Karate is not meant to harm anyone it is meant to teach them elements and fundamentals that could help them in the future. However that this may be, there are still a few people who join so that they can either protect themselves or learn to fight using martial arts.
Whatever the reason for your child wanting to join a Karate class, there are a few things that you should consider first and I am going to be covering a few of these in this article.
One of the things that you should think about is the reasons that you are even considering it in the first place. Is it because you want them interested in something? Karate is an excellent way to get your children involved in something that they will enjoy and it is a great way for them to make friends.
Is your reason because you want them to learn to fight? Despite what a lot of people say, Karate is a skill that takes time to learn and a lot of the Karate masters will go over the dangers and what skills that your child will learn and also the benefits that a child or person gets from learning karate.
Some children view Karate as a new skill that they want to learn, kind of like the reason that a lot of little girls want to learn how to be a ballerina or why little boys want to try out for football. It is all about a new skill that they can learn and be good at it.
The great thing about Karate is that it teaches hand and eye coordination as well as how to deal when they are under stress or peer pressure. A lot of parents think that it is all about learning to fight and for the most part, they are wrong.
When I was a child, my dad put my sister and I into a Karate class hoping that we would learn something from it and learn how to protect ourselves if the situation ever came about. My uncle was one of the mentors that we had, he was a third degree black belt and taught us on the weekends when the Karate classes were closed.
We had only been in Karate for a couple of weeks when my sister and I decided that we would use each other for target practice. The problem with this was that we took it to the extreme. My dad ended up pulling us out of Karate for a full year due to this. He also had my uncle and the Karate Master to come to the house and to explain to us what Karate was all about. I learned a valuable lesson that day, Karate is not meant to fight with, it is a skill that posses a lot of benefits and these benefits can be used for a lifetime.
The following year, we were put back into Karate and were taught how to protect ourselves if we were in danger and that walking away from a fight makes more sense than it would be for someone to end up in the hospital because of someone’s actions.
Karate makes a world of sense but if you are in it for the fighting skills, you would be better off to go with something like wrestling or boxing and not Karate. If you chose to enroll your children, you should explain to them what you are hoping to achieve out of this.
