Important Life Skills Your Kids Learn While Fencing

Considering placing your teen in fencing? It's a terrific way to improve both emotional and physical health. Although the most direct benefit is through exercise, a structured fencing class can also help your child to learn, grow, and excel in school, work environments, and even socialization. It isn't just about swordfighting; nothing could be further from the truth. Look to these six important life skills to see how fencing can benefit your child's ability to succeed in subtle ways.

Discipline

Like martial arts and other sports that require a high degree of concentration, fencing requires a significant amount of discipline. As a life skill, discipline teaches children to follow "a code of order or rules," and that's essentially our society-at-large, too. As children progress through middle school and beyond, they, too must learn to follow the code of order that is our society; if they break the code (i.e. laws), they'll find themselves in hot water. Although the connection may not seem obvious at first, learning discipline through fencing will enable children to adapt to tougher grown-up life and difficult moments at school because they'll have the discipline to persevere.

Patience

Patience is quite possibly the second most important life skill your child can hold next to discipline. Any parent who goes into a toy store with a two-year-old likely knows the struggle; they want toys, and furthermore, they want them right now. But teaching your child that he or she must wait for a holiday or save their allowance before purchasing the toy is an excellent life lesson; they'll learn patience and that good things come to those who wait. Fencing teaches this same lesson by giving children to power to understand when it's best to wait and defend as well as when it's best to strike out at your opponent. In fact, a significant portion of fencing involves patiently watching for the right opportunity.

Sportsmanship

In the sport of fencing, you will win some and you'll lose some. That's simply how it is. Of course everyone likes to win more than they lose. But when your opponent does best you, you learn to take it in stride and use it as a learning experience rather than letting it get you down. Being able to gracefully accept wins and defeats is a critical part of your child's success, and she'll get plenty of practice, too. Better still, she'll learn how to work with a partner or team to resolve problems. Great sportsmanship has benefits far beyond just sport; it helps kids learn to be kind, friendly, and respectful of people they meet all throughout their lives.