We tried soccer. We tried swim. We tried dance. Nothing has clicked.
I have heard that sentence, in one form or another, from 31 of the last 37 families who sat down with us. That is almost everyone. So let me tell you what I think is actually going on, because it is not what most parents think.
What the carousel quietly teaches
Here is what worries me about the carousel of activities. It is not the money. It is not even the schedule, though I know that one is real. It is what your child learns about himself along the way.
A child who starts six things and finishes none of them is not learning that he has not found his thing yet. He is learning something quieter than that. He is learning that when something gets hard, that is the signal to leave.
And that lesson does not stay in the gym. It follows him into homework, into a first job, and eventually into a marriage. Nobody sets out to teach that. But six seasons in, it has been taught.
Every activity has two phases
In more than 20 years of teaching, this is what I have learned: every activity has two phases.
Phase one is new. Everybody is nice. The uniform is exciting. Your child gets attention just for showing up. Phase one feels great, and phase one is incomplete.
Phase two starts somewhere around week six or week eight. The newness is gone. Now it is just Tuesday. The thing your child could not do in week one, he still cannot do in week seven, and now he has to do the boring version of it forty more times. Phase two is where the actual person gets built.
Here is the part I want you to hear. Clicking does not happen in phase one. Clicking happens on the other side of phase two.
So when a family tells me nothing has clicked, what I usually find is that they have done phase one six times. Six times. And they have never once been through phase two. It is not that your child has not found the right activity. It is that nobody has walked him through the boring part yet.
I am not telling you to force a child to do something he hates. That is not it either. I have been wrong about plenty in 20 years. But I have never once seen a child fall in love with something during phase one and stay in love with it. The love comes later. It comes after he does the hard thing and finds out he can.
What phase two looks like on our mat
At Ko Martial Arts, we do not test for belts whenever a student feels ready. Our belt cycle runs on a set calendar, and everybody in the room is working toward the same date.
To test at the end of a cycle, a student has to have earned every stripe along the way, and he has to have shown up. Both, not one or the other.
That means there is a stretch in every single cycle where a student is not close to a new belt. He is in the middle. It is week five, and nothing is new anymore. That is on purpose. That stretch is the product.
A mother once told me her daughter traveled with the family, missed a few weeks, and came back behind her class. Her daughter hated it. I mean, she hated it. And the mom was telling me this like it was a problem.
It was not a problem. That was the day it stopped being something her mom drove her to and started being hers. You cannot manufacture that in phase one. You only get there by staying.
If you are on the carousel right now
Here is what I would do, and it does not require you to call anybody.
- Pick the next thing your child starts, whatever it is.
- Decide before the first day that you are going through phase two.
- Say it out loud to him. Tell him it is going to get boring around week six, and that you are going anyway.
That one conversation before it gets hard does more than anything you can say after.
If you would like that next thing to be here, the first step is an Intro to KOMA, and it is complimentary. Your child gets on the mat. We see how he moves and how he listens, and together we find out whether this is a fit. For some families it is not, and we will tell you that honestly.
Either way, whatever you choose next, go through phase two. That is where your child is.
Ready to see if Ko Martial Arts is a fit? Book an Intro to KOMA.
Our locations
Ko Martial Arts, South Overland Park: 15030 Antioch Road, Overland Park, KS 66221, 913.851.2400
Ko Martial Arts, North Olathe: 21701 College Blvd, Olathe, KS 66061, 913.829.2929
Ko Martial Arts, Prairie Village: 5320 W 95th St Unit B107, Prairie Village, KS 66207, 913.228.0555
Serving families throughout Johnson County, including Overland Park, Olathe, Prairie Village, Leawood, Lenexa, Shawnee, and Mission since 2006.
