Your child will get a respected adult role model who lets your child know exactly what is expected of them. Children want expectations, and as previously discussed, will strive to hit to those expectations if they feel respected and if they’re taught with respect. Hitting those expectations help them feel more valuable, successful, and in turn helps them have a better self-esteem. Your child is taught to respect the instructor, other students, the school, and most importantly themselves. Even when they’re in combat with one another on the mat, they learn to respect each other. This respect of everything around them starts the development of self-discipline and self-esteem.

Being in a classroom setting helps children with communication and social skills. Our instructors are constantly giving feedback by communicating with your child respectfully on their progress through the program.

Improving on any skill requires discipline. Children should learn discipline and accountability early in life and a martial arts training is a perfect way for them to learn this skill. When your child commits to learn, comes to class consistently, and continues to practice they are learning discipline, and this carries over into all aspects of their life. Discipline allows them to set goals, make a plan, and achieve those goals. Remember, when those goals are accomplished, their self-esteem gets better.

Learning a martial art requires preparation, practice, and is also a sport of individual accomplishment. As your child gets better with a martial art, they move up in rank and other students start to look up to them for their guidance. This will help with their confidence, self-esteem, and build that ability to be a role model for other children. Not only are they improving their skills for their own benefit, they are reinforcing the idea of discipline, responsibility, and being a valuable person. Having that feeling of being a valuable person assures them they are responsible for their own actions, their own happiness, their own behavior, and their own success.

At Murray’s Martial Arts, they learn quickly they are responsible for their own accomplishments, to show up for practice on time, eat right and take care of their own body, respect for other students and instructors, and for picking up after themselves. As your child moves up in rank and earns their next belt color, they learn that lesson of responsibility and, once again, building that confidence and self-esteem. The ranking system shows other students how hard your child has worked, they’ve committed, taken responsibility, and they take initiative to keep moving forward in their art. The other students in the dojo build respect for your child and it reinforces a positive work ethic in other students.

Children want to be recognized and need approval. Murray’s Martial Art instructors are trained to teach every child they are perfectly capable of moving up to the next rank. They also teach them it will be hard; it takes lots of practice, and discipline, but it is possible. Our instructors are taught to encourage these practices, so every child feels they can move up.

The martial arts have a series of specific and structured goals which require our instructors give constant positive reinforcement in a variety of practiced techniques. With these reinforcements they can improve in their confidence, self-esteem, and therefore improving their skill.

Children learning a martial art improve their agility, strength, balance, endurance, coordination, and reflexes which translates to a better performance in other team sports they participate in. It has shown that children with these types of improvements and abilities get picked first in team sports by their peers, see improvements in their grades, are more social with their peers, and are more concentrated on schoolwork, thus improving their grades at school. These accomplishments make them proud of themselves and the work they’ve done.