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You win some…you lose some

parents-playing-tag-with-sonWe have all done it; slowed down to let your preschooler win a race to the car, happen to forget where the matching card was in a memory game, miss a shot in a game of HORSE with your son. We do these things because we want our kids to feel good, boost their self-confidence, to keep them from feeling sad. But by losing intentionally, we just may be hurting our kids instead of helping them.

Our children are being raised in a very different world. When we were growing up there was one winner, and they got the trophy, the prize, the shiny medal. Now- a- days every child goes home with a ribbon because we don’t want anyone to feel bad. While a nice gesture, it just may be promoting a generation of entitled kids who don’t know how to deal with losing.

But, the fact is we don’t always win in life. Sometimes the job you applied for goes to someone else, you may get passed over for a promotion or you lose the election for PTA president. But hopefully when those things happen, you are able to accept the loss with dignity and grace. This is exactly how we want our children to act as well. Whether they are playing baseball or a game of monopoly, the only way they will learn how to be a good loser is if they have a chance to lose some times. That is why it is so important that you allow your children to feel the disappointment and show them how to act at home, in a safe environment, so that when it happens at the ballpark or in school they will know how to act.

By losing, your child may become motivated to try harder next time. It can encourage them to practice and improve their skills so that next time they have a better chance at winning the game on their own, getting a better grade on that math test and eventually getting that promotion at work. Losing can also teach your child empathy. Every time they lose, they have a chance to understand what it feels like and how everyone has struggles in life. It is a chance to show them that you value effort more than victories and that it is how we deal with those struggles that life gives us that really matters. Will we be beaten down and give up? Or do we congratulate others who have succeeded and use that experience to work hard so we too can experience our own successes?

So the next time your child says to you, “I’ll race you to the car,” RACE them, and if you win so be it! High five your child and tell them they ran a good race. Sure your child may be sad for a while, but you can use the moment to teach them about losing and winning with grace; so that when a bigger loss comes, they’ll have the skills to handle it!

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Striving

DSC_0024If you have read many of my posts, you’ve maybe noticed that no matter what sort of issue I am puzzling over, I always find myself coming back to yin yang theory and balance. When I ask myself what is good or which of two things is better, I always seem to conclude that everything exists in a continuum with its opposite, and that the two are inseparable, and the healthy range of behavior or evaluation on the continuum varies very much depending on the situation.

So to continue this trend, I want to talk about striving.

Certainly in certain contexts striving seems to be critical. When you are at a kungfu school, for instance. Kungfu is exactly the outcome of long-term, continual effort. We say here at the school, “Kungfu equals time multiplied by sweat.”

But striving so often seems to mean discontent and happiness, doesn’t it? We focus on the thing we want, the thing we can’t do, the unattained goal, and the distance to that goal seems so big and we feel we’ll never reach it and it is a terrible feeling. The other day, Shifu was talking about contentedness. He pointed out that, as an organism, all a person really needs to exist is nutrients – food and water. So unhappiness that rises not from hunger or thirst is the product of the mind and the mind alone. He compared us to trees – never having a mind, they grow and flourish without worry, as tall as their environment will allow.

One of my classmates replied with a story. He said he was in Peru once and a humble cheese-maker, who spent his days in his trade but mostly on his porch surrounded by his family,  asked him, “Is it true that Americans are all very busy all the time?” My classmate agreed that was true. And the cheese-maker just started laughing as if that was the silliest thing he had ever heard. All of American wealth and prosperity and industry was a big joke to this poor Peruvian who knew he had what he needed. Shifu liked that story.

I have been stumped in trying to untangle the idea of striving into its continuum and opposite, its yin and yang. But I think this is because striving is actually the name we give the intersection of two more fundamental pairings: work and rest, and agitation and calm. Striving is the name for working agitatedly. It does not have a direct opposite of its own because it exists in a complex continuum with resting calmly, resting agitatedly, and working calmly. It is hard to see the value of working or resting in an agitated way, and indeed much of my time is spent trying to free myself from habitual agitation in any mode. But remembering the model of yin and yang, I am forced to reflect that agitation too has its time and place.

Because even balance has to be balanced with imbalance – perfectly balanced forces are static, and what is life if not dynamic?

 

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Lil’ Dragon Classes

Lil’ Dragons (Age 5/6 – Kindergarten & First Grade)

Portfolio-young classThe Lil’ Dragon program for 5 and 6 year olds is taught in two classes per week (Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday). We believe that our 5 & 6 year old students (Kindergarten and First graders) still learn the best by play. Based on this belief, we use instructional approaches that fit their needs. We constantly work to identify safe, innovate, and fun ways to connect with our students to make their training something beyond learning to kick and punch. A major focus continues to be to teach how to help and serve others. In addition to the physical work they are doing, they continue to practice doing acts of kindness and will begin to learn how to lead their own projects of service to their community. We emphasize to them that their most important team is their family and the need to contribute to the family by doing chores without being asked is a part they can do to contribute.

Session begins Monday August 25, 2014
For information on Summer Schedule please call 410-263-0050