Sometimes I can’t help but laugh when I hear people talk about teens. Although the teenage brain is still developing and it’s not uncommon for them to make really poor decisions, they are the smartest age group.
Yes, they are smarter than most adults! A teen may be a child at heart, but their critical thinking skills are top-notch, and put most adults to shame.
If you think back on your own teen years, and remember what life was like when we were that age, there are many times where our smarts got us into trouble but also helped solve problems and get out of trouble!
So, at Life Skill Academy, our coaches expect teens to initially make choices that are easy as compared to applying thought and effort. Our goal is to get them to see the bigger picture and apply their intellect.
Teens are also physically competent and can excel in most physical challenges that are presented to them. The problem we discovered is they are so focused on what is socially acceptable that they have a hard time keeping themselves emotionally driven to the task at hand.
Over the past thirty years of teaching, I’ve found the solution is to provide teens with their own program that targets their stage of development in a manner that nurtures their social and emotional instability while at the same time building skills that set them up for success. With that said a structured program introducing extreme skill-based training to become a martial arts athlete has proven to be very successful.
Emotionally – thanks to science, they are typically all over the emotional spectrum. This is more prominent in boys than girls. So, our coaches expect most teenager’s efforts to be based on what they think is cool. The goal for our Teen program is to help them apply intrinsic motivation and realize their true potential. Our goal is to also help them improve their decision making skills with drills that challenge their reaction time.
Socially – they care about what their peers think. If something is cool, then they will put more effort into it. Here, Life Skill instructors expect them to initially hold back if they are uncomfortable as a defense mechanism. The emotional skill goal for our Teen program is to help them feel that they excel at everything they do, especially in front of a crowd.
By understanding the stages of development of all the different age groups, we were able to select age-appropriate skills that make up then yet challenging LIFE SKILL Programs. For more info on our teen program go here: https://lifeskillma.com/program/teens-martial-arts/
