Teach Your Child to Never Give Up

According to Parents.com, it’s increasingly common for parents to have difficulty motivating a child, while teaching them to set and reach goals is an even bigger challenge. All too often, today’s children give up at the first sign of trouble, missing out on valuable increases in confidence and lessons on the value of perseverance in the process. It’s not that every child in this day and age is a quitter, or even that they’ve been offered too much instant gratification—the biggest issue here is that most children don’t realize they have another option, and many parents don’t know how to teach them properly.

This is where an extracurricular activity like martial arts comes in. While instructed physical activity has been shown to increase the memory and attention span of school-age children who practice, another commonly overlooked benefit of this carefully monitored journey to a black belt is the ability to continue through tasks and reach the goals that instructors, parents, and even children themselves set. Regardless of what obstacles these children face, they have the training and the confidence necessary to stand tall and carry on instead of giving up.

If you want to remove the word “quit” from your child’s vocabulary, they need to be trained in these qualities and practices:

• Goal setting: because a child who can’t set a goal will never reach one. Martial arts are particularly good at teaching children this basic tenet of success by offer milestones in belts, practice matches and even proper competitions wherein they’re given a goal and the skills to reach it in due time.
• Confidence: a child who doesn’t believe they can do something will never be able to do it. By teaching children self-control and self-defense, martial arts give children confidence in their abilities, which makes them more willing to take on challenges without balking.
• Focus: if a child can’t stay on task, the task will never be completed. By teaching children to set and reach goals, as well as giving them the confidence to take on difficult tasks, martial arts teach children how to focus on specific tasks and issues, thereby making it easier for them to work out solutions to even the most difficult problems.

These tenets of martial arts teach children to be diligent and to work hard in everything they do, improving concentration and coordination along the way. As your child becomes more skilled in their chosen martial art, you’ll find they’re more driven to complete other tasks; SelfGrowth.com reports that, while success in the real world is full of obstacles, by facing obstacles on the way to obtaining goals in martial arts training children learn these skills in such a way that incorporating them into daily life is easy.

The more capable your child is of understanding their own abilities and establishing clear goals, the less likely they are to give up just short of the finish line. You’ll see an increase in performance, confidence, and even overall happiness in your child often within just a few lessons. If you want your child to stop quitting, you need to give them a place where they can succeed under their own power; martial arts classes are the perfect solution.