Backyard fight between teenagers-mixed feelings

The problem is without adult and professional supervision boys will kill each other.

Like what happened here.

A kid got choked out, to death.

A few broken bones is a learning lesson, but a death wreaks two boys lives.

One dies, the other gets criminal record, jail time, debts, and a bad life path full of regret.


Why?
Teen angst, aggression, peer pressure
Ego, status, pecking order, school reputation, girls, and a boys sack starts to drop.

Testosterone is a very powerful chemical that makes critical and rational thinking difficult when the onset of puberty happens.

Need a mature enough adult to say "he's had enough!"
 
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The problem is without adult and professional supervision boys will kill each other.

Like what happened here.

A kid got choked out, to death.

A few broken bones is a learning lesson, but a death wreaks two boys lives.

One dies, the other gets criminal record, jail time, debts, and a bad life path full of regret.
That's tragic. I can find all kinds of news stories about how teenagers accidentally die. Would you like for me to post some examples of kids who die swimming, die while camping, die while playing football or basketball in a park?

I want to be clear, this is a shame. But kids fight all the time. Sometimes with genuine intent to harm each other. Kids with no training wrestle, fight, and engage in all kinds of physical shenanigans. Every time a kid dies, it's a real damned shame. But what you're posting above is exceedingly rare.

AND, as emotionally satisfying as it would be to bubble wrap them and snuggle them up until they leave the house as adults, it's not good for them.
 
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That's tragic. I can find all kinds of news stories about how teenagers accidentally die. Would you like for me to post some examples of kids who die swimming, die while camping, die while playing football or basketball in a park?

I want to be clear, this is a shame. But kids fight all the time. Sometimes with genuine intent to harm each other. Kids with no training wrestle, fight, and engage in all kinds of physical shenanigans. Every time a kid dies, it's a real damned shame. But what you're posting above is exceedingly rare.

AND, as emotionally satisfying as it would be to bubble wrap them and snuggle them up until they leave the house, it's not good for them.

Do as you will, but I will let my kid get his a- s-s beat or beat an other only with parental consent and direct supervision.

It's important for a young man to learn how to fight. I would say very, very important.

I would rather it be in a studio or gym... or loose Sandy beach. But teens are becoming far martially equipped with technical skills then just punching.

They need guidance supervision, and the Internet ain't going to give it to them.

So yes, I would ref backyard horseplay...
There will be a few rules, and a few banned techniques.
 
Do as you will, but I will let my kid get his a- s-s beat or beat an other only with parental consent and direct supervision.

It's important for a young man to learn how to fight. I would say very, very important.

I would rather it be in a studio or gym... or loose Sandy beach. But teens are becoming far martially equipped with technical skills then just punching.

They need guidance supervision, and the Internet ain't going to give it to them.

So yes, I would ref backyard horseplay...
There will be a few rules, and a few banned techniques.
Two quick things.

First, I agree that there are better things for kids to be doing. High School wrestling or judo, both school sports around here, would be way better than this. The key is that I'm not condoning the behavior. I simply understand it and don't think it's that big a deal. It's dumb. But it's not dumber than most other things that teenage boys get into, and way less dumb than most of it.

Second, parents who set such a hard line like you seem to be doing tend to be shocked if they ever find out what their kids were really up to. You can't control everything your kids do. All you can do is model behavior and a strong moral compass. They WILL do dumb things, and some of them will be quite dangerous. If you think your teenage children aren't doing dumb things, you're in denial.
 
Two quick things.

First, I agree that there are better things for kids to be doing. High School wrestling or judo, both school sports around here, would be way better than this. The key is that I'm not condoning the behavior. I simply understand it and don't think it's that big a deal. It's dumb. But it's not dumber than most other things that teenage boys get into, and way less dumb than most of it.

Second, parents who set such a hard line like you seem to be doing tend to be shocked if they ever find out what their kids were really up to. You can't control everything your kids do. All you can do is model behavior and a strong moral compass. They WILL do dumb things, and some of them will be quite dangerous. If you think your teenage children aren't doing dumb things, you're in denial.

Oh, I know... I was the teen who broke rules and lived to test boundaries.

Let me tell you an story
On November 3,1951 Ie-jima Island produced a modern day karate legend named Kiyohide Shinjo. He began karate training, not by his own choice, when he was ten years old.

Seiyu Shinjo was a hard man concerning karate. He maintained the uncompromising, sometimes inhuman, standard of training established by Kanbun Uechi.

Intoxicated servicemen often found their way into the dojo, challenging the Okinawans to fight, in those days. Seiyu Shinjo often ordered his son to fight the belligerent Americans.

For many years the skinny young Okinawan was beaten by the challengers. As Kiyohide’s size, strength, and karate ability increased, so did his dislike for American servicemen.

In time Kiyohide won every fight with great pleasure.

Now, I am not Seiyu, and I wouldn't do that to my son. But I grew up without a dad. The closest thing to it were my two Sensei.

I have read hundreds of books, gone to parenting seminars, talked with other dad's.
I have a feel for what it takes.

All you can do, is do your best.

Firm but fair is my method. Open door heart to heart talk, no lies from me. Respect can only be earned or lost.

I am not ultra permissive or a lock down dad.

Balance is needed.
 
Considering some of the actual street violence posted around here over the years, I find the brouhaha over this video rather odd.

I'm not going to take any approval or tsk tsk stance here, but what I see are a couple of teenagers who've done this sort of thing before, who know each other, and who shook hands afterwards. They obviously know the give and take of kids going at it, they're in a back yard as opposed to the street and they both keep their hands up. And there is no way they don't have some training.

I did get a little scarred with the takedown, but I think the kid doing the takedown lost his grip and balance a bit. But at least there wasn't any downward force used, he wasn't pile driving. And no ground and POUND once there. I think they were looking out for each other more than most kids I've seen doing this.

Young boys fighting, pecking order and adolescent nonsense - not news breaking stuff by any means.

And me thinks a lot of you guys on here should be thankful there weren't as many cameras around when you were teenagers.
 
So it really did you a lot of good then being in constant pain all the time and being damm lucky it wasn't a serious injury
When will you test your fighting skill if you don't do that when you are still young? Do you want to wait until you are 80 years old? There is only a small window that in our life time that we can afford to train "full contact sparring". This is why you don't see any 80 years old who fights full contact.
 
When will you test your fighting skill if you don't do that when you are still young? Do you want to wait until you are 80 years old? There is only a small window that in our life time that we can afford to train "full contact sparring". This is why you don't see any 80 years old who fights full contact.
Why do you need to test it who cares if you enjoy training that's all that matters it's not an essential thing in life. I competed for fun but if I never had I wouldn't have lost anything from it
 
Seems to be two schools of thought here. Hmmm.

I know. Let's go in the backyard and fight! :)
EDIT - Geesh, I almost forgot. NO Noogies.
 
Why do you need to test it who cares if you enjoy training that's all that matters it's not an essential thing in life. I competed for fun but if I never had I wouldn't have lost anything from it
- I had broken my left ankle in a wrestling match.
- Someone dropped his elbow joint straight down on my heart area when I was on the ground. I was almost killed that day.

If I could live my life all over again, would I do it again? I would.
 
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Seems to be two schools of thought here. Hmmm.

I know. Let's go in the backyard and fight! :)
EDIT - Geesh, I almost forgot. NO Noogies.
I had formed my fighting club when I was young. That was the best part of my life. If I had a new MA idea, I could test it the same day. Today, if I ask my wife if she will let me to twist her body in a certain angle, she always says no.
 
I had formed my fighting club when I was young. That was the best part of my life. If I had a new MA idea, I could test it the same day. Today, if I ask my wife if she will let me to twist her body in a certain angle, she will always say no.

Oh, how I remember groups of us hanging around after class - to "test" things. So much fun. So many black eyes and banged shins. Would watch my students do it years later. Same passion. Same results.

I don't even think of asking my wife. That look she gives kind of scares me.
 
Why do you need to test it who cares if you enjoy training that's all that matters it's not an essential thing in life. I competed for fun but if I never had I wouldn't have lost anything from it
What if I enjoy training and the adrenaline from doing it outside of a gym?
 
Oh, how I remember groups of us hanging around after class - to "test" things. So much fun. So many black eyes and banged shins. Would watch my students do it years later. Same passion. Same results.

I don't even think of asking my wife. That look she gives kind of scares me.
In one daily news, a MA guy fought in the street. He did beat up many of his opponents. But his opponents threw rocks at him and sent him to EM. That day we got a grouop of MA guys.

- We draw a circle.
- One person stays inside that circle.
- Everybody throw tennis ball at him.
- That person just trains dodging tennis balls.

Even today, I still don't know how to train "rocks dodging" skill without a group of people who are willing to test new ideas with you.

I still remember we trained how to jump off from the roof top. It was nice to be young back then. IMO, if you have not done crazy things, you have not been young.
 
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I responded negatively to the video, and I stand by everything I said. And no, I'm not a helicopter parent.

I'll be 41 next month, so I'm not of the generation that sat in the house playing video games. I'm of the "be home before the street lights come on" generation.

What they did was stupid. Had I come home and found my kids doing that, I'd be extremely pissed. Just like my parents would have been. Why? No mature adult around to stop things when/if they went too far. No mature adult around to administer first aid.

If my kids want to do something like this, several things would be done... permission from the other kids' parents, head and hand protection, and make not sure the surface was safe. And no video going online. It's not for anyone else but the two competing.

I'd be pissed because it would be my back yard and therefore my liability. How do you think a parent is going to act if their kid got their neck broken in my back yard by my kid without me being around? Or even if I was around? I'm not getting sued.

Then there's the video. What's the point? Bragging rights? Showing their friends how tough they are? I don't have a problem with video if the kids are using it for the sole purpose of watching and breaking it down. That obviously wasn't the point here.

Again, there's a right way and a wrong way. If that's being over protective, then I'm guilty.

These kids did something stupid. Of course there's far worse. But that doesn't make a stupid thing less stupid. I did stuff that was way stupider than this. Not even close. As I'm sure most of us have. But I wouldn't give my kids a pass on this because I did stupider stuff.

My kids are 4 and 6 year old girls. They'll do some stupid things. And I won't know the full depth nor the frequency of the stupidity. I'm sure of it. But I'll have different headaches than my cousin who's got two boys the same age as my daughters. His already hold wrestling matches on a nightly basis. Just a matter of time until they take it to the next level. Just like we did (we grew up like brothers, living 2 blocks away from each other). We grew up in the WWF days of Hulk Hogan, Iron Sheik, etc. I can't count how many times we did pile drivers, off the top rope (actually the back of the couch) Superfly Snuka cross-body and Macho Man Savage elbows, the camel clutch, and so on. We knew which ones really hurt and which ones didn't. And we did the ones that hurt. Then there was a period where we boxed with mittens on, which prompted my father to buy us boxing gloves. Then there was what we did on our bikes - ramps, throwing stuff in each others' spokes, jousting, etc. Then there was football- tackle football, "smear the queer/kill the carrier," etc. Then there were girls, and we did equally stupid things, just different stupid. Then we got driving licenses. Then there was...

Guys don't grow up, we just get older.

But that doesn't give these kids nor anyone else a free pass. Reminds me of a time when my father was getting after me for doing something stupid. My grandfather laughed and said "like you never did that before?" My father said "he's going to get his a$$ beat like I did." I guess that's when my grandfather finally felt like he did a good job raising my father :)
 
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I responded negatively to the video, and I stand by everything I said. And no, I'm not a helicopter parent.

I'll be 41 next month, so I'm not of the generation that sat in the house playing video games. I'm of the "be home before the street lights come on" generation.

What they did was stupid. Had I come home and found my kids doing that, I'd be extremely pissed. Just like my parents would have been. Why? No mature adult around to stop things when/if they went too far. No mature adult around to administer first aid.

If my kids want to do something like this, several things would be done... permission from the other kids' parents, head and hand protection, and make not sure the surface was safe. And no video going online. It's not for anyone else but the two competing.

I'd be pissed because it would be my back yard and therefore my liability. How do you think a parent is going to act if their kid got their neck broken in my back yard by my kid without me being around? Or even if I was around? I'm not getting sued.

Then there's the video. What's the point? Bragging rights? Showing their friends how tough they are? I don't have a problem with video if the kids are using it for the sole purpose of watching and breaking it down. That obviously wasn't the point here.

Again, there's a right way and a wrong way. If that's being over protective, then I'm guilty.

These kids did something stupid. Of course there's far worse. But that doesn't make a stupid thing less stupid. I did stuff that was way stupider than this. Not even close. As I'm sure most of us have. But I wouldn't give my kids a pass on this because I did stupider stuff.

My kids are 4 and 6 year old girls. They'll do some stupid things. And I won't know the full depth nor the frequency of the stupidity. I'm sure of it. But I'll have different headaches than my cousin who's got two boys the same age as my daughters. His already hold wrestling matches on a nightly basis. Just a matter of time until they take it to the next level. Just like we did (we grew up like brothers, living 2 blocks away from each other). We grew up in the WWF days of Hulk Hogan, Iron Sheik, etc. I can't count how many times we did pile drivers, off the top rope (actually the back of the couch) Superfly Snuka cross-body and Macho Man Savage elbows, the camel clutch, and so on. We knew which ones really hurt and which ones didn't. And we did the ones that hurt. Then there was a period where we boxed with mittens on, which prompted my father to buy us boxing gloves. Then there was what we did on our bikes - ramps, throwing stuff in each others' spokes, jousting, etc. Then there was football- tackle football, "smear the queer/kill the carrier," etc. Then there were girls, and we did equally stupid things, just different stupid. Then we got driving licenses. Then there was...

Guys don't grow up, we just get older.

But that doesn't give these kids nor anyone else a free pass. Reminds me of a time when my father was getting after me for doing something stupid. My grandfather laughed and said "like you never did that before?" My father said "he's going to get his a$$ beat like I did." I guess that's when my grandfather finally felt like he did a good job raising my father :)
I think there's a difference between understanding and endorsing behavior. I think the difference between a rational parent and a helicopter parent is the difference between being pissed when you catch your kid doing something stupid and never giving them the room to do something stupid. Saying it will never happen is helicopter parenting. Saying its dumb is not.

Headhunter was way over into the "rar. I will never let my kids do blah blah rar." That's helicopter parenting.
 
They are fortunate that they had such weak strikes. The sound from the impact of the strikes gives me the assumption that there was very little technique to the strike. When you punch someone and it makes a slapping sound, then it means you are hitting them with the flat part of your fist and not actually the knuckles. If you compare the strikes before 1:44 and the strike at 1:44 then you will see the difference. They are actually lucky that the has such bad technique because with technique you can swing with less force than they did and cause significant damage. They were gassing out at 1:30 and that makes me think that neither one of them trains on a regular basis.

This is verified at the end when you can hear tendons rip. It didn't look like it bothered him much but I bet he felt soon after the video was over.

The only thing they are doing is beating each other up with the assumption that it verifies that they tough and that they are getting tougher.
 
Parenting is a sort of pass/fail thing. But we are seeing the problems with overprotection now, as we have a generation of kids who are entitled and afraid of risk or failure. Fortunately the gen z kids are righting the ship. They're a bunch of risk takers, and good on them.
That has nothing to do with sparring safely. These kids didn't have the skill set or the control to spar at the intensity that they were sparring.

Afraid of risk or failure attitude comes from the "Everyone's a winner mentality" The OP's video was not that. I teach sparing at my school and there's no way I would have let someone with the lack of control that they had spar with that level of intensity.
 
I responded negatively to the video, and I stand by everything I said. And no, I'm not a helicopter parent.

I'll be 41 next month, so I'm not of the generation that sat in the house playing video games. I'm of the "be home before the street lights come on" generation.

What they did was stupid. Had I come home and found my kids doing that, I'd be extremely pissed. Just like my parents would have been. Why? No mature adult around to stop things when/if they went too far. No mature adult around to administer first aid.

If my kids want to do something like this, several things would be done... permission from the other kids' parents, head and hand protection, and make not sure the surface was safe. And no video going online. It's not for anyone else but the two competing.

I'd be pissed because it would be my back yard and therefore my liability. How do you think a parent is going to act if their kid got their neck broken in my back yard by my kid without me being around? Or even if I was around? I'm not getting sued.

Then there's the video. What's the point? Bragging rights? Showing their friends how tough they are? I don't have a problem with video if the kids are using it for the sole purpose of watching and breaking it down. That obviously wasn't the point here.

Again, there's a right way and a wrong way. If that's being over protective, then I'm guilty.

These kids did something stupid. Of course there's far worse. But that doesn't make a stupid thing less stupid. I did stuff that was way stupider than this. Not even close. As I'm sure most of us have. But I wouldn't give my kids a pass on this because I did stupider stuff.

My kids are 4 and 6 year old girls. They'll do some stupid things. And I won't know the full depth nor the frequency of the stupidity. I'm sure of it. But I'll have different headaches than my cousin who's got two boys the same age as my daughters. His already hold wrestling matches on a nightly basis. Just a matter of time until they take it to the next level. Just like we did (we grew up like brothers, living 2 blocks away from each other). We grew up in the WWF days of Hulk Hogan, Iron Sheik, etc. I can't count how many times we did pile drivers, off the top rope (actually the back of the couch) Superfly Snuka cross-body and Macho Man Savage elbows, the camel clutch, and so on. We knew which ones really hurt and which ones didn't. And we did the ones that hurt. Then there was a period where we boxed with mittens on, which prompted my father to buy us boxing gloves. Then there was what we did on our bikes - ramps, throwing stuff in each others' spokes, jousting, etc. Then there was football- tackle football, "smear the queer/kill the carrier," etc. Then there were girls, and we did equally stupid things, just different stupid. Then we got driving licenses. Then there was...

Guys don't grow up, we just get older.

But that doesn't give these kids nor anyone else a free pass. Reminds me of a time when my father was getting after me for doing something stupid. My grandfather laughed and said "like you never did that before?" My father said "he's going to get his a$$ beat like I did." I guess that's when my grandfather finally felt like he did a good job raising my father :)

Echo about every thing you said. Turning 43 in a few days. Not liking getting older. My boy is 4 and a half. He already plays too rough.
And he is a giant. 46 inches tall @50 lbs.

And he is not chubby.
 
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