Martial Arts as P.E., part 1

Martial Arts as P.E., part 1

Your fifth grader is undergoing many changes in his or her life. Some of those changes are emotional, some are academic, and some of the most noticeable are physical. As his or her body changes the importance of physical education becomes more important. Many times children are started in team sports such as football, or soccer. These sports are great in that they teach team dynamics and sportsmanship. A great amount of dedication is also required for participation in these sports. The drawbacks to those kind of team sports are few but among the drawbacks, two stand out. the first is that they tend to be hard on the body and so as the child matures into an adult often the team sports played at younger ages are dropped. The other drawback is that they by definition of being team sports require the participation and cooperation of others.

I would like to present an alternative to team sports for your child’s physical education program. Martial arts are a great way to keep in shape. They require discipline and perseverance. They are a fairly solitary sport, meaning that they do not require the participation of another person or group of people to be active in them. Martial arts, for the most part are low impact sports and do not generally prove hard on joints or muscles. The martial art I know most about is Tae Kwon Do. For our family it is a physical activity that the entire family participates in, from the youngest member to the oldest. It provides a great cardio workout, provides over all muscle conditioning, and as an added bonus does not require any special equipment to practice the forms. Consider the lack of equipment necessary to practice the basic forms an added bonus as your child gets older. When she goes off to college, or travels on business trips, there is nothing to stop her from continuing her work outs in a martial art. Martial arts also allow for individual expression through training in various weapons. Among the weapons available to train with are sword, nun chucks, and staff, allowing a more complex and varied workout. Competition within the sport can be as strenuous or as laid back as you and your child would like it to be. Physical fitness is not the only benefit to martial arts as a part of your child’s physical fitness education. We will look at that more next time.

Independence, part 2

Independence, part 2

As a homeschooling parent, I often do not accept failure to complete an assignment, nor do I accept lower than an 80% on graded assignments. If my child doesn’t finish, we continue until it is done. If my child doesn’t make the 80% I require, then we redo the lesson and the graded part of the assignment. I know that many homeschool parents follow this same sort of guideline for the quality of their student’s work. And until this year, it was probably a great way to run school, allowing each child the time they needed to learn and excel. But among the flaws in this system are a) the child has no responsibility for completion of the assignment, b)there is no reason to learn time management, and c) there are no consequences to for the student’s actions, or lack there of. This is a learning and growing time for me, too. I have to learn to let go, I have to micro-manage less. I have to allow my child to spread her wings, and hit the ground if she doesn’t get those wings open fast enough. The distance to the proverbial ground is shorter for a fifth grader than it will be for a tenth grader, or a twenty-one year old. As painful as it is for me to see her fail at something, it would be more painful to never see her truly succeed. To succeed, she must learn to be independent.
The road to greater independence for your fifth grader is paved with many lessons along the way. She needs to participate in chores around the house, she needs to be aware of nutrition and how to prepare at least snacks for herself, if not simple meals. She needs to be responsible to monitor and regulate not only her television time, but internet surfing. Some psychologist label the late elementary school years and middle school as the time of gaining competencies. It can be a difficult time for parents and students. As I go through this time with my own daughter, I remember one of the most important lessons my mother taught me. When I was getting ready to move out of her house for the first time, I was worried to bring it up to her, worried that I would hurt her, or disappoint her. The day I told her I was moving into an apartment she said, “All these years, I have given you responsibility, I have encouraged you to be independent. I didn’t raise you up to keep you, I raised you up to let you go.” That is an important lesson to remember.