What I Did With My Kids Today: Part 2

This is the second installment in my “What I Did With My Kids Today” series. At some point, I will add a dedicated category on the homepage which will link to all the associated articles, but since this is only the second one, I have some time before that’s a necessity.

As I mentioned in Part 1, I want to start documenting things I do with my children with more specificity and clarity. Often, when I write about the activities I do with my kids, those activities are kind of secondary to what I am wearing or to some parenting point I am trying to make or something like that.

This series is more solely dedicated to sharing the wonderful moments I share with my kids, but more specifically, sharing WHY I am doing this-or-that.

I want to make sure I am staying accountable! I want to parent with intention!

Let’s get on with it…

My boys are in a very interesting age range. My oldest is eight and my youngest is five. They are at the ages, especially my oldest, where they are starting to become interested in things that are more… not “grown-up”, really… but a little more mature than the things they liked a few years ago.

Some examples…

My oldest is now reading beginner chapter books.

He also really likes this Jurassic Park cartoon series on Netflix, which features much more peril than the shows he was watching even a year ago.

I was even able to show my boys an episode of The Twilight Zone recently!

Basically, my boys are getting into ages where I can start to share more of my own interests with them. And that’s really exciting!

As Christmas was drawing near, I was trying to think of something my boys would like that would also get them some exercise. All kids need to get their energy out, especially little boys.  

I decided to get them some boxing gloves and one of those big, water-filled, free-standing (I didn’t feel like drilling holes in the ceiling), heavy bags. I thought they might enjoy taking a few whacks at it now and then. I also decided that I would use it too, since I used to do martial arts (Tae Kwon Do, MMA, BJJ) back in the day and always enjoyed it.

When it comes to sports, my kids seem to take after me, as in, they prefer solo activities to team sports.

When I was young, I never really gravitated to playing sports on an organized team. I always played football and baseball with my friends, but the idea of being part of a proper league with adults looming around barking orders at me never really seemed all that appealing.

I was in high school before I played on an actual team (baseball) and I only did it for one year. It was an experience I certainly appreciated, but really only to say I did it.

Throughout my adolescence, I was also involved in Tae Kwon Do. Obviously, TKD has a bit of a “McDojo” reputation these days, which isn’t completely unwarranted. But the particular school I attended almost thirty years ago was legit and run by very competent people.

Fast forward to adulthood and I ended up joining a gym that morphed over time from MMA/wrestling-focused to strictly BJJ. I attended that gym on and off for about five years mainly for the fitness benefits.

Now, I was never more than a hobbyist at best when it came to martial arts, but I was always fairly decent at them, despite my complete lack of flexibility and fast-twitch muscle fibers.

What I liked most about them was how training them, even only on the hobbyist level, forced me to grow a great deal, personally.

Specifically, martial arts helped me learn how to stay calm and think clearly under pressure or fatigue (which was very helpful for someone with anxiety). More importantly, though, it helped me deal calmly with other’s aggression.

At this point, you might be asking what the point of all this is. That’s valid.

The point of me telling you about my own martial arts experiences is that, in buying my kids boxing gloves and a heavy bag, I wanted to introduce them, in a healthy, constructive way, to the “competitive masculinity” (for lack of a better term) they will encounter among groups of other boys/men in their lives.

Ok, that’s a very weird sentence which requires even more explanation…

When I was a kid, my dad wasn’t around very much so I was largely raised by my mom and two older sisters. Like I said, I never really liked participating in organized sports, so other than my friends (who were all similar temperament to me, obviously), I never really had much of a healthy male presence in my life. I was never in a “community” of boys, whether it was sports or scouts or other things like that (again, other than my friend group). That meant that things like competitiveness and healthy aggression, that are always present in groups of young boys, were things I felt very uncomfortable with because I wasn’t used to them.

Basically, the rough-and-tumble aspect of my childhood as a little boy wasn’t as robust as it should have been, because my dad wasn’t around enough to instill that resilience and confidence in me. Sure, he taught me how to field a grounder and throw a punch, but he needed to be AROUND more to make those lessons really stick and help me feel confident in those skills.

I want my sons to be used to the competitive dynamic that they will encounter, inevitably, with groups of other boys. Since they don’t play organized sports, I need to do that for them myself.

I don’t want them to be easily intimidated or frightened by the natural push-pull, jockeying-for-status “way” of other boys, the way I was as a kid.

Ok, now that that’s all settled…

It’s been almost two weeks since Christmas and my boys LOVE the boxing gloves and heavy bag! My oldest son can’t get enough of it. I have shown him basic punching combinations and kicks and he has been getting better and better each day.

Oh, he also really likes sparring with me! He became curious about it after I casually mentioned that “the bag doesn’t hit back”. He wanted to know what I meant, so I explained that hitting the bag and trying to hit a person (who is trying to hit you back) are very different experiences. Sparring, I told him, is very eye-opening. That intrigued him, so he told me he wanted to try it.

And want to know something funny? He’s better at it than I am! The kid doesn’t flinch at all.

It’s a fantastic workout for me, too, because I need to squat down in order to approximate his height.

He also soaks up instruction like a sponge. I showed him one time how to parry and counter a jab and he nails me with it consistently!

Most importantly… he is having FUN with it! Our bag/sparring sessions are certainly intense (as intense as is appropriate for an eight-year-old, obviously) but he is managing that intensity and competitiveness very well. Even when he gets a little discouraged, he pushes on through it.

It’s a very different experience for him than what he is used to. It’s not like playing with dinosaurs on the rug with his little brother… he is sweating and huffing and puffing and getting bopped in the face. I think the exhilaration is really speaking to him on an unfamiliar and exciting level. But I think it’s really beneficial!

Also, having him workout with me helps me stay consistent. I’ve been having so much fun having him as my little workout buddy! He even uses the bag by himself if I am busy at that moment.

At the end of each session, we share high-fives and sweaty hugs.

All in all, it’s been a fantastic experience. It’s exactly what I intended when I bought the gloves and bag.

And that’s what I mean when I say that we need to be INTENTIONAL with our parenting and the things we do with our kids.