To feel totally repulsed and horrified by this news item about my son's martial art club

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thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/1551975-taekwondo-coach-suspended-for-disciplining-teen-n.s.-governing-body-conducting-an

I just randomly came across this news article about my son's martial arts instructor, and I feel really sick. I'm considering withdrawing him but feel that's not a rational response. Fees are also paid for the next three months. Son has been going to this club for several years, never any incidents - the instructor/owner always seems like a perfectly nice polite guy, never saw him yell or anything at students (unlike some other instructors there). What are your reactions? Thanks.

Exactly, Pengwynn Although I do not think OP would be unreasonable to pull her child out. Some people are uncomfortable with corporal punishment and that is their right. I must admit if the caned child had been much younger I would have issue with it. I have never liked the idea of caning children tbh. I do not think it is damaging in the same way sexual assault is, but I personally think there are more effective ways of disciplining a chidl than giving them a whack.

WellThisisShit

brainwashing and coercion due to loyalty and group belonging/leader worship

That is a good point actually. I had not thought of the peer group aspect of it. That changes my views a little now.

wheekwheek
Your father was wrong to shout and scream and name call. It sounds as if you had learnt things, which enabled you to leave home at 16. And what you are fundamentally missing is that you were given permission to leave. Not all teens or even adults are that strong or know they have the right to leave or walk away. I didn’t know I had these rights when my mother bullied, manipulated and abused me and for example whacked me hard on the face/nose when I was 17 or when my brother was doing the same and worse. Or when I was being bullied by her even into my 40’s and pushed over and threatened with violence from my brother.

I likened the situation in this thread to be a little like grooming upthread. For everyone to accept the situation, the instructor is instilling a certain mindset into the children and their families. That mindset appears to include the use of corporal punishment.

You cannot extrapolate your one life experience and say no teen would have accepted this if they didn’t want. As Penggggwyn said, no one knows why the teen (and I would add the parents) allowed himself to be caned.

Cross post with a few, yes, brainwashing and coercion along with group belonging/leader worship is a better explanation that mine. This is what I was trying to get at.

"No son of mine would go anywhere near it once I knew that. It sounds cultish."
Most martial arts are pretty cultish. The whole hyrarchic master and pupil dynamic, the bowing stuff, the obeying can't abide with it.

MummyofLittleDragon But I did not leave at age 16. I mental health issues and lacked confidence to live on my own becaus eat home I was to afraid to do anythi for fear of being screamed at. I left at age 19 and went to Uni to do a degree I did not even want to do to get away from my father, I was a shy timid child and easily coerced, so my point was that if I can do it- can leave- then so can this child. I, being female could not hit my dad in self defence when he was leaning over me screaming at me how he would kill me or beat me or whatever

MummyofLittleDragon What I said in my post was taht at age 16 my dad would tell me to leave. When I had graduated Uni and wanted me to move into my own place my father actually tried to get me to stay by begging me and telling me I had a good home and he did not understand why I would leave... I was afraid of displeasing him, due to living in an honour and shame based culture where women are meant to toe the line. So yeah I know about coercion. My mother was to scared to leave him in spite of her black eyes.

MummyofLittleDragon I am sorry for what you went through. I know how you feel too. I have been left with fears of men and displeasing anyone and I do not know where I end or where I begin tbh..... to you.

I know I deserved what my dad did to me because I was a brat but it is hard for me to acknowledge this. As a young child I had built a wall around me and could not accept that I was wrong about things and being unable to process the shame that being "wrong" felt, so please understand that I am struggling to accept that I was to blame for what my dad did. For years I framed myself as an abuse victim and had therapy for complex trauma issues but recently I am learning to see that things were nto black and white and my dad was not to blame for my bratty behaviour.

Maybe for this young man he did something which made his coach upset and the coach lashed out in unreasonable anger?

wheekwheek
Your post wasn’t clear. You said you were over 16 by then “And so I did”. It was a fair assumption to assume you left when he said to leave especially coupled with your post about most teens being assertive. But I can see you definitely didn’t mean your post to read in that way.

I also had no confidence and lived in constant fear. I am sorry your experiences were similar to mine. . You were not to blame for your father’s outbursts. Your mothers black eyes were testament to this. Your father is horrible and abusive and your mother too afraid to look after you properly and take you away from the situation. It was also her job as a parent to protect you.

I don’t know what therapy you went through that you were left with the impression you were at any way to blame. Please let me be clear you were not. My dd is only 9 so we are yet to go through the teen years. However, I am struggling to see any way that I would ever treat my dd in ways we have been treated. She is a child and I am an adult. Treating her in this way even as an older teen would still be be a total abuse of power.

Wheekwheek
To clarify. Your father wasn’t responsible for your bratty behaviour. But he was responsible for his response to it. And had you had more cooperative and caring parenting, perhaps some of your behaviour would have been unnecessary.

To be pernickety, this is part of taekwondo discipline. You should know that before you sign your child up.

No it isn't!

Most martial arts are pretty cultish. The whole hyrarchic master and pupil dynamic, the bowing stuff, the obeying can't abide with it

Yup this is why dd couldn't stick it!

Its patently obvious why he agreed.
In a choice between leaving a sport he had trained in for years and obviously loves (and had cost his parents a lot of money and time) or be punished he probably felt he only had one option.
Its hardly a 'choice'.

Its apaling and against all the tennants of TKD. TKD is a defensive art not an aggressive art.

Is it just me, or is it inappropriate to speculate that this 17 year old must be okay with being hit, or he would just leave? Do some people imagine relationships and situations to be that simple?

Thanks MummyofLittleDragon You are right, I did not make my post clear . The thing about my father is that his moods would swing, sometimes he would be kind and let me make my own choices at other times he would not, so when he told me to leave I thought he was bluffing and being irrational. I think that his abuse of me must not have been that bad because although I was scared of him, I would also by my late teens stand up to him.

My therapsit did not say I was to blame- I found her therapy very helpful. It is just a couple months ago I started realising that I must have played a part in it too. Because I was badly behaved as a teen- my father wanted me to get a job at age 18 but I had been unwell with a kind of virus which went on for a few years and lfet me with zero energy (I just wanted to sleep all the time and my brain felt all fogged up) and my doctor was encouraging me to rest instead. But my father told me I needed to stop being a drain on society and work, Looking back I should perhaps have tried to push through the exhaustion but I am easily influenced and assumed when my doctor told me I needed rest that I thought dr was right. I thought my father was being horrible by calling me a "lazy fat lump who should exercise more". His words were horrible but I now see the intention behind it was that he did not want it on my records that I had been sick because he worried about discrimination. He cannot have really disbelieved me- only a sociopath would be that nasty.

Back to the thread, OP, maybe ask your DC what they want to do- does he want to continue there or not? I am assuming that he knows about this instructor and what he has done.

Sorry Pengwynn it was me thatt assumed that, but my views stand corrected now as another poster pointed out about peer pressure and hero worship. I had forgotten how strong those influences can be at age 17. Also as Willow stated, maybe he had trained at TK for many years and felt he had to stick with it. I look back now to my teens and realise there were a couple of relationships I stayed in that were not quite appropriate but I felt I was nothing without those relationships. Maybe the lad feels this way about the TK?

wheekwheekpiggiefeet

Fair enough.

Ive skimmed through, and the thing for me is why is there a place for physical punishment in a sport? What could a participant actually do that warrants a beating? They are late? They didn't follow protocol? They did a movement wrong? No, no and no. It's not allowed in other sports, because it isn't justified. (And the culture thing is bollox)

It says disrespect - but doesn't say how.

“Yet Master Jung is being asked to respond to this anonymous ‘complaint,’” he said. “Under the MTU’s guidleines it is not even clear how someone other than the disciplined party has the right to complain.”

Well that depends on how you view the law, I suppose, and whether it is legally acceptable to beat U18s with canes in Canada.

I don’t care what the ‘culture’ of a country, a sport or a particular academy is, here in the UK any teaching of U18s and vulnerable adults needs to be governed by a Safeguarding policy and no Safeguarding policy would allow beating with a cane under any circumstances. I would not be sending my child to an establishment where anyone had such a lack of grasp on Safeguarding that this could happen. I am guessing, for example, that the anonymous complaint did not come from another member of staff? So they all let it happen.

I also would not want my U13 year old to be corralled into a changing room listening to someone being caned.

Dreadful all round and I cannot believe their are MNers being ‘yeah, so what?’ about this.

I would not be surprised if the beaten student and family were also Korean, What else is ‘culturally’ acceptable? That is accepted out of peer and family pressure? Beating children in UK faith schools? Co-ercrd marriage of 17 year old? FGM?

Also it might be a lie, spread by a rival or enemy of the instructor

We can discount that, Dunno, as the instructor himself admits to it.

wheekwheek, you did not deserve the way your father treated you. However well-intentioned his bullying was with regard to your illness, it was a heartless and utterly idiotic way to deal with it. And no "bratty" behaviour justifies abusing you and screaming and threatening you - let alone having to witness assaults on your mother.

“A 17 year old being whacked is unpleasant but am pretty sure the 17 year old is not feeling shamed or intimidated into silence. Most teenagers are very assertive.”

I currently have lots of 16 and 17 year olds in and out of my house, and I would say they can be mouthy, but actually are emotionally raw, heavily swayed by peer pressure, work hard to make sense of their emotions, are easily tipped, find it hard to see manipulation, subtext, etc. They look like big hulking grown ups, in some ways many of them are still 12 year olds. They are adults-in-training and they still need out vigilance and care.

I would not allow my children to carry on attending a club where one person caned another. You don't need to explain why.... I would simply remove him.