When Teaching Becomes Learning, and Parents Learn to Bow Too
It has been a year since my son and I began training with our Shaolin coach.
Over that year, we have both earned our First Duan and are now preparing for our Second. Like Taekwondo, Karate and other martial arts, Shaolin also has a system of ranks. What began as a weekly two-hour class every Sunday has gradually become much more than physical training. Somewhere along the way, it became a quiet practice of reflection—for both of us.
I still train on my own three or four times each week. My son was only six when we first began, shortly after returning from two months of training at Kunyu Mountain Academy in China. That experience marked the beginning of our Shaolin journey, but it was not where the journey itself truly began. Before that, we had spent years searching for something that suited him, moving from Taekwondo to Wushu and trying to understand what kind of practice his mind and body needed. I wrote about much of that search in My Child Is Not Naughty—Just Different: Raising an ADHD Child Through Eastern Wisdom and Modern Science. What began as an intervention for ADHD slowly evolved into a lifelong discipline that neither of us had expected.
The Coach and the First Year
The first time I met our coach, I sensed almost immediately that he was from Mainland China. There was something familiar in the way he carried himself, a calm authority that reminded me of the masters I had met during our time in Shandong. He was surprised that I understood the technical names of the Shaolin forms, and even more surprised when he discovered that my son could already perform Tong Bi Quan.
My son initially joined the beginners’ class. Because I was training as well, however, we were eventually moved into the intermediate group. Most of the students there had already been practising for three years or more. I was the only adult in the class.
At middle age, my body no longer responds the way a child’s does. I may understand the philosophy behind the movements, but understanding does not make my hamstrings any more flexible or my hips any more willing. While the children folded effortlessly into stretches, I found myself negotiating with muscles that resisted almost everything they were asked to do. Even so, my coach often told me that he was glad I trained alongside the children. His school focused primarily on teaching young students, while most adults who came only attended Sanda, or Chinese kickboxing. He believed parents should learn together with their children whenever possible.
One day he said something that has remained with me ever since.
“In China, you can still find seventy-year-olds doing kickboxing in the parks—strong and agile.”
Then, after a short pause, he added,
“If parents train, children learn more than forms. They learn endurance.”
At the time, I thought he was talking about martial arts. It would take me many months to realise he was also talking about parenting.
Learning Beside My Son
In every class, I do exactly what the coach asks. If he says, “One hundred times,” I do one hundred. It may take me longer than everyone else, and I may not move as gracefully, but I finish. I cannot do the side splits, and my kicks certainly do not reach my forehead, yet I continue to train as sincerely as I can. At first I felt rather self-conscious. Surrounded by children who seemed to improve every week, I often wondered whether I looked ridiculous struggling through movements that came so naturally to them.
Gradually, however, I realised something far more important than whether I was performing the techniques well.
My son was watching me.
Not to see whether I was talented, but to see whether I kept trying.
He watched me struggle through stretches that my body resisted. He watched me bow before every practice. He watched me repeat movements over and over without complaint, even when I knew I would never perform them as well as the children around me. Without either of us talking about it very much, he was learning something I could never have taught through words alone. I was no longer asking him to persevere. I was simply persevering myself.
Something else began changing as well. Other parents slowly started joining the classes. First a mother trained alongside her daughter. Then another father decided to participate. Eventually, after watching us train week after week, even my husband stepped onto the training floor. He now genuinely looks forward to our Sunday sessions, finding renewed energy, fitness and enjoyment in the practice.
One afternoon, as I looked around the hall, I realised something had quietly shifted.
Parents were no longer waiting outside while their children trained inside.
They had become part of the practice themselves.
When Parents Join the Practice
Only after living this experience did I begin to understand what my coach had been trying to teach me all along. When parents participate in what their children are learning, the entire relationship changes. Most of us enrol our children in the best schools, the best enrichment programmes or the best coaches, hoping they will improve. We wait outside the classroom while they practise, then later correct them when they fail to meet our expectations. Yet before asking more of our children, perhaps we should first ask ourselves a simpler question: could we do what we are asking them to do?
Training beside my son transformed the way I parented him. When he struggled with a movement, I knew exactly why because I had struggled with it myself. I understood which stretches demanded patience, which stances exhausted the legs and which repetitions quietly wore down the mind. My corrections became gentler because they were no longer based on observation alone, but on shared experience. Instead of saying, “Do better,” I found myself saying, “Let’s try again together.”
Somewhere along the way, I also realised that we had begun teaching one another. He challenged the stiffness of my ageing body, while I quietly demonstrated the perseverance he was still learning to cultivate. Neither of us possessed everything the other needed. Yet together, each of us carried something the other lacked.
That, perhaps, is the quiet gift of practising alongside our children. They no longer feel as though they are facing every challenge alone. They know someone else has walked the same path, struggled through the same repetitions and understands why certain things are difficult—not because they have been told, but because they have lived them too.
What Shaolin Taught Me About Parenting
My coach has always insisted that I sit for every Duan Wei examination alongside my son. At first I assumed it was simply part of the school’s culture. Over time, however, I realised that the examinations were never really about earning another rank. By learning the same forms, I came to understand every movement my son struggled with and every emotion hidden beneath those struggles. The physical practice became a mirror, reflecting patience, humility and endurance long before it developed strength or agility.
Shaolin gradually changed the way I thought about parenting. Parents are not meant to stand above their children, pointing out the correct path while remaining safely on the sidelines. More often, we are meant to walk beside them—to bow together before practice, to sweat through the same repetitions, to become frustrated by the same mistakes and, eventually, to discover together that progress is usually quieter than we imagine.
The practice itself was never only about flexibility, power or perfect technique. It was about humility. It was about understanding. It was about replacing hierarchy with companionship. The older I become, the more convinced I am that genuine teaching rarely begins with mastery. More often, it begins with shared effort.
After a year of Shaolin training, I no longer see my son as a student I need to mould. I see him as a companion on the same path of discipline. We learn different lessons, and we learn them at different speeds, but we grow in much the same way—through repetition, patience and the willingness to begin again.
Perhaps this is the quiet lesson Shaolin has given me.
Children do not need parents who have already mastered everything.
They need parents who are willing to become students again.
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