Does your child get upset, frustrated, or angry when something doesn’t go their way? Maybe they tend to get a temper when they lose at a game? Or, they tend to want to give up on something the second it gets hard?
These awesome #Teammate Parenting Tips are for you!
Don't forget that people, including kids, are supposed to fail on the way to success!
Anything worth doing is hard, and will include set backs and failures along the way.
As parents and mentors, one of the greatest things we can do for a child is to teach them to shrug off failures. To encourage them to try again with the new information from the failure.
The more one fails, the closer they get to success
Failure is a huge part of the process to success. In martial arts, they can learn how to take their failures as lessons on the way to success. We try to promote excitement around failures. This encourages failures to be worked through as meaning we are on the right track.
Getting frustrated, being rude, or mean when someone struggles with something is not going to help them learn it. Instead, it will help them feel bad about themselves, lose confidence, and likely quit. Telling someone they should already know it, or telling them that they are doing it wrong constantly without pointing out what they are doing right, is not going to help them learn it.
The top reason kids end up quitting martial arts is because it is hard. You will fail from time to time. Karate takes patience and commitment to get to black belt. It is simply something that anyone CAN do, but very few will…
Anyone CAN do it, but few will...
The top reason kids end up quitting martial arts is because it gets hard. Often, parents become too critical of their performance and they are not getting enough encouragement on what they are doing right.
When the focus is put entirely on what they are doing wrong, they will lose confidence and will to keep going.
Martial arts training is hard at times. You fail from time to time. You won’t get everything the first time. It takes patience and commitment to get to black belt.
It is simply something that anyone CAN do, but very few will…
Mostly due to their fears of failure or letting someone down.
Encourage & Remind Kids
For true success, we need to reframe how we look at and treat failure as a society.
Remind yourself, your friends, and the kids in your life that failure is part of success. Nothing to be feared or ran from. As long as you don’t stay stuck on the failure you can keep trying until you get it.
When someone feels like they have failed, that is the time to point out what parts they did well, or their progress. It is NOT the time to berate them about what they did wrong.
Always start with complimenting their progress and what they did right. Make sure they feel good about that before offering advice about what they did wrong. In martial arts, we recommend parents focus on the support and encouragement. Let the instructors handle the corrections.
If you have concerns about their correction, talk to your kids instructors. Open communication is key to achieving goals as a group!
Failure should never be the last step of anything...
If a person is going to stop an endeavor, don’t stop right after a failure. I like to tell kids that quitting is okay, just don’t quit on a bad day.
It takes tons of failures and thinking about them before finding the answer of how to do it right. The harder it is, the more worthwhile it is. But, it also means the more failures you will face. Imagine if we had given up on starting our studio at any one of the thousands of failures we had along the way to learning to do what we do BETTER!
Encourage your kids or yourself despite failures. A real leader knows that failures are opportunities to get better, and getting better is the only real goal.
Real leaders will patiently be there with encouraging words and gently nudging to get them to try again, just a little differently.
Real leaders don’t criticize, they help.
Success isn't real...
Truth of the matter is, success isn’t really real. In martial arts, we talk about striving for perfection where perfection can not exist.
The idea of success is that there is some end point that it is over. Goals may be accomplished, but the process of success is never over. Enjoy the process more than the success, and you have the tools to succeed at almost anything.
Success is a constant state of growth and getting better. NOT an end goal.
Difficult Times
If we encourage kids to practice a little bit of discipline and perseverance now, they will learn about the enjoyment and rewards that come from moving through failure. This may not sound like a hard lesson when you hear it. However, it is very difficult to put into practice in the moment. With your kids, you are there to be their #Teammate through the hardest times of that process.
Subtly and slowly show others that the only thing holding them back is themselves. Their own feel of failures and being judged by others.
Show them there is nothing to fear. Show them to celebrate their small steps of progress.
Personal Story....
I have been injured in training in some form or fashion leading up to every single black belt exam I’ve ever taken. Four at this point.
In those moments I had the option to feel sorry for myself and put off my advancement, or to be careful with it so that it heals and do what I could.
One of those times, I broke my foot, shattered everything near my pinky toe. It was just three weeks before my 2nd Degree test. I could have easily given up and waited another year. Instead, I chose to sit on the couch and practice my hand techniques. I chose to stand on one foot and hold on to things to practice what I could safely.
Only one person made fun of me, my own mother. I wasn’t about to listen to that negativity though!
My greatest #Teammates and students cheered me on even though I couldn’t be anywhere near my best.
One Step At A Time
As soon as I could put weight on it fairly comfortably I added stance work back in. I wasn’t required to do physical therapy because my doctors knew I was a martial artist. They knew I had the discipline to rehabilitate myself.
I tested with the boot still on my foot, still barely able to put full weight on it. That moment was huge for me. Overcoming something like that to accomplish something I didn’t think I would ever be able to do. Especially since I was never that good with hip flexibility for a martial artist anyway. BUT, I learned ways to use the skills I did have while working on the ones I didn’t.
I couldn’t kick like my peers, but I could hold my own with them.
I had already put two years of work into preparing for that exam. Our students depended on me, I couldn’t just do it later.
My Students & Kids Needed Me To Succeed
Our students were relying on me to rank up and continue to learn so that they could also rank up with me. I even managed to learn things I could not do before while I was injured. It allowed me to focus on what I COULD do.
I’ve recovered from most of my injuries fairly quickly with no need of physical therapy.
I don’t give in just because I have an excuse to do so.
We Are The Example To Our Kids
We show them how with persistence and discipline, nothing can hold them back for too long. It is on us to show them this by not letting ourselves get held back by our fears of failure or being judged.
Show them this by not letting yourself get held back due to lack of discipline or persistence.
This lesson takes time, have patience with your kids failures. Teach them that failure is not a bad word, it is an exciting opportunity to learn more about the subject than those that can do something more naturally.
The ones who struggle the most and still make it, are the ones who end up with the most knowledge, experience, and wisdom.
They make some of the greatest teachers.
This #Teammate parent article was written by: Cory Rose