Lifestyle Social Solutions - 10 Ways to Make a Difference

The LifeStyle

Training and dedicating your life to martial arts can have long lasting positive influences.  I’ve seen it happen.  But, it is always a balance of the student finding the right teacher at the right time.  A good teacher will have skill sets and an approach that enables him or her to meet the needs of diverse students, but it is not always going to be an optimal fit.  Timing, and all the factors associated with it, can also be factors.

Once you have come to a stable place and found the right facility and instructor, there are several things you as parents can do to help solidify martial arts as a part of your child’s lifestyle.  

You’ve been taking incremental steps in committing to the lifestyle, starting with when you first accepted the notion that martial arts is a reasonable solution to whatever it is that has brought you to the search for a school.  Now, its time to transition to a role of support that will leave little room for error or misinterpretation.  As the leaders of your respective families, your child will follow the example you set, and the stronger your message of support and encouragement comes across, they more they will want to model the behaviors to which you've assigned positive value.

The Social Connection

All humans are social animals, and our kids are no exception.  Even shy and withdrawn children need to have social interactions.  We all feed off of them.  In the martial arts school, the master or head instructor dictates the culture, which ideally is one of respect and acceptance that encourages everyone, especially the withdrawn, to comfortably share and interact.  In the home, it is the parents who lead and set the tone.  The statements you make and actions you take relay messages to your child all the time.  Positively engaging and seeking out means of being involved with martial arts alongside your child sends a message of support that will only lift up your child and edify your position of authority in the home. 

When your child starts martial arts, so do you.  You do not have to attend class with them, going rep for rep, to be involved and engaged.   However, it can mean more than just asking questions about class on the car ride home.  While this certainly serves as low level engagement, it is not the pinion that will secure your child’s interest and long term participation in martial arts.   The rule in martial arts is simple...the longer an you train, the more you grow.  There is no end to the path of martial arts.  Certainly, there are peaks, valleys, and plateaus along the course, but the trek is always forward into new horizons and levels of achievement.  

Imagine the likelihood of your child becoming a black belt, a Master, or even a Grand Master, and...

How awesome would that be? 

They need to have a strong foundational support network, including engaged support, from their top level influencers, their parents.  

10 Support Solutions

I’m not here to just dance around concepts though.  Sure, supportive engagement is the center of the thought cloud, but as parents, where you take the idea will reflect your family's specific nature.  To get things started and spark some ideas of your own, immediately or after you’ve tried some of the following, this list includes ten different means of showing support that may match an interest or active dynamic in your household.

1. Travel: Make a Trial lesson at a studio part of any travel plans to a new city

• You can usually get these for free and they show the breadth of what is available in the arts and how they are taught.

2. Movie or Game Fans: Schedule a Martial Arts movie or Gaming Night

• There is no shortage of content in either one of these categories!

3. Cooking: Prepare a meal from the country of origin for your child's art

• There are picky eaters in every culture...you can find a recipe (or mod one) to fit the bill

4. Bibliophiles: Read a book together

• Again, there are works of fiction and non-fiction aplenty on the arts

5. Handy: Build a piece of training equipment or accessory

• Consult a few martial arts supplier sites or catalog and match their offering with your skill sets!

6. Crafty: Tailor their uniform

• The way in which uniforms are sized is...lets just go with singular...hem the sleeves or legs, or take in/let out the jacket

7. Musically inclined: Put their material to music

• Encourage them to practice while you improve or perform a piece 

8. Artistic: Paint their picture

• Use a favorite photo from classes and training and use your preferred media to bring the image to life  

9  Photography: Create a photo collage or slide show. 

• Use motion capture style to make a short film, or create a photo-biography of their career to date 

10. Techy: Build a website or blog

• Show the path of his or her training career to date, or share your own thoughts and reflections on how MA has influenced and positively impacted their lives

Any way you can invest your time and talents into growing along what is perhaps not necessarily a shared path, but certainly a parallel one, will give boat loads of affirmation.  Your child will see that their participation has value to you that at least matches that of the existing passion you pair it with.  Bringing these two elements together combines their effective influence in a dialectic fashion where the whole is far more than its respective parts.

Try to stay away from a one-and-done mentality with this type of encouragement.  How it grows and matures in your home will depend on you and your family, but continuing to show support and your own engagement as something aside from just the chauffeur to classes will only aid in your child's long term success in martial arts and, in turn, in life.