One of the reasons many parents enroll their children into Martial Arts is to help them learn discipline. Martial Arts CAN help your kid with discipline. Martial Arts also CANNOT help your child with discipline. Just as your child is unique, the answer is unique. Do we have the ability to help with discipline – absolutely. Can we help with discipline – possibly. As your child is unique, so is their behavior. Their current behavior was not learned overnight (if it was, we can solve that problem immediately), thus it cannot be fixed overnight. In Martial Arts and especially Jiu-Jitsu, there is no training for three months and then going and winning the All Valley Tournament as Hollywood would lead you to believe. Discipline and behavior are learned and developed over time. The correct question to ask is “How can WE improve my child’s discipline?”
Martial Arts of any form will provide benchmarks for improvement, positive reinforcement for positive behavior and correction for incorrect behavior. These are elements that will help your child become disciplined. Now, if a child trains twice a month for two months, and the parent comes to us and states their child’s behavior has not improved, and they have not shown increased discipline, thus they would like to withdraw from the program – are we at fault for not providing discipline? Not a reasonable scenario, yet over the years we have dealt with this EXACT scenario multiple times.
If YOU want YOUR CHILD to learn discipline through Jiu-Jitsu or any other Martial Art, YOU must become just as invested as them. As your Martial Arts Academy, we cannot pick your child up and force them to attend classes. When they are tired and want to stay home and play video games, and are arguing, we cannot come to your home and force them to attend. Those tasks must be done by YOU. You must lead by example. If you quit after two months, you are teaching your child that when something becomes difficult, it’s ok, to quit, or if you acquiesce on them arguing about going – then that does not have anything to do with the Jiu-Jitsu Academy.
Now, if a child has structure, routine, goal-setting with positive reinforcement, a community of like-minded people that constantly push them to improve, endorphins gained from exercise, and the confidence gained from self-improvement – YOUR CHILD WILL BECOME MORE DISCIPLINED AND FOCUSED. It takes a village, and we want you to be part of our village, just as we want to part of yours. We can provide the goal-setting, positive reinforcement and a fun environment that they will want to attend. But YOU must provide the leadership of the structure and routine of consistent training. YOU have to make the hard decisions of going when they do not feel like it. You have to set the boundary of the routine is not something to debate.
So, can we help with discipline and structure? Yes, we can. We are all in. Are you?