Before I went into grade school, having immigrated from the other side of the world and thrust straight into the North American education system, my mom told me to always be mindful of conflicts and do your best to avoid them. She told me that I should a) always try to deescalate a situation and avoid physical confrontation where I could, and b) to never take anything from anyone when that doesn’t work. Thus, I grew up fighting frequently. I should probably preface this by saying that I had been boxing and kickboxing since I was four, so instinctively the connection is likely to say that the competition and the training is what made me so hot-headed. On the contrary, I would like to argue that it made me more tranquil, and it is the main message of this article: Teach your kids to fight.
When I started training, it was nothing serious. Getting together a couple times a week with some fellow children to do some light physical activity and socialize with people outside of my school was like a godsend to a kid like me. As I grew older, however, the implication of training for competitions and sanctioned bouts loomed over my walking into the gym door every week. Hence, I had no time to really cause trouble at school because my mind was preoccupied. I would also like it to be known that I never started any physical conflicts myself, but I would never let them go unanswered. Regardless, being part of that fighting community and taking it into account as a sport rather than a self-defense tool really helped me avoid fighting because I didn’t see what I got out of it outside of the gym. Also, it turns out that kids don’t really want to fight someone that will almost certainly be able to rough them up, so that helped me deescalate situations more frequently, and even fights themselves would end quickly because again, no one wants to get hit. So in that sense, the self-defense aspect is a key component to de-escalating conflicts because people can feel the imbalance in ability and therefore will be less likely to actually further the situation.
If you know anything about the Dutch kickboxing style, you’ll know it’s essentially a world’s toughest person competition; you hit me hard, I hit you back harder until one of us quits. It’s really conducive to strong long term cognitive health, I know. But through that toughness is strength. You learn to be more confident in yourself and who you are, and as you get pushed to your limit, you find out what you have left to give when there’s nothing left to give. My training partners at my gym are some of the most confident people I’ve ever met outside the gym. However, all of that confidence is built and honed through the process of “losing” everyday in the gym. Without adversity, you have nothing to overcome, so struggle and stress can be an invaluable teacher with respect to enhancing your self-esteem and view of the world because you get to prove to yourself time and time again that you can climb over the barriers and obstacles in your way. This isn’t to say combat sports is the only way to get that experience, but overcoming adversity when you’re completely alone magnifies your confidence in yourself more so than any other team sport can.
I want to address a counterargument: teaching kids how to fight will make them more violent and therefore increase conflict in both the school system and outside environments. Taking my own anecdotal experience, I can confidently say this is anything but the case. I remember a couple of months ago I asked my training partners when the last time they fought someone was, excluding the training that goes on in the gym. Surprisingly, the answer is that many of them couldn’t even remember the last time they had a verbal fight, much less a physical one. Keep in mind these are twenty-something year olds coming from a wealth of socioeconomic backgrounds and areas of the province. I have seen naturally aggressive individuals walk through the gym doors, only to be sent out flying and humbled by the process; there’s always a bigger fish.
Returning to the main message, teach your kids to fight. It will give them self-confidence, mental and physical toughness, and of course key self-defense abilities, both emotional and physical, that will follow them throughout their lives. There are many “less violent” ways to solve a conflict through physical means (just look at the plethora of chokes in grappling styles of combat sports) and being able to have the confidence and ability to react in tense situations will reduce the likelihood of being a victim or a bystander. Regardless of if you enroll them in combat sports, teach them to be tough, be confident, but most importantly, never fight someone with cauliflower ears.