Being a Martial Arts Dad and Teacher

Click the button to play the podcast:

Good morning my fellow Americans and listeners throughout the world and welcome to another edition of martialartsbusinessmagazine.com.

Today’s subject is the tales of Karate father. Yes, I was a dad too and I had a son named Phil. He is thirty four years old now. Well, he kind of begins to tell of my own age. One of the things that I wanted to kind of let me know was a Karate dad. I was the grand master instructor. What I did was I allowed my son to practice in my school several times. He actually was taught by my black belts students. Not by myself. I was sculpted as a Karate dad that it would bring conflict into the house. There were discipline was as a father, the discipline did not have to be there as a martial arts instructor on my own child and this was the premise that I used that one of the premises that my grand father used, too. As I signed in an earlier broadcast, when I was growing up in a region of Japan, I went to Judo classes. I would ask my grandfather and ask, ‘Sir, can I attend jiu-jitsu classes for nagininibu jui-jitsu?’. My grandfather would there practicing and he would not work at me. He absolutely refused. When I was a bit older, I dared to ask him why and he said just exactly that it was not for him as a Karate father or martial arts father to interject anything into the practice of the martial arts that would bring back concept to your home.

I did not understand, I was a little kid. But you know, as a martial arts dad, I did and so what I did was I let my son train with my black belts and they created in him an individual with martial arts capabilities. It is something that you as a parent, if you are practicing martial arts as a child that is another story, you as student. But if you are a teacher, teaching your own children can sometimes be a bad thing to do. It can be a negative incident in your life that can impede or deter their learning process because it is you who’s critical. It is something that when you are teaching as an instructor should be done with love and a lot of times that instruction can be misunderstood. It is so something that I as a parent did not do.

My son studied martial arts for a time and being something I was interested in and so involved in, he did drop out and that was kind of hurtful at that time, that you got to understand those sort of things to occur. Just the same thing as being an instructor that I had students to begin with me and they will be there for years and then all of a sudden, they would get married. Get fine to figure out when they were teenagers that they have hormones and they got boyfriends and girlfriends and they left. I was disappointed. I was disappointed with my son that they didn’t understand. I just wanted to convey to you how very important it was that I as a Karate dad, as a martial arts father, allowed other people to instruct them. They were good teachers and they taught and disciplined, they taught him indomitable spirit, they taught him perseverance and consistency in living of life and not being accorded.

So, I want to thank them and thank you for listening. I will be back in another edition. See you, then. Thank you very much, America. Goodbye.