Teaching Children Life Skills Involves a Lot More Than Telling Them to Do What is Right

The theory of children or adults doing what is right just because it is right is rife with flaws. Most people do 1 of 2 things and that is to move away from pain (the most popular) or to move towards pleasure. Rarely does anyone do anything just because it is right. Think of your own life, there are certain things we do without the thought of reward like being a friend. But, don't we expect friendship in return for the most part? Children need guidance, a plan, role models, expectations, and rewards just like the rest of us. To expect anything differant is just foolish. All actions carry consequences good and bad.

Children must learn the differance in application not just theory and talk. Holden Martial Arts.com has a mutitude of programs to address the different needs of our students and their parents. Presentation of material, Study, practice, role models, congruency of thought are presented and practiced throughout the school. Young students as well as teens and adults and their differances are taken into account and the ART is modified to help the student to attain their goals and not the other way around. If an art cannot accomadate the general public it isn't an art or the teacher isn't qualified to present it, regardless of age (certain limitations do apply).

The 4 stages of learning

Not sure where I learned of the 4 stages but it tracks the growth of a student. The 4 stages are
1. Unconscious Incompetence
2. Conscious Incompetence
3. Conscious Competence
4. Unconscious Competence.

The 1st stage of Unconscious Incompetence is you don't know what you don't know. This is the 1yr of training for most people. Next, Conscious Incompetence describes the intermediate student in our system includes purple, blue and green belts. They are beginning to understand that they don't know. With this stage also comes quite a few dropouts as they tend to get frustrated about their perceived lack of improvement. Conscious competence is probably the most dangerous in terms of ego. The student starts to think that they are getting good and may try the boundaries of their experience. Too many students stop at this stage and then either move on (saying they accomplished their goals) or start to mix in additional training that may interfere with their growth, or that they actually understand and don't need further instruction. This level extends up through the new black belts. Only after many hours on the mat with directed training do students develop the unconscious competence to perform without thought and almost watch themselves.
An example of this progression is remember when you 1st started driving, all the different details you had to keep track of, the road, the cars in front, back and around you, the clutch(?), brake, mirrors, how much gas to give etc etc. And now you do all that and add things we probably shouldn't. I'll leave that list to your imagination

Unfortunately, in this day of instant everything too many people don't commit or will stop when the going gets even a little hard thereby short circuiting one of life's most important lessons, Anything worthwhile will have many moments of doubt, frustration and rationalization (of quitting, is it worth it, etc.) but never experience the confidence and satisfaction of attaining a long term goal.

welcome to my blog. Linda (my wife) and I discuss many things in the morning over coffee one of which is that I am a renegade when it comes to most things. Now I know that I am not that differant from some people out there, its just hard to find them. I have my own ideas about martial arts, self defense, business (and how I want to run it), that differ from the norm.

My hope and desire is to connect with these odd people and also my students as I ramble on about many differant subjects