Apparently, the Jiu-Jitsu is Working
I signed my daughter up for discipline and exercise. The confidence showed up first.
Disclaimer: At the risk of sounding like I’m tooting my own parental horn, I’m going to toot it a little.
Last week at IBJJA was promotion week for the kids. Lyla landed two new stripes on her belt, so she’s trucking right along. Actually, Gabby and I were talking about her jiu-jitsu journey thus far, and she seems to be doing pretty darn well in class lately. She’s been going 1–2 times per week for a little over a year now and has progressed from incessantly picking her nose and legitimately causing a ruckus every 45 seconds to only occasionally picking her nose.
We’ve also adopted some of her class routines at home. Coach Matt’s “put a bubble in your mouth” instruction (the cue for the kids to puff out their cheeks and stop talking) and Coach Lacey’s “show me you’re listening” phrasing (another cue to stop and pay attention) both regularly get used around the house, among other things.
It’s been great. And that leads me to the playground event from several weeks ago.
Gabby, the kids, some friends of ours, and I were at the park. Lyla, Charlotte, and their friend were all playing about 30 yards away on playground equipment they had entirely to themselves.
Their friend was chasing them around with a stick, pretend-shooting them with it, when three random young kids (maybe high-school-freshman-ish-aged) showed up. And just like every movie ever, there was a super tall skinny one, a short portly one, and a normal-sized one with way too much fluffy hair.
The stick-gun got pointed at the skinny one, and he walked up, grabbed my kid’s friend by the wrist, physically removed the stick from her grasp, and threw it off into the distance.
Lyla ran up to him and started very confidently berating him, which I could easily hear from 30ish yards away.
“You’re a bully! You can’t just take that! Go bring it back! You’re going to go to jail!”
I started to get up to intervene, but then the kid actually went and got the stick and brought it back over to where they were.
Silly me, thinking that was the end of it, I sat back down.
That doofus walked right past them, threw it into a nearby creek, then came back to them and said, “There, it’s in the creek now. Go swimming if you want to get it back.”
Pro tip: That is not something anyone should ever tell kids aged five and under.
Anyway, that lanky turd waffle started to walk away, and Lyla ran up behind him, berating him even more loudly this time.
“You’re a stealer! You can’t just take that! Go get it back! You’re going to go to jail for that! You’re a bully!”
I started quickly walking over and, as I was closing the distance, Lyla connected with him from behind and grabbed him around the waist under his arms so quickly I literally heard her hands clap together in front of him from 10 feet away.
Then she extended her right foot to the outside of his right foot to trap it and began rocking herself and him to the side to take him down.
That’s when I was finally close enough to grab her by the arms and peel her off him. But not before she had off-balanced him and completely caught him by surprise.
She seemed surprised to see me and immediately began angrily filling me in.
“That boy is a bully and a stealer and stole our stick and threw it and won’t give it back and he’s bad and needs to go to jail.”
That sentient coat hanger and his friends quickly disappeared elsewhere into the park.
Gabby and I talked with Lyla about it on the way home and asked what her line of thinking was.
She said, “I was going to take him down, get to mount, and make him go get the stick and bring it back. He can’t just do that and bully people.”
The takedown-to-mount sequence she nearly completed was the one they had been drilling that week. As far as proper jiu-jitsu technique is concerned, it was actually quite impressive to watch and about as technically accurate as a 5-year-old could make it.
Parenting is weird because sometimes your wins don’t look like what you expected.
We signed her up for jiu-jitsu so she’d get some exercise, learn discipline, make friends, and maybe pick up a little self-defense along the way. I wasn’t expecting to watch a five-year-old attempt a technically-sound takedown on a playground bully.
But the takedown isn’t really the point.
For the last year she’s been practicing difficult things, getting corrected, struggling through techniques, and learning that she can do hard things if she keeps showing up. The takedown was just the visible result of all that work.
The part that made me most proud wasn’t that she nearly pulled it off (impressive though it was). It was that she saw someone picking on her friend and immediately decided that wasn’t okay. She didn’t freeze, she didn’t look around for someone else to handle it, and she wasn’t intimidated by someone much older than she was.
We’ll keep working on judgment and restraint. But seeing that kind of confidence and willingness to stand up for other people? I’ll take that as a win.
Lyla is going to be an absolute monster on the mats one day.
I can’t wait for Charlotte to start training next year.