There is a difference between adult and children's martial arts & self-defense?

Children's

Self-Defense and Martials Arts

Can children really learn to defend themselves? The short answer is yes, but against who? If you have ever had to deal with children, you know they can learn just about anything they set their minds to. This, of course, is with the correct motivation. If you are teaching children self-defense the question becomes “what do you teach them”? Teaching survival self-defense is like giving them a loaded gun. Teaching them to defend against a typical bully is not the same as teaching them to escape the grasp of a stranger. There are several different issues in teaching children to defend themselves. These issues must be addressed whether you are a parent or a martial arts or self-defense instructor.

How Do We Teach Children To Protect Themselves?

Maturity is an issue that self-defense and martial arts instructors must be concerned with. Children like to play around, goof off and have fun. Teaching an eye gouge or a throat strike can be hazardous to the other children they practice with. Of course some children are more mature then others as we all know. So the self-defense techniques that you teach to children should be a first concern. What children can be taught self-defense depends on the maturity of the child or their ability to comprehend the outcome of what they are doing. Some children mature faster than other due to their parents and other environmental factors. The fact still remains that children will be children and they don’t always do as they are told. Many adults have the same problem. This is the reason there is overcrowding in the prisons is immaturity and making bad choices.

To further answer the question, what age should children be taught self-defense depends on the child maturity? I personally teach some basic self-defense skill to children at ages 5 to 12. Most children 12 years and older are big enough to defend themselves against some adults if taught properly. This is always dependent on the ability to focus and understand what they are doing, along with size of the individual. We don’t want to teach emotionally immature young adults to become a more powerful bully. If children can’t control their anger and are being violent toward other children their own age they need psychological counseling first, not self-defense training. These types of children may be the ones your child might have to defend themselves against.

Where do you start when teaching the younger children ages 5 to 11 years of age? Also how do you teach in a way that won’t traumatize them? The first thing is to teach them that there are bad people in the world and not everyone is a good person. Awareness training should be the next part of self-defense training just like you would train an adult. Teaching a child prevention is always the best part of self-defense training. This will carry into adult years if taught properly. Teaching children to use words to diffuse a bad situation is not always easy especially if they are afraid (in a bully situation). It is almost like teaching the adults the value of humility, easy to understand and difficult to do.

Bullies Will Always Be With Us

We all know small and younger children can’t defend themselves against an adult. In my opinion that is a fact. They just don’t have the body mass, strength, and speed to strike hard enough to do and real damage for the most part. The best self-defense to teach them are some techniques to use against school yard bullies. The techniques used against pulling and shoving are the easiest to learn. Children should not have to learn to defend themselves at school but we all know it happens. Most schools in the United States have a “no tolerance” for fighting rule. With that in mind we all have a right to defend ourselves. Any striking taught to children to use against other children should not cause any serious damage. No eye gouging, throat striking and the like. Elementary school yard bulling, most of the time, is not real serious but kids need the confidence and skills to stand up to bullies. Children do not have the same ability to think and analyze the same way an adults do. There is a fine line between a child having to defend themselves with physical violence and walking away or asking for help.

Teach a Child to Get the Needed Attention, and Sometimes Pay Attention

A child defending themselves against and adult is about the child screaming and yelling (kicking, biting, and thrashing about) to “by time” so the responsible adult can take care of the situation. There are things a child can learn to slow down someone trying to abduct them. Anchoring themselves to a solid object while screaming is the most commonly taught child self-defense technique. Latching onto the abductors legs to make it hard for them to run with 40lb child clinging to their leg is another way. These are known techniques a child can learn, of course, with several other escape techniques also. They must be practiced with people other than parents. If practiced with a parent the child may perceive the training as play and fun, which will not help them. Fear or uncertain conditions during training also help for retention of these basic skills. Emotions or feelings help us all store this type of training in long term memory which can be used at a later time if needed. Remember some children are not mature enough for fear training and may panic and become more traumatized during the training.

Conclusion

Children should not have to defends themselves from anyone, but that is not reality. Some older children do get into fights at school or even in their own neighborhood. Self-defense skills do come in handy when another child insists on getting physically aggressive. Of course children need to be taught to control themselves and always do their best not to get into a fight. Most school system in the United States have zero tolerance policy against fighting in school. But don’t tell me a child should not defend themselves against some miscreant who is bent on hitting someone.

The little ones, under 6 years old, should never be left alone with older children or anyone you don’t trust. I am sure we all know this as a fact. Children should be taught properly how to stand up to school yard bullies. Generally, self-confidence is the best way for those situations. On the other hand, children must be taught about stranger awareness and predatory dangers that exist in the world. There are many ways children can slow down the process of being abducted by yelling, screaming, kicking, biting, and anchoring. All adults need to be alert when out in public with their children. Sometime kids just wonder off to whatever grabs their attention. Most anybody can have children but parenting is a tough job. Be a good parent.

Children can be taught age specific self-defense. Most of it seems like common sense and easy to learn. Parents, please watch out for other parents who seem to lack common sense and let the child wonder into unsafe conditions. Kindly say something to them for the children’s sake. Also, find some way to teach your child how to defend themselves if they are forced to.

Threat Levels In Self-Defense May Not Help

Should We All Carry a Concealed Weapon

Senior Black Belt versus Junior Black Belt

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Many articles are written and talked about a child black belt versus and adult black belt in the martial arts industry for many years now. They talk about selling out of martial arts, watering down curriculum, and giving away black belts.

I have seen all this and am troubled. The main reason I’m troubled is the Prestigious Black Belt title is getting less prestigious in the public mind as the years pass.

After many years of teaching Martial Arts to children and adults I found a terrible mind shift in our culture. When people think of martial arts training they think of children wearing karate uniforms and learning respect and self-discipline. Although martial arts teach children these values and many others, it was originally meant for adults. Times have changed, and many adults don’t even consider martial arts as a method of working out for exercise.

The big problem, in my mind, is with some martial arts schools there is no difference in Junior Black Belt and the Adult Black Belt. The issue is that most children are doing martial arts to please mommy and daddy. Yes, they like doing it because mommy and daddy are cheering them on and taking them to class several times each week. The question is, are they really doing for themselves or to please their parents and would they continue if mom and dad were not encouraging them?

If an adult goes to train in a martial art, they are doing it for themselves and are generally self-motivated to keep going and progress to the black belt level and maybe higher. Motivating a child comes from a parent’s involvement in their training which is not how an adult mind is motivated.

Different Requirements For Children

A child will generally have a different curriculum than the adult because of the mental development stages of a child change. Over time the child can learn the same things that the adult learns. I’m not a big fan of teaching throat strikes, eyes gouges, choke holds, arm bars, and the like to children. There is always a maturity element a child will fight with in learning martial arts so as not to cause harm or physical damage to another child.

In all my years in the martial arts and teaching the children and adults I will never say a child black belt is the same as the adult black belt. Personally, and this is true with many other professional martial arts schools I know, have the Junior Black Belt level. Keeping the younger students, who learn most of the same martial arts material as the adults, at the junior level keeps the separation. After thirteen years old the student can elect to take the senior black belt test, which is much more difficult and grueling than the one-hour junior black belt test (several different levels for juniors so the amount of material is not overwhelming).

Children have plenty to do with school, studying, sports, time with family and friends. They don’t need more “stuff” to remember and be held accountable for. This is, if they are taking a martial art that consumes too much time and effort to learn correctly. Juniors can learn the same martial arts material over time but in smaller amount. There are always exceptions to the rule. Hence, the need for a Junior Black Belt rank where children can develop the mental and physical skills an adult may already possess above the age of 16.

A Child Continues To Develop As They Age

If martial arts teach respect, self-discipline, perseverance, courage, confidence how can a child own these when it takes some adults a life time to develop? Does the martial arts practitioner only demonstrate the qualities in their martial arts school? If so, that would make them duplicitous. Please don’t misunderstand what I am trying to say. Children will still need discipline and encouragement to do better, or even use their manners. An adult will most likely not have these problems if they have developed the habits and desire to do so.

The physical and mental abilities of children continue to change as they age, this is known scientific fact. Power and speed of martial arts/self-defense techniques will increase as they get older if they are still training. On the other hand, it will take an adult sixteen and older far less time develop these skills then it does an eight-year-old.

As I said earlier about the 10-year-old Black Belt being the same position as the adult Black Belt, in any martial art style, is not only wrong but could cause an unwanted outcome. The result could easily be that the 10-year-old can develop an inflated sense of ego and greater artificial maturity by wearing an adult black belt and the title.

Different Belt Rank Tests For Seniors and Juniors

I’m a big believer that a junior black belt test should be less mentally and physically intense than the adult test. They should test separately and not during the same test time. The martial arts material for adult must be more related to the adults mental and physical abilities with consideration to the age of the adult.

I have had some Junior Black Belts take a 1-hour test for a small amount of material then claim they earned a Black Belt. Any one of our Junior Black Belt tests contain parts of the adult Black Belt test, but not all. There are six testing levels of Jr. Black Belt, so the material is easy enough to learn and retain, as it should be for the younger students. This is so they don’t become overwhelmed. All this adds up to adult Black Belt when they become ready to take the big 3 to 5-hour test, depending on how many people are ready for testing.

Yes. children need praising and rewarded for efforts and accomplishment they work hard for. But they also correction for mistakes or and bad behavior. All too often there is too much praise and not enough correction which will give a child a false sense of accomplishment.

Negative Impact of The Title “Black Belt”

Giving a title of Adult Black Belt to a child is not a good thing to do, unless you have dummied down the requirements for and adult Black Belt. I have seen both and believe neither is a good thing.

Martial Arts is an individual journey of change and personal progress, both mental and physical, by choice. Ninety-nine percent of the time you will never hear a child ask to learn respect, confidence, self-discipline or and of the tenants of martial arts. Parents sign up their children in martial arts classes because they lack one or more of the tenants, and martial arts will help. But it will not be their choice. They may have fun, learn, and improve through martial arts training but there will be little to no self-motivation on the part of the child.

Self-motivation comes to mature people if they have a reason and burning desire to become better at something like martial arts for instance. Children don’t usually have self-motivation because it takes mental reasoning power which does not start happening in young minds until 10-years and older. As I said before, children are motivated by wanting to please their parents.

Children who enter in to martial arts do improve in the mental and physical skills that the training provides. The respect, self-confidence, determination, self-discipline and many other life skills that martial arts instills will only happen if the child has a good support system in place. That support system can be a parent, coach, mentor of some kind, aunt, uncle of some other relative who can influence the children.

All said and done, children can learn the same martial arts material as any adult. The reason to learn it and the self-defense aspects of training in martial arts are the two biggest differences in the Junior and Adult Black Belt. There are several minor differences like maturity levels and ability to understand the tenants of martial arts and it philosophies that a child will have difficulty with. Understanding the philosophies and tenants of martial arts will come with age and life experiences.

Rusty Solomon

Tampa Bay Martial Arts Academy