Swapping the kid's hobbies

[Thaigal]

Currently my 8 year old son does taekwondo, he's been doing it for a few months and has recently got his "orange stripe" belt.

I've never really been impressed with the classes, they always start 10 minutes late and since the class is only 1 hour long this means that they only get 50 minutes a week training, 20 minutes of this is taken up by warming up so all in all they get around 25 minutes a week doing actual taekwondo. The whole thing is very sloppy and disorganised and for this we pay £18 a month by direct debit for one class a week meaning we still have to pay even if he doesn't go, if he was to go 3 times a week it would cost us £40 a month which I could never afford so he's stuck with the 25 minutes or so he gets on a saturday where they only do the basics, no sparring etc.

My youngest son has expressed an interest in starting martial arts but I am reluctant to send him to this taekwondo class when I know he could do karate 3 times a week in proper, organised classes for half the price so I have decided to join a karate class with him after christmas, my eldest however is still stuck in his once a week 50 minute taekwondo class which will cost us the same as both mine and my youngest karate training fee's put together...my question is, should I take eldest out of the taekwondo class and get him to join karate with us where he would be able to train 3 times a week in much better classes?

I'm reluctant as I paid a lot of money out for his taekwondo suit (different to a karate suit) and he's just got his first belt but on the other side the belt is only a 'half grade' as apparantly they only do half grades for kids to make it easier for them to pass so it probably isnt even nationally recognised and the certificate he was supposed to get with it is still coming a month later.

He doesnt really want to leave the taekwondo class so I feel a bit guilty but resent paying out so much money for a class that isnt really that good.

What should i do?

No no sparring at all and I thought the same as you, how can he progress with no sparring?

AT this class the belts go:

Orange
Yellow
Purple
Brown
Blue
blue and red
red
red and black
black.

Apparantly the younger ones do 'half grades' which is just the colour stripe rather than a full colour belt, all he had to do to get it was remember that taekwondo comes from korea, how old it is and show a few stances!

There are no more taekwondo schools in the area I don't think they do competitions either, my son has been going for about 6 months now and I've never heard competitions being mentioned (not even for the higher grades).

Try Karate instead?

Ah just read rest of thread.

I'd check out the official Tae Kwon Do website. The belt colours in your original post are definitely not ones I recognise. Personally if I wasn't happy with the class I'd cut my losses on the suit - but if your son enjoys it...

At DDs class they do a pay for two get one free offer for families so it might be worth checking if this is available at any martial arts clubs in your area.

As to the colour of the belts it depends which Taekwondo Organisation the Club is affiliated to. My dd is a member of a Club which is part of the GTF (Global Taekwondo Federation). The 4-8 year olds are members of the Rainbow section which does have orange, purple and brown belts, with coloured tags for the in-between grades. The junior section is for 8 years and upwards and there they do a yellow belt, then a green belt, again with coloured tags for the intermediary grades. Dd did a year in Rainbows, where sparring was done but was really non-contact. Now she is in the Junior section she has had to purchase protective sparring gear. The Club holds various competitions throughout the year, and dd did her first one a couple of months ago. It was really interesting - the kids were divided into groups of 3 or 4 depending on Grade and height. The kids in each group then competed amongst themselves in sparring and two stances/patterns with gold, silver and bronze medals awarded for each. I thought that it was really good that this meant that each child came away with 3 medals.