Parents Training in Martial Arts Together with Their Children: A Priceless Family Activity

If you are unsure whether an adult can start from scratch, my own account of beginning karate at 42 is in starting karate between 30 and 60, and every programme we run is listed on the full course listing

The study martial arts increase oxytocin production tested the saliva of 68 jujitsu practitioners before and after training and found oxytocin rose immediately after high-intensity work, and that ground grappling raised it significantly more than punch-kick sparring. The authors attribute the difference to closer and longer tactile contact. It was measured in adult practitioners, not in parent-child pairs.

The second mechanism is consensual play fighting. The observational study of rough-and-tumble play and the regulation of aggression in father-child dyads found the quality of the play matters more than the quantity: when the adult holds the pace and the boundaries, this kind of play is associated with lower aggression, and when the adult does not, the association can reverse. In a dojo, the rules, the instructor, and the bow do that boundary-holding job.

Through these sessions my children learned that losing means getting back up, not something to be ashamed of. The safe-falling skill that underpins every throwing art is covered in Ukemi: falling safely in Judo

One officially announced example is the beginners' parent-and-child judo class run by the City of Hiroshima, open to children from five years old through elementary school together with a guardian, alongside the trial classes for complete beginners run by the All Japan Judo Federation, which people can join without owning a judogi. Neither is aimed at producing Olympic athletes; both open a door for a whole household at once.

What I actually carry over is the etiquette, starting with the bow before stepping onto the mat. I wrote about that in what a Dojo is and the spirit of Budo, and it is the backbone of the classes at IMAC Dojo

Research by the advanced diagnostic imaging centre and the child safety research centre at Ramathibodi Hospital, reported in a special report on the brains of Thailand's child boxers, compared brain scans of about 300 child boxers with 200 children who did not fight. It found white-matter abnormalities and old microbleeds in the boxing group, and that those with more than five years of fighting had an average IQ around 88, roughly ten points below the standard level. The findings fed proposals to set a minimum age for win-loss bouts.

Today urban Muay Thai has largely become a health activity that a parent can take alongside a child, while taekwondo has become a popular choice for Thai families from kindergarten age because parents see it as protection against danger and against being bullied. That last observation is what I see in the industry, not a survey figure, and the comparison between disciplines for children is covered in karate versus taekwondo for children

For parents specifically worried about violence at school, I wrote a separate article at reducing school violence with the right self-defence training

The study on the mediating role of perfectionism between parental involvement and young athletes' performance found parental pressure predicts both perfectionistic striving and negative reactions to falling short, while the clinical report on overuse injuries, overtraining, and burnout in young athletes from the American Academy of Pediatrics links intensive year-round training without rest to burnout and dropout.

The often-quoted figure that around 70 percent of young people quit sport before the age of 13 comes from a United States youth-sport organisation's poll and has since been questioned for having no traceable source. I do not use it as a conclusion. I use it as a reminder that children really do quit when the fun runs out, and that the most fragile moment is the car ride home after a competition.

Training with your child on the mat is the remedy I trust most, because it makes the parent meet failure first, and the ego shrinks on its own after that.

Every course's times and fees sit on one page at the schedule and pricing page, and the beginners' judo class is at the Judo course