United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

Well, it is still hard for me to read on this forum b/c of the size of the words, BUT I wanted to ask a quick question.
Does anyone have experience putting their BPI child into karate at a very young age? Ella will be 5 years old in September and wants to try karate. She came out of the blue one day and asked me if she could take karate lessons. I think it has something to do with the fact that her uncle is very involved in akido (sp?).
She said she wants to try karate instead of soccer which was the original plan for this fall. I know she will not hurt her arm more, but what if she continues to like karate and down the road in a few years it gets more involved with the throwing down and flipping to the ground. Can this hurt her? For now I would like for her to try it and we'll take it from there. Any experience or info would be great! Thanks!
Krista (Connecticut)

Krista,

I can't help you in regards to enrolling a BPI child in karate, but my 2 older kids were both in Tae Kwon Do for almost 4 years. My son was 7 and my daughter was 4 1/2 when they started. My son definitely had an easier time picking things up than my daughter. She struggled a bit being so young (but looked so adorable in the uniform - lol).

I'm not sure how different karate is, but in Tae Kwon Do there was never any throwing down or flipping to the ground. The only physical contact they had with the other kids was when they did sparring and the focus there is basically punches and kicks into the chest pads.

I think being involved in martial arts is a very positive experience for children. They teach a lot of life skills, respect, humility, etc. It was also great for learning about goal setting. They would earn a new belt and then set a goal for earning the next one. The long-term goal was a black belt. They both stayed long enough to earn their black belts and my son even got to a first-degree black belt.

Anyway, good luck with your decision.

Missy is too young by our clubs standards to enter into Karate, however (as I have posted in the past...just can't find it!) we have already spoken to the Sensei (master) in charge of the Canadian Wado Kai Federation about enrolling her. He is prepared to help MODIFY certain moves so that she will be able to perfrom them. (Missy's dad is a brown belt in Wado Kai - he will be a black belt by the time she is old enough to enroll, and will be one of her Sensei's!)

The men and women in charge of (most of) the dojo's are decent people and do not want to see young children hurt even accidentally.

My suggestion would be to avoid the karate diciplines that involve throws and more upper body moves (like Judo)and find one that concentrates on more lower body and footword.

There are so many different forms of karate that you will have a excellent variety to choose from.

If you want to see some of the ones that stress non-aggressive/non-violent philosophies, I've pasted a link for Budo karate here:
http://www.shotokai.com/ingles/introduc ... oeng2.html

As well, you can check out the USA Karate Federation. About halfway down their website page are links to some of the different varieties of karate.

http://www.usakarate.org/

Good luck and have fun!

Ginne

Thank you Lori and Ginne!

Ginne- can you email me? I have a couple of questions for you. Thanks! Ldybug4134@aol.com

~Krista~ (Connecticut)

Hey Krista, Danielle started SuBokDo Karate in June. She loves it. This is a no contact form of Korean Karate. I think it's great. They do 20 min. of stretching and cardio, then 30 min of Karate then a 10 min warm down. Most of the stretching she does is the same as what Michele in Boston told us to do. In fact when we went to Dr. Water's in July, he told us this was fine with him.
How are you and the girl's doing? Talk to you soon.-Dawn