How Jiu Jitsu Makes Calmer kids

It’s the mad “sign your kids up to stuff” scramble again, and like every parent, I’m trying to secure places for my daughter and schedule days in her activities.

I’ve 3 kids, and 2 of them are old enough to pick their own stuff, but we always tried to let them sample everything to see what they liked most, and to see what helped them the most. Between the 3 of them, just for sports, it’s been football, Gaelic football, hurling, swimming, basketball, gymnastics, water polo (really), Jiu Jitsu (of course), Muay Thai, MMA, and probably a few I’ve forgotten about.

If you have kids, you’ll have a similar list. There were only 2 non-negotiables in our house. Jiu Jitsu and swimming.

Why swimming? Well, it’s not just a sport, it’s a life skill. Falling into water is a danger that can very quickly kill you. Without being a sport swimmer, even knowing how to stay afloat and not panic until help arrives is a great skill in itself.

But leaving aside a disaster, you want your kid to be able to enjoy the great things water can provide. Even the craic of being at the beach with friends, or heading for a dip on a summer evening. I know this because I didn’t learn how to swim until my 20s! Never let your son experience the heartache of watching the girl he fancies swimming with his rival for her affections!

She wouldn’t have gone out with me anyway, but enough of my unrequited teenage loves.

I think of Jiu Jitsu in a similar way. Knowing how to fight is a life skill. It could save your life. Much is made of the threat to young women, but for young boys too the threat of violence, particularly in the adolescent and young adult years, is present in school and social situations. Knowing how to handle yourself, particularly not to panic in contact, is a vital life skill.

But there’s so much more to it that doesn’t get talked about. Grappling, believe it or not, is calming. Constant movement, squeezing and gripping, various movements for balance and coordination, and the constant contact are things that therapists know all about when it comes to calming down stressed kids. You might even have a squeezy stress ball at home for yourself. Imagine how good it is to have a class full of human ones?

What does that mean? Well, calmer kids who can access their frontal cortex more readily, and make better decisions. This isn’t my opinion, although I can call on years of first hand experience in my own life, as well as tonnes of second hand experience from watching and coaching the kids around me. This is the interaction between body and mind that is well founded in science.

Exercise is generally calming. That fight/flight centre of your brain that gets activated when you’re stressed is calmed by all exercise, but activities that involve balance, coordination, squeezing, and gripping are known to get that animal side under control and allow you to think more clearly and calmly.

Like, maybe. I’m not saying your mad kid is going to become the Dalai Lama, but he might decide to step away from a fight, or eat broccoli. Let’s start small.

And there are lots of other things too, like friendship, respect, discipline, balance, coordination, but we’ve only got so much time this morning.

See you on the mat!

Barry