Taekwondo questions

[Anonymous]

My daughter started taekwondo about 2 years ago and likes it very much. However, the school puts a lot of pressure on the kids to compete constantly, and now are pressuring the kids her age to enter a “leadership” program that costs another $250 a month for an extra class thar has some mysterious benefit they can’t explain but will help them be “better” at Martial arts.
The black belts in the class travel constantly for competitions and I have no idea how any of these people can afford to travel every month or more often and sometimes it’s out of the country. They have specifically targeted my daughter and she’s upset I can’t really spend more than we are already because rhey have convinced her it’s necessary and she’s “so talented” .
Why couldn’t she just take classes?are all studios this high pressure to compete constantly? It seems excessive and also slightly coercive to convince these kids that they can’t progress without these extra classes and all the travel .
I regret signing her up for sure, but now she’s so into it I don’t want to just take it away. I just don’t like the extreme nature of all of it.

[Anonymous]

Money grab OP. Nothing more to it.

[Anonymous]

What school? What age?

[Anonymous]

Try a different school. At the taekwondo studio my kids go to, to the best of my knowledge, competing is limited to once or twice a year and they are local (<60 min away)

[Anonymous]

Absolutely a money grab. For some reason, there’s a lot of that in TKD.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Try a different school. At the taekwondo studio my kids go to, to the best of my knowledge, competing is limited to once or twice a year and they are local (<60 min away)

OP here. Wow that would be nice. The pressure to compete here is intense, with some people literally traveling far and wide (last year they went somewhere in South America) multiple times a year. And they make it seem like it's nothing, but even just with having to take time off of work it has to be so expensive, let alone airfare, hotels, etc. And they all act like it's nothing to do this about 15 times a year...although some are more local of course.

I regret starting this and now they have convinced her that she should do it, too, and she's 16 so of course agrees with them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely a money grab. For some reason, there’s a lot of that in TKD.

OP here. Yes, that's what it seems like, although I'm pretty concerned, too, with the general attitude that this should consume all of your free time.
I truly don't know how a few of these families are even able to have jobs with how much traveling and spending time on the weekends competing even locally.

My other kids were in travel soccer for a few years and it was nothing compared to this.

It's extreme and I hate extremes of anything.

[Anonymous]

My kids were involved in a high pressure expensive school like that when they were young. It was time consuming and expensive. We don’t have any regrets because we could afford it, had no delusions to what it was and our kid loved it. He wasn’t involved in other sports and it gave him a ton of confidence in elementary school and a social life. If you are in that situation, it’s worth it, if you have the time and money.

For our other kid, it wasn’t worth it and he quickly stopped. But he got involved in the world of other travel sports, which was equally crazy and expensive in other ways.

[Anonymous]

10:03 posting more, it didn’t consume all of our free time. We dropped off and picked off during the week. We didn’t stay. On the weekends, yes, tournaments were often the entire time. But that can be any sport.

My attitude has always been to not join a club or team if I’m not willing to drive or fly to the required tournaments and if we can’t make it work with our schedules or a carpool. It sounds like you need to switch.

[Anonymous]

Find another dojang. My adult child has practiced TKD for over 15 years and has *never* competed (or been pressured to do so). That’s just not something their curriculum focuses on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:10:03 posting more, it didn’t consume all of our free time. We dropped off and picked off during the week. We didn’t stay. On the weekends, yes, tournaments were often the entire time. But that can be any sport.

My attitude has always been to not join a club or team if I’m not willing to drive or fly to the required tournaments and if we can’t make it work with our schedules or a carpool. It sounds like you need to switch.

Thanks for the input. My fault for not realizing it wasn’t just classes I guess. Once or twice a year competition would have been fine. But with other children I’m not flying places for the tournaments though. And I don’t like the constant talk to them as if they are the end goal and they are the most important thing either. I was there one day when the teacher was harassing my daughter about not going to the next competition and I had to step in and shut it down. However; when they make the children believe that the competitions ARE the point of it all, it becomes a source of conflict with the child.
Buyer beware I guess