As soon as my kids could walk, their budo journey began. Throughout their toddler and kindy phases, priority was all about having fun and incentives offered for achieving X and Y karate goals. They are still very young, and often during our training sessions together, drive me up the wall where I’m on the verge of combusting, shitting and bleeding through all orifices in annoyance at once. The number of different cussing word combos they have had to hear from my mouth, they could probably publish the 10th edition of Daddy’s Dictionary by now. (And yes I do apologise – bad parenting I know ☹ ) I don’t consider myself as someone who takes many things very seriously, but the things I do, I do thoroughly and wholly and hope that my kids can replicate the same, obviously in this case – training!
I can understand why our Kobudo sensei feels so defeated and disappointed about his children not training at all. For a renowned master who has no family to pass on the tradition, his passion, and culture, heartbreaking would be an understatement. I guess that may be one reason why he treats us like his own family, simply happy that we want to learn what’s important to him.
Anyway, after the kid’s session tonight, I felt a huge sense of pride, joy, and a special bond. There are no more prizes, incentives, nor anything else on offer for them – just straight to the point training. I treat and train them as I do with the handful of adults I teach, but for one reason or another, it has worked wonders. For the past few months, they have trained on a regular basis and actually asked questions like they were genuinely interested! (Time to buy the lotto??) Many parents long for their kids to grow up to be rich and clever, have a respectable job, and marry someone worthy. For me it is a lot simpler than that – just train kids, it will help you with everything else in life, certainly has mine! Ganbatte kudasai!
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