5 Ways To Keep Your Child Motivated To Continue Their Martial Arts Training!
1. Stay and watch class! We know with busy schedule this is a hard thing to do. But when a child looks over at mom or dad during class and see’s how excited they are that they are working hard it makes a big difference! You don’t have to stay for every class but you do not want to be the parent that constantly drops and runs.
2. Don’t Complain about Bringing your child to class. Every child is going to have a night where they do not want to come to class, or they are taking their sweet old time getting ready to go. Don’t tell them come on we need to go I have to drop you off then go shopping, the go here. If you make coming to class stressful your child will start to hate coming, even though they enjoy it when they are here.
3. Practice with them and get involved. Take time to help your child practice. Even if its just one kick or punch. Children want to do what their parents are interested in. If you take time to practice with them it will make a big difference. At Dragon Gate we do parent participation classes 4 times a year make sure to make a couple of these classes, This is a chance for you to workout with your child! Some of the parents at Dragon Gate Train in Martial Arts classes just so they can help their children. Buy equipment that you and your child can practice with at home. My son is starting to kick and punch just because he sees how excited I get when my students do it!
4. Be your Child’s biggest Fan One of the mistakes I see parents make is that as soon as their child leaves the Mat, they are correcting everything their child did wrong during the class. Let the instructor do that. We don’t correct everything during class because we do not want to overwhelm our students. We are going to correct them and thats hard for children to handle sometimes. If mom and dad are doing it also they wont enjoy it! Tell your child they did a great job when they leave class.
5.Get friends and family members involved Invite your child friends and family members down to try a class. One of the things we here all the time is, when its time to come to class they don’t want to come. Most of the time the child is playing video games, or in the middle of a play date. If this is the case of course they do not want to go to class, they are having fun at that moment ( Instant Gratification) They love going to karate but if they are in the middle of a play date they are not gonna want to come. Get their friends involved and make Class their play date.