I don’t usually follow the UFC too closely, but last Saturday night we were invited to a friend’s house to watch the fights.<\/p>\n
There were plenty of people there with their families. Kids aged from new born (that’d be us) to early teen years. It was a good night and some of the fights were good too.<\/p>\n
I enjoy watching the tactical\/strategic aspect of the fight, but once someone clearly can’t defend themselves (due to being unconscious or very close too it) and then being pounded senseless with 5 or 6 additional strikes to the head, is when I turn off. There’s no skill involved when it gets to that stage. It just looks like a gang beating.<\/p>\n
To watch someone be split open with blood pouring out of their head, their eyes swollen shut, be repeatedly beaten and then strangled is very graphic.<\/p>\n
Yet at the party the parents of 4 year old kids were cheering and yelling and allowing their children to be in the same room witnessing everything that was going on.<\/p>\n
Monkey see, monkey do. They mimicked what was on the big screen TV. There it was… Two 4 year UFC fighters running about pounding into each other, punching with clenched fists, taking each other down to the floor, while the parents cheered them on.<\/p>\n Five minutes later one of the parents caught one of the kids hitting again and told them “We don’t hit!”.<\/p>\n Are you as confused as I am with the logic here? Imagine how confused the kids were!<\/em><\/p>\n Why is it ok for 4 year olds to be watching the UFC in the first place? Why do some parents encourage violent actions and promote graphic imagery as a positive part of their child’s development?<\/p>\n Fortunately most people wouldn’t teach their kids that it’s ok to hit another unless is was self defense, but the 4 year old who is encouraged to do it because their drunk parent gets excited watching the UFC is going to grow up confused, and maybe turn into the schoolyard bully.<\/p>\n As instructors who work so hard in teaching kids positive values through martial arts we will occasionally be faced with some parents who teach (perhaps unknowingly) the opposite.<\/p>\n Your thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don’t usually follow the UFC too closely, but last Saturday night we were invited to a friend’s house to watch the fights. There were plenty of people there with their families. Kids aged from new born (that’d be us) to early teen years. It was a good night and some of the fights were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/strong>
Clearly the kids saw the enjoyment the parents were receiving from watching the fight. So what did they do?<\/p>\n