Saturday morning, we’re eating breakfast together and my son has us watching that goofy cartoon show, Spongebob Squarepants. When my wife and I first saw this show some years ago, it looked awful and dumb. But soon I had to admit that despite appearances, it was usually funny and frequently hilarious. Nothing wrong with a good laugh. Anyway today the episode featured Spongebob in a complete panic over the threats of a hulking bully at school. Oddly enough, when the dreaded confrontation arrived, Spongebob’s softness and lack of substance rendered the bully’s attack harmless. (If only taiji were that easy!)
After the show I remembered a few years ago when the father of one of my son’s classmates asked me for some martial arts advice. This rarely happens, and that’s as it should be because I don’t know much. But the other man (who knew I was studying taiji) said that he wanted his son to get some self-defense training but of a purely defensive nature. He had in mind for the boy to learn “deflections” that could de-escalate boyish fights. I said I’d get back to him on this.
Some time later I came back with advice. I told the man that deflections were great, but in many situations, a bully wasn’t going to give up just because his initial attack(s) was inconclusive. I said that in good conscience, I didn’t want to help give his son a little knowledge that could be dangerous — dangerous because it might teach how to tread water but not how to swim.
Also there’s the issue of taiji quan not being especially suitable for kids. I might have mentioned judo, I can’t remember. The other man has sort of a pacifist outlook but I felt obliged to point out that one can’t just count on “deflecting” an attacker who will eventually run out of steam. I did find a couple of MA training video clips, I think they were Chen Style moves that could end a fight quickly if successful, and could be approached as hard-MA even without chansi jin (IMHO). Just to provide some food for thought about fighting and not getting beat up. When my own son was quite young we took a special seminar about protection from not just bullies, but adult predators. But that’s another story, maybe I’ll post on that too, the thought just occurred to me.


