should young kids do a martial art?

spinninggumby · Purple Belt

I think that if anything, children have excellent potential (their minds are cleaner, less on the slate, their bodies more supple and flexible and more responsive to new influence and exposure to physical or mental training). However, due to their -2.3 second attention spans, it is hard (at least in the U.S.) to produce hard-core top notch martial art kids b/c you can't really beat them with a stick (b/c unless you do that they won't be able to stay attentive long enough, and it's not legal here or in many other places). So it is definitely possible to create an elite child athlete/martial artist (it obviously has been done), but children esp. need more discipline (b/c they don't have as much of a grasp of disciplining themselves) from the teacher.

MonkeyNinja · Orange Belt

I think that 3 is a little too young. 4 is the youngest I'll think 6 is about a good age to start training them in M.A. I do think tough it should be up to the dojo, and the istructors
themselves.
Monkey

tsdstud · Orange Belt

well.. at my school we have a "tiny tigers" for little kids 2-4. They get in there with their parents and basically just have fun. They do work on hand eye coordination and physical fitness. They play a lot of games. Actual training starts at 5. Which seems too young a lot of the time. They don't have the attention span. They just stare at me when I'm trying to teach

oh well

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Lau gar · Blue Belt

they should be able to practise martial arts at a young age

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KarateMom · Yellow Belt

I think it depends on the child!
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aes · Green Belt

The Dojo I go to have a Little Dragon program as well. Kids seem to have fun and learn the very basics of Karate but more a forum to teach safety and self discipline IMO.

My daughter is taking regular Karate at the age of 8. She is very mature for her age and loves all aspects of it. Yes her attention span at times could be better but I don't think it is her fault. In a big class of mixed kids if a child of this age is not constantly engaged in an activity they tend to day dream. When asked to do what she needs to she often seems to show that she understands what is expected of her. She also seems to take it very seriously and practices on her own time without much prompting.

Of course this is only week 7 of her being involved in Karate so we will have to see what the future holds.

Al
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hobbitbob · Purple Belt

At our Uni TKD club we recently had two children of a staff emmber brought to class. Both the 6y.o and teh 7y.o are "black belts." They are very much representative of children their age. their attention span, self discipline, co-rdination, etc are lacking. they haev yellow belt technique at best. When the Mom was told by the chief instructor that he wasn't going to allow them to train (if nothing else, they'd get squished by the college students as the stepped!) Mom threw a fit. She spent x amount of money on those kids, and by god they are black belts, etc...
This goes along with what I haev always felt, that for most people, any martial art training is best begun no earlier than ten. I can speak from experience. In my 2d grade class at Karachi American School, most of us boys did Judo. How many of us internalized much of what we learned? None.
One of the fellow assistant instructors at teh TKD club runs a parks and rec program on Mondays, Wednesdays adn Fridays, and has many of teh "little ones." The classes are always completely out of control. Ron loves kids, so he doesn't maind, but acknowledges that no real learning occurs.
My two cents.
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ZeRo · Black Belt

rabid hamster · Purple Belt

most little kids are annoying...

I don't feel comfortable in the same class as them. I doubt they do either. Think about training with someone that is 5 ft taller then you.

monkeygirl · KF VIP

We also have a Little Dragons program, but it is for 3 & 4 year olds. The 5 & 6 year olds have a Little Ninjas program, and then at about 7 or 8 we start them in Tae Kwon Do. Little Dragons & Ninjas are really just play time, and as they get older it gets more difficult and TKD-oriented. This means that they won't start progressing through the belts until they're 7 or 8. This holds off the blackbelt until they're about 13, because we have a Jr. Black Belt. We keep it interesting by using colorful stripes and "in-between belts". In between belts are half-white, half-whatever color.
There are quite a few changes happen between 3 and 8 years old! I don't think it's fair to limit a child's potential because of what might POSSIBLY happen in a worst-case scenario. Stuff happens (I should know

...dodgeball among our class of young children is a bad idea when the violent child is around...learned that last week. ) and as Angus said early on in this post, sometimes adults use their abilities on others!

As long as there are programs suited to that age, martial arts can be great for 3 year olds. It helps them to improve their attention span as it's developing, as well as coordination. We have two 8-year-old purple belts (6th out of 11 belts for the kiddies) who started when they were 3 or 4 in Little Dragons. One is actually on the Leadership and Demonstration teams. These kids have made it work so far, but by the time they're 9 or 10 they'll be jr. blackbelts. 10 year old blackbelts are something we try to avoid, but it's hard.

I really hate to see 8 year old black belts, especially because of tournaments. I went to a tournament in Harrisburg where one of my friends was competing in a "14 and under" category for blackbelts. This is put up in the concept that there WON'T BE MANY UNDER TWELVE. But alas, my 14-y-o friend had two 7-or-8 year old little boys and a 14-y-o girl as his competition.
I'm sure that in their own right these 8-y-o's were incredible. But they were not equally judged. My friend was actually beaten by one of these 8-y-o's in open-hand katas! (In weapons he dropped his bo and didn't place, but that was his own fault) IMO, my friend was incomparably better, but the judges went "Awww little boy, you get a 10." When it came down to SPARRING, though, my friend was put in with the 15+ division. It was an unbelievable situation.

*whew!* Sorry about the long-windedness but I kinda just woke up

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