0 Introduction
This is going to be a first approximation, a first try at putting into words my perspective on teaching kids Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ), which also informs all my other interactions with kids. I want to focus on the pedagogical aspects of teaching BJJ and leave the technical stuff for another time.
The following are some concepts that seem important to me to understand in order to have the best results in teaching and interacting with kids. There is probably a lot more happening implicitly, but these concepts stood out to me as I saw colleagues acting in contrast to my way of teaching, which is probably based on different understanding of the world and of what is important, as far as I can tell.
This is also the first thing to keep in mind: what actually IS important? What are our goals? Teaching BJJ techniques is the medium, not necessarily the message. Especially for younger kids, the focus shouldn’t be on “how good can they do X”, but rather on developing a secure sense of self, confidence, discipline and focus, the ability to deal with frustration and emotions in general, and all the other things that fall into this category. This should inform how you interact with the kids, how you design your lessons, what kind of atmosphere to create. The amount of kids who are going to do BJJ at a professional level are probably close to zero, so why would you design your class that way?
1 Views about the world
Your views about the world shape your behaviour and interactions, which in turn shape the world view of the kid. Is the world a safe place? Can you trust people, in general? Yes to both, I would say. A lot of people don’t, though, and so in turn think they have to teach their kids to be mistrusting and that the world is a dangerous place. Instilling negative primal world beliefs into kids has almost never positive effects. Quite the opposite: having negative beliefs about the world predicts less sucess, less flourishing and life satisfaction, worse health, more negative emotions and depression.
So please do your kids a favor and don’t tell them that the world is dangerous, that everyone has to fight for themselves, be wary, etc. (all things I already heard) - instead, try to paint a more optimistic view of the world, one where we help each other. We want a society which cooperates, which needs people that cooperate instead of defecting. So find out what your primal world beliefs are, recognize if they are negative and work to change them. At the very least, don’t give them to your kids.
2 Views about kids
Your interactions and behaviors towards kids are informed by how you view kids. Don’t commit the typical mind fallacy by thinking kids work the same way as you do. Even other adults most likely don’t work the same way internally as you do, for kids this is even more true. Things that are second nature to you, that you find intuitive and obvious might not be for the kid - it was just thrown into this world without any skills or knowledge and has to learn it on the way. They have no clue about your expectations, your culture, “common-sense” stuff, even something as basic as language and its mapping to reality should not be taking for granted in kids. Your verbal explanation might just be nonsense to them, or too complex. They are in this context of learning about movement for the first time, never before had they to translate these kinds of words into movement.
The same holds true for keeping focus and paying attention. This is a skill that is to be learned and that different kids are differently skilled at. It’s not a matter of “wanting”, more a matter of ability. There is no use in getting angry or frustrated with the kid not getting it right, because they are “not paying attention”. Chances are that your methods are not suited for the situation, if this happens. It would be of course very comfortable to just blame the kid for “not wanting enough” or something, when in reality you should be rethinking your methods and how you approach the teaching situation. If you see your kids fail regularly, maybe you have to adapt your teaching. Most of the time when a kid is not paying attention, doing some random stuff instead of the current task it is because it is either 1) exhausted or 2) didn’t understand the assignment or it’s too hard for them. Keep in mind the inferential distance by reflecting about the current abilities of the kid, don’t expect the distance to be short.
Dealing with emotions can be viewed in similar light. Per default, kids don’t know what their emotions are, what they mean, and how to deal with them. Don’t expect them to be able to regulate themselves and don’t try to talk kids out of their emotions, even if the emotion seems to be misplaced or over the top. “Don’t be sad”, “Stop Crying!”, “stop making a fuss out of this” and the likes are all rather useless. You wouldn’t want to be treated like this as an adult, so why treat kids this way? Instead, acknowledge the emotion by naming it and accepting that the kid now has this emotion. Help it go through the emotion and work with it. Help it learn the skill of understanding and regulating their emotions.
3 Failure culture
Implementing a positive failure culture seems obviously important to me, but seeing my colleagues get frustrated or even angry at kids doing mistakes, this seems to not be the case for everyone. Worst case the kids even get punished for not doing something correctly or as you wanted it. This is hardly expedient: the kid learns that if it tries, it might get punished. So it might not try at all. If it also gets punished for not trying, it might stop going to class altogether or will try to find other ways to get around participating. Punishment nearly never corrects behaviour in the way wanted, but results in evading strategies.link incentivizing kids post
Instead, try to install a sense of it being okay to make mistakes. The kids should feel comfortable not getting something. We learn from mistakes. Put the focus on trying at all and incentivize that. If the kid is unable to do something, if it fails repeatedly at something, the reason might be the explanation of the teacher. Try to improve your explanations instead. Or it might also just be way above the current skill set of the kid. Then find something else that is more suited.
If doing something wrong that is related to “correct behaviour” (which has to be learned and for the kid might not be as obvious as it is to you, e.g. keeping out of this specific area, or sitting in a certain way when we greet each other), it often is sufficient to point out the mistake (after having explained the rule of course). Most kids don’t want to do something wrong but are just distracted or might have forgotten about it. Give it the benefit of the doubt and tell it in a friendly manner, not accusing it. Like you would hopefully tell an adult friend that is tired or distracted.
4 Incentives
We are using incentives all the time, reinforcing good and bad behaviour all the like. Better to notice what you are doing and use incentives correctly to get kids to show desired behaviour.
It has been shown time and time again that only positive reinforcement really helps to build desired behaviour reliably and long-term. “You have to catch them being good” - wait for the desired behaviour, then reinforce by praising it that instance, right after they have done the thing. The reinforcement needs to be in close succession to the behaviour, in order to be effective.
Make sure to praise only what really is worthy of praise. Often kids will make a bid for your attention with something like “look what I have found”, just give them attention in the form of “yes, you have found x” and keep your praise for things that really deserve it.
Very important is to not (accidentally) reinforce undesired or bad behaviour by giving in to their wishes, e.g. letting them get away with throwing a tantrum and getting what they wanted. Giving in in this situation not only reinforces the kid to show this behaviour more often (after all it worked out), but also reinforces the adult, as the kid stopping his crying comes as a relief.
Punishment in general does not really work - the kid will find ways to evade the punishment before actually changing their behaviour to the desired one. Worst case, it doesn’t even know what the desired behaviour is. Using punishment only reinforces the person dealing out the punishment, by giving you a sense of high status when delivering the punishment.
From the Book “Don’t shoot the Dog”: “As a dolphin researcher whom I worked with sourly put it, ‘Nobody should be allowed to have a baby until they have first been required to train a chicken,’ meaning that the experience of getting results with a chicken, an organism that cannot be trained by force, should make it clear that you don’t need to use punishers to get results with a baby.” This applies to small kids too, up to a certain point.
5 Frames
Be attentive as to not fall into the frame of the kid. Teaching kids means deciding on the setting and rules of how we behave in certain situations. Kids don’t automatically know this and will start talking to you in every situation, asking you questions, will want to play with you. Often, the immediate reflex is to respond to the kid by answering their question, start talking or playing with them. But it might not be the appropiate time to do that and by accepting their frame you reinforce this behaviour. Instead, realize this and channel your inner Dr. Oak: “now is not the time to talk/play/ask questions!”
If the kid wants to play but you think it’s not the right time, it often is enough to tell the kid “not now, we can do that later”, which works a lot better than just telling it to stop. They know they can come back later to play at a more suitable point and are more likely to cooperate. Often times they didn’t take me up on that offer and forgot about it anyway.
6 Other
There are some other, smaller things that I noticed work well and that weren’t obvious before, at least to me.
Small kids sometimes start crying and won’t stop, even if it is because of some small and random thing. The kid then gets into this mode of crying where it’s hard to communicate with it. I haven’t found a foolproof way to calm them down, sometimes they just have to go through the emotion until they stop by themselves. Sometimes it works to reassure them, speak calmly to them and distract them with something else. If they stop focusing on the pain (or whatever) because you are telling them a story, asking about their plans for today, being silly with them, then the pain is not there.
As it happens often in class that one kid hurts another, maybe accidentally, help the kids reconcile this. Don’t get mad, just explain to the kid what happened, that it hurt the other kid and how could we help them feel better? Maybe go over to him and say sorry? 9/10 times the other kid forgives immediately and instantly feels better.
Something I use to get the attention of the class and get them to be quiet: introducing some call and response thing. I clap in a certain rhythm, they have to clap in the same rhythm right afterwards and then be quiet. Practice it with the kids at first and every time it doesn’t properly work, reinforcing them when they are quiet and focused right afterwards. Easy group silencer that works without screaming at the kids that “they should be quiet as I said before” or something similar. They are kids, they probably forgot that they should be quiet the minute after you said it.
Having a plan and a structure helps free up your mind to pay attention to the details, to look more closely what is happening with the kids and what they need. Prepare classes, take note what worked and what not - build up a model of what kids can do at what age. What kind of explanation can they understand? What motorical skills do they have or lack? How long can they hold attention?
All this is of course not exhaustive, but rather that which came to mind after thinking about it for some time. I’m sure there are other useful concepts to think about in this context, I hope to be able to address them in the future at one point.