Parents - stop making excuses for your kids

You set the tone for the way that your child perceives the world. The best example you can set is to train alongside them...

Over the past few months, I've witnessed numerous occasions when students have fallen short of the mark, only to have parents start blaming everyone except their kids.

In one instance, a young man who had deservedly high expectations was comprehensively beaten in kumite. After the fight, the father blamed everyone but his son. First it was poor refereeing. Then it was an unfairly matched bout. Then it was the quality of the training  the boy received. The actual truth was plain to see. From the off, the young man was not on his top game that day, and he was intimidated by his opponent, and he didn't move very well. That was nobody's fault but his own. He had an off day. Whether that was because of poor physical preparation, or it was just one of those days, is irrelevant. His psychological game has always been far weaker than his physical abilities, and he'd been coached to deal with that, but ultimately, when the pressure was on, he reverted to old habits and lost comprehensively.

In another instance, a team lost in team kata, coming third. The mother of one competitor complained, accusing one of the judges of bias. Not once did she ask the judges how they'd arrived at their score, or why her son's team came third. Even so, the chief judge that day took the trouble at the time, to explain to her son's team what the problem was: although the team performed individually excellent katas, each of them performed them slightly differently, whereas the other two teams, who were individually no worse (and incidentally, put in far, far more practice), also performed their katas in exactly the same way as their other team-mates. But did she heed this fact? Did she look inwards, and suggest to the team that this was an aspect that they should focus on? Did she notice the fact that it was her son most notably, who was different to the others? Did she even have the modesty to acknowledge that as a spectator, not conversant in the subtleties of refereeing top-level teams, that she may not even understand all of the criteria by which the teams were being judged? Did it even occur to her that all three judges had independently reached exactly the same conclusion about the relative placement of the teams? Of course not - her instinct was to find someone else to blame.

In another case, a child with a behavioural condition was becoming increasingly out of control and disruptive in the class, and when the child was eventually pulled into line, his mother accused the sensei of bias, and of failing to take the child's condition into consideration. She didn't acknowledge the fact that the other students had a right to train without getting hit. She refused to accept that in a class of 30 or 40 students, one child could not monopolise the entire class, and do only those bits that he deemed worthy of him. When it was pointed out that his crying tantrums or constant outbursts were unfair on those students who wanted to train, she threw back the "Karate for Everyone" philosophy in her sensei's face, implying  that it meant that no matter how disruptive and lazy her child was, he was entitled to continue training to the detriment of everyone else in the class, because after all, he had "a condition". He DOES have a legitimate condition, but that only cuts so much slack. Senseis are not psychologists, baby-sitters or prison warders. It is not our job to give one-to-one therapy to a single special needs student, no matter how needy that child may be.

In yet another case, there was an older teenager who's appalling etiquette finally crossed the line, causing his sensei to ban him from training for two weeks. When his mother was informed of the actions to be taken, she immediately started listing off other badly behaved students, and saying that the ban might cause the boy to quit because he trained so often. Oh and, maybe he hadn't taken his ADHD tablets that week... No thought of the fact that as the highest graded kid in the class, this boy was a role model for dozens. No recognition of the fact that this boy repeatedly crossed the line, and this latest particularly bad incident was just the icing on the cake. Just excuses, excuses, excuses.

Parents, it's up to YOU to shape the way that your kids see the world. As soon as something happens, you can commiserate, and tell them how badly they've been treated, even when it's not true. Or you can do something constructive.

So, excuse-making parents, have you ever considered the harm that you're doing to your kids with this behaviour? You're teaching them that when things go wrong, blame anyone and anything except themselves. Let's not worry about analysing our actions to see if we can improve our own situation. Let's not look impartially at the situation to see if there might be a valuable lesson to learn. Let's not impose boundaries. Let's not hold our kids accountable for their own actions sometimes. Let's not bother to grow - let's just blame, blame, blame.

And then, when your kids grow up to be underperforming excuse makers, fit only for a job as labourers, you can blame the schools for not making the exams easier, and the universities for not accepting your kids with their poor discipline records, and you can accuse potential employers of prejudice. And you can do all this, safe in the knowledge that although your kids will have shallow, unfulfilling lives, at least it was not their fault. It was probably yours.