In the Washington Post Joel Stein muses over whether a dad should teach his kid to fight:
Three years ago, I had a son. And after a lifetime of thinking that fighting was barbarism easily avoided, I found myself wanting him to know how to fight. I realized that not knowing how to defend myself has made me live in fear, or at least fear of going to biker bars, which I never really wanted to do anyway. But still, fear. And I don’t want my son to feel that way.
I knew that if I wanted to be a good dad, I had to change myself. I had to immerse myself in the foreign land of masculinity to learn its language. I wanted to show baby Laszlo that fears are just a list of things to be done. And I hoped to get to a point where I could say manly things like that out loud without cracking up.
I think that every kid, son or daughter should learn how to fight whether taught by their dad, mom, or by somebody else. They should have power, learn to control it, how to avoid trouble, and most importantly, when to fight to defend themselves or others.
I have some sympathy with Stein’s dad, a scarred-knuckled Brooklyn Jew, veteran of any number of street fights, in some of which he was probably the aggressor. I was born with rage. According to my mom I had to be restrained at birth to prevent my striking out at anything that come into range—the nurses, my mom, anything. As a kid I routinely picked fights, always with kids older and bigger than me. That ended when my parents enrolled me for judo classes at the “Y”, an activity that occupied my energy, interests, attention, and aggression for decades thereafter (I also practiced fencing, karate, taekwondo, aikido, and kendo).
All of that practice helped me in my lifelong contest with my most daunting adversary—myself.
I don’t think I’ve ever been in an actual fist fight. There were little tussles when I was working in 24-hour restaurants and had to remove obnoxious customers. And a couple of close calls probably rescued by the fact that I’m big and the other guy had time to think about it.
The closest to a really bad fight came when a guy tried to bash in my door. I opened the door holding a 14 inch chef’s knife out of his view and he did me the favor of ramming his arm through a piece of reinforced glass and nearly bleeding out.
I’ve discussed it with my son a few times but I can’t say that he’s interested, and it now seems almost anachronistic. It doesn’t seem relevant to his actual life.
Been in a few fights. Got stabbed once. Got my son to do a year of karate, but he didnt really enjoy it. I did make sure he knows how to shoot.
Steve
Wasn’t much of a fighter. I was usually the guy who tried to mediate between combatants.
This is something, though, I’m thinking more about as the kids get older (now 8, 7, and 2) to be honest I haven’t quite decided what to do.
While I approve, enthusiastically, of studying the martial arts, I think that a year of karate is worse than useless for reasons along these lines. Don’t fall into a dinner party.
Just keep in mind that a martial art geared towards competition style fighting might not be that helpful when it comes to a street fight where there are no rules. In competition certain things are not allowed, but in a street fight all bets are off.
I remember once going to see a friend and he was teaching Tang Soo Do to kids that morning. They had a brief sparring session and one of the kids knocked down his/her opponent and moved back. My friend stopped them and said something to the effect of, “Don’t back away, when somebody is down is the best time to continue the attack. I know the idea of not kicking a person when they are down sounds nice and such, but that is the best time to kick them. And if you do go down, keep in mind that your opponent is going to take advantage of it and get ready, try to take advantage of them if they come in sloppy or unprotected.”