Monday 17 June 2013
I read a great article on news.com.au about why kids quit sports and basically the article said that kids who play team sports quit because of the terrible behaviour of their parents, or at least because of pressure from parents to perform. The article went on to explain that 20 million children a year in the USA quit sports because of this.
So why is it that some children quit Martial Arts? Well it’s not to do with the team sport scenario as noted in the USA because we don’t have parents abusing coaches and officials on the side lines of our classes – they wouldn’t last a second as the Martial Arts accepts only respectful behaviour from all participants. But we do see poor behaviour at tournaments from time to time, however that’s another story. I’m talking here about why kids who don’t attend external tournaments quit their classes.
Well, and I guess I’m going to need to apologise up front for the next comment for those parents who disagree, but it’s the all too familiar statement I hear from beginning mums and dads:
“… we’re just going to let Michael choose his own sport and see how he goes – we’re not going to tell him what to do when it comes to picking his sports.”
And already I hear some of you asking “What’s wrong with that?”.
It probably would be OK if Michael were 24 years of age, or even 19, but when Michael is just 4, or 9, or even 13 years of age, I think there is some more responsibility needed to be taken on the part of the parents.
I guess an easy analogy, does the following comment sound right?
” … we’re just going to let Michael choose his own health practices and see how he goes – we’re not going to tell him what do do when it comes to cleaning his teeth or having a shower at night”.
And that’s not the same I hear someone screaming?
Well, it’s all about consistency and, even more importantly, about teaching our children how to think, how to make responsible decisions, and getting them educated in the life skill or life saving areas of life that I call the “not negotiables”.
As I explained to a parent recently, parents were put on this earth for a number of reasons, and one of them is to make the decisions for our children until they are good at making their own decisions. It’s not good enough for us to abdicate the throne of responsibility and simply argue that letting them make their own decisions is teaching them how to make good decisions. And good decisions is what we want them to make. The operative word here is “teach” and so how do we teach them to do this?
We do it by helping our children experience the concept of “doing the hard yards” and not being a “quitter” just because something gets hard or tough. I know that nearly all children who quit Martial Arts do so because it got a bit hard, it took more commitment than they were prepared to make. In every case, when I ask the confronting question to the parent “what do you really want your child to do?” Almost always they say they want them to continue training to black belt and beyond.
Definitely health and safety are the “not negotiables”, as well as education and so on. Under the category of health and safety comes cleaning teeth, hygiene, self protection, building confidence and the ability to make good decisions in social situations.
So should we be saying to Michael when he has trained for a while and doesn’t want to continue his Martial Arts classes “come on, jump in the car and let’s have a chat to Master O or one of the instructors about how you might be feeling down in your motivation at the moment, and what we can do about that.
Our Instructors at Factor10 have all experienced a lack of motivation from time to time – it’s normal – and they’re here to help you cope with and solve these sorts of problems. But please … please … let’s not make quitting the beginning of the problem solving process.
What does that teach our children?
After all, who didn’t have trouble with motivation one time or another – I think it’s a given in life.
Master O
