Chief Instructor Ed Francis 4th Degree Black Belt Aikido

20 Years experience teaching in the U.S. and Japan.

So why would you send your child to school armed with a kick or a punch?

    Dojin Aikikai offers to children the ability to truly protect themselves from the aggressive actions of other students or even adults. We do not teach students the skills of punching or kicking as a way of defending themselves. They are taught how to react to an attack against them by using the attackers body and movement to defeat the attacker.

We teach children to avoid conflict first then to only use the skills of Aikido when everything else has been done to prevent the problem. We feel that by teaching a child to strike at an early age the results of the child's attempt to defend him or her-self can be serious. Aikido does not require strikes to defend. Aikido uses the attackers force to make a technique work. This means that an attack has to be made before the defending child can respond with an Aikido skill. Look at it this way. If your child is involved in a altercation with another child and it is only verbal, your child can not do anything or hurt anyone unless he or she is attacked physically. Then the skills of Aikido are meant to defend and not injure the attacker using avoidance and control techniques. If need be they are taught pinning movements to keep an attacked down until an adult or teacher can assist in stopping the problem. This helps show that your child did not provoke the problem and did not act out with strikes. All children are prone to act without thinking and let their emotions take control. So if they can not act to soon because they do not know how until the attack physically starts. Then you are assisting them by teaching them that they maybe able to stop the problem by talking it out before it becomes an actual fight. If you teach a child to punch or kick as a way to defend themselves then you must be prepared to deal with the responsibility that your child, like all children, will act with their emotions and sometimes strike first and injure someone. These emotions are anger and fear. Both are very powerful and do not take much to activate in a young person. Also that sometimes they do not know that the strikes that they have been taught can result in injures above what they expected, sometimes even death. Are you ready and willing to except that responsibility. I'm a parent. I know what my answer is, so my son attends our classes. as will my younger son when he is at the right age.

Contact me to find out more. Sensei Allen Turner

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