good. That's a different lesson that you're teaching.

You're teaching them that the process — performing, assessing, theorizing, drilling, and then performing again — running that, that's the goal. If that's the goal, then whatever they decide to do, they're going to get very good at it pretty quick.

Martial arts, in my opinion, it's not the only thing that teaches it, but it's really good at it. Because you have that immediate feedback from the person that you're sparring on how well you did. You know pretty quick.

I think it's a fair question. But if it's a question that concerns you, I think you're addressing it the wrong way. Process. Constant improvement. Kaizen. Those things. Way more important. Everybody's got a certain amount of innate talent.

When I was a little kid, my granddad picked up on that I was going to be a talented musician. He was a musician. And so he was like, that kid, that's going to be my musician grand baby. So I would play a little and he would encourage, and I'd play a little and he would encourage, and I'd play a little, and then he would be like, now you don't have it. You're terrible at this. Try this. I'd get mad. He thought it was funny. But I would quadruple down and learn whatever the thing was he was busting my chops about that day. He did it because he knew I had kind of a rebellious streak. He leaned into that.

What I'm trying to say here is, find the style of your kid. If they have a natural aptitude, challenge them. Make them work. That's more important. They may impress the whole world with what they have, who knows. But if they're challenged, they're engaged, and they have people behind them pushing them and cheering them on, nothing will stop you from raising a warrior.

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