Martial Musings with Grant Buchanan of Mile High Karate and Youngforest Tai Chi

Last week we discussed ‘fun' – what it is and how we should establish for our children that fun is the result of hard work and achieving goals, rather than vacantly watching TV, playing video games or uncontrollable hyper destructive play.

The other bit of education we must work on with our children is our use of language and how we program them for successful thinking.

If you think you can or you can't you're right – our language not only determines who we are, but pre-programs our children's expectations of their own outcomes. I love working with parents on how they speak with their kids and seeing profound change as children rewrite their own internal dialogue.

In the last week I have heard; 'Don't worry, I was hopeless at maths”; 'Don't worry, I never had many friends at school”; 'That's okay, none of us are sporty”; 'Of course we are big boned”.

We all can fall into these language traps and confidence knockers instructing subliminally our child's responses and reinforcing our own. There's never been better resources for dedicated parents to remedy any of the examples I have given and break that cycle of lack of belief. Simple changes are usually profound; 'I know what it's like to have to work hard at maths, but we know you can do anything you make your mind up about so let's make a decision to get on top of maths this year”.

The other component for our Mile High Karate students is an instructor, mentor, role model reinforcing that they can do and be anything they want as long as they work at it and celebrating every little success along the way.