There comes a time, quite soon after your child starts training, when they will have their first grading. Most of them won’t know what to expect and might be worried about facing yet another type of ’test’.
This short blog is just to give parents a heads up and to take the mystery out of the whole process so that they can help their kids to look forward to it, perform to the best of their ability and be proud of their efforts and achievements.
The whole purpose of a grading is to make sure your child is ready to progress to the next belt and step up a level in their training. It takes place in a formal setting with parents and peers watching, so there is bound to be some nervous tension in the air, but the Examiner and Instructors aren’t there to try to to catch anybody out. With each belt based on a theme, the aim is to give your child the opportunity to show that they have been focused and alert in their training sessions.
Despite best intentions to keep timings on track, there is always going to be some waiting around before a grading, so please use time to warm up and mentally prepare for the task ahead. After the warm up session, led by one of our senior belts, Instructors will collect each group and take them through to a different room for their grading. Please tell your child not to worry if they make a mistake – as long as they give their best effort.
The most important thing we ask is that our students enjoy Taekwondo. From the outset we all have aspirations to get our blackbelt, but it isn’t a race. Different students progress at different rates. Even when you get to blackbelt, you realise that the journey has really only just begun….