Monday, January 3, 2011

How Karate Can Help Teach Respect In The Home

How Karate Can Help Teach Respect In The Home

This article explains how the respect learned in karate class carries over to other areas of a kid's life. It focuses on the home but also touches on school.

karate,respect

Most of the parents who bring their kids into one of our Virginia Beach area martial arts studios, discover that there are a number of benefits to our Karate for Kids program. The benefits of karate are many and obvious: helping overweight children to slim down, improving self-esteem and raising the overall fitness level of a child. However, karate has many benefits that are slightly subtler than that. One of the key principles we instill as part of our Karate for Kids program is that of respect.

Respect has different contexts and can mean many different things. There is respect for authority, respect for others and respect for yourself. Our karate program is designed to increase a student's level of respect in all these various areas.

One particular aspect of our karate training program that parents are often pleasantly surprised by is how karate increases a child's level of respect around the house. Our Karate for Kids program is designed to be active, engaging and of course fun. Along with that fun comes a level of discipline and structure with karate. In karate, talking back to the instructor or misbehaving towards fellow students is not tolerated.

In my twenty years experience as a Martial Arts Instructor, I have found that the sense of respect we instill in our students at the karate studio often carries over to a greater sense of respect at home. Peer pressure on kids is enormous these days. Talking back and bad behavior are considered just as "cool" now as they were when we were kids. One of the goals of our Karate for Kids program is to show kids a different path while using karate: the path of respect.

Having respect for their instructors, fellow students and the martial arts as a discipline, has a surprisingly powerful effect on our students. Nearly all of our students end up taking that sense of respect with them when they leave a martial arts class. In our karate program, we demonstrate that respect for others is a virtue and that bad behavior has no place in the constructive confines of the martial arts dojo.

Learning martial arts requires discipline and hard work. Many people come to martial arts for one reason and find that they end up staying with martial arts. Kids who come to class because they want to learn to do flashy kicks like they've seen in the movies often find they enjoy the discipline and hard work entailed in karate. That new found sense of self-discipline coupled with the courtesy we adhere to in all our classes carries with it an inherent level of respect that most karate students will end up taking home with them when they leave class.

If you'd like to find out more about how our karate programs definitely increase your child's level of respect at home, give us a call at our headquarters in Virginia Beach at 757-471-9002 or visit us at this website: www.atakick.com
Changing Lives Martial Arts
Master Instructor Tracy Lee Thomas
7th Degree Black Belt

Affiliations: American Taekwondo Association
                      Krav Maga Worldwide

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