As we talked about last month, many parents watch every class their child participates in and sometimes want to interact with them during class.
Although we discourage interaction with your child during class, we do encourage every parent to watch classes. If you cannot watch every class, try to visit once a month and watch a class or two.
This way you can become familiar with what your child is doing and can have conversations about it. You should also feel free to ask questions before or after classes or during breaks.
We want parents to take the time to learn about martial arts, in particular our style, Tang Soo Do.
If you want to go one step further, there are several excellent books on the philosophies and styles of martial arts.
We are ordering student manuals from TSDMA (Tang Soo Do Masters Alliance) and plan to give them out at the next belt exam. You can read this together with your child!
Another of my favorite martial arts books is a small tome called Zen on the Martial Arts by Joe Hyams, a student of both Bruce Lee and Ed Parker (founder of Ed Parker Kenpo Karate.)
I read these as bedtime stories to my children when they were coming up the ranks in martial arts. You can find this book on eBay for about 50 cents plus shipping.
I also have this book, as well as many other martial arts books on my bookshelf at the studio and would be happy to loan them out to anyone who wants.
Of course, the best way to help your child grow in the martial arts is to become a student yourself. That is one of the reasons we offer our free Family class at 2 p.m. on (non-tournament) Saturdays.
You can try it out, learn the basics and be able to practice with your child at home. Who knows, you may even enjoy it and join our regular adult classes as a testing student!
Even if you don’t stick with it, and climb the ranks to black belt, and your child does, you will be able to share a common language and be able to understand better what they are going through in their practice.