FREE Martial Arts Workshop: Join us in Person
Tuesday, September 13th
1:30 – 2:15 PM 3 – 5 years No Experience Needed
6:15 – 7:00 PM 5 & Up All Skill Levels Welcome
What is Bullying?
Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. Both kids who are bullied and who bully others may have serious, lasting problems. For more information about bullying, check this Stop Bullying site.
Where and When Bullying Happens
Bullying can occur during or after school hours. While most reported bullying happens in the school building, a significant percentage also happens in places like on the playground or the bus. It can also happen travelling to or from school, in the youth’s neighborhood, or on the Internet.
What You Can Do About Bullying As A Parent
Martial arts instructors are often asked by concerned parents about the best ways to help their children to deal with bullies. While there are many approaches to the problem, one of the best ways is to instill self-confidence in your children. The built-in success and achievement models of martial arts is one way to increase your child’s self-confidence. Here are some other steps you can take as a parent to address bullying issues your child may face.
- Create an open line of communication with your child. You want your child to feel comfortable to discuss bullying with you. Create that comfort zone by asking about any incident your child mentions and simply listening to what they have to say. Continue to ask questions until you understand the whole story. Refrain from judging or leaping to conclusions until you have a thorough understanding of what happened. If your child has been bullied, first make sure you speak with them about what happened to them and make sure they feel loved, supported, and safe. You can share your own experiences with bullying, if you have any, to make sure they know you understand. This will help them to understand that you know how they feel.
- Role play. For the same reasons you role-play to anticipate tough questions during a job interview, role-playing bullying scenarios with your child will teach him how to respond to a stressful confrontation. Practicing martial arts is the same as role-playing self-defense scenarios. When practiced enough, the student can recall and instinctively respond if her or himself in a dangerous situation.
- Teach body language. Martial arts stances exude confidence. In traditional martial arts training, the posture of the attention stance is body straight, eyes focused and feet firmly on the ground. Also, instruct your child to breathe properly (calm breath equals calm composure) and speak in a confident tone to help deflect any immediate threat from a bully. Your child should avoid challenging the bully.
- Teach communication skills. While standing one’s ground with an air of composure despite feeling of fear should be learned and practiced, children should also learn how to communicate and create rapport with others. Using words to defuse a situation can help prevent it from becoming physical, and this is always the ideal scenario.
- Enroll your child in martial arts. Consider enrolling your child in a traditional martial arts program, such as Karate or Jiu Jitsu. The training at most self-defense academies does not promote the use of violence but does instill self-confidence, creates realistic role-play scenarios, trains children in body language, and teaches communication skills. Even if your child does need to physically defend her or himself, martial arts training will provide a level of safety by allowing him to perform the moves instinctively when threatened. Besides learning self-defense skills and understanding when it would be appropriate to employ them, your child will take away life skills and leadership lessons that will bolster confidence throughout his life.
Bullying should never be taken lightly. While we’ve made great strides against bullying — bullying policies have been implemented by schools, the workplace and the government — we need to, as a community, prepare and educate our children on how to deal with this serious issue.
Please contact the caring trained martial artists at Balance Martial Arts to discuss your child’s situation with bullying and learn how we can help.
FREE Martial Arts Workshop: Join us in Person!
Tuesday, September 13th
1:30 – 2:15 PM 3 – 5 years No Experience Needed
6:15 – 7:00 PM 5 & Up All Skill Levels Welcome
Please join us for our back to school bully prevention workshop. Bullying is never ok and we have to give our kids the confidence to deal with verbal, physical and online bullying. This class will take place for 3-4 years before classes start, and during our 6:15 Basic Kid’s Class, but is open to all participants – you don’t have to be a martial arts student to attend! This is a FREE community event. Please forward this to a friend and encourage them to bring their kids. Let’s ensure that our kids enjoy a bully free year!
You can contact us at 919.463.9833, balancemartialarts@gmail.com,
or, even better, check our schedule and come on by!
Come to class a few minutes early and you can participate the same day!
We’re located conveniently in Park West Village (the Target shopping center) at 1408 Village Market Place Morrisville, NC 27560.
