Everyday throughout North America, thousands of children miss school due to fear or intimidation of bullies. In fact, many believe that fear of bullying may be the leading cause of low self confidence in children. Worse, statistics suggest that less then 15% of kids actually report acts of bullying. We know that most bullies are insecure and seek self esteem by harassing smaller or weaker children. Mash Gym has three objectives with our kids classes:

1. Boost confidence: Bullies are less likely to target self confident children. We instill confidence by teaching techniques that will neutralize the attack of a larger opponent.

2. Increase awareness: Harassment from bullies can be physical or verbal and delivered at various intensity levels. In each lesson, we focus on teaching your child to recognize and respond to the most common physical and verbal bully behaviors.

3. Be ready: Only when your child makes it clear that he/she will not tolerate the harassment, will they free themselves of the bullies torment. We will prepare them for every common contingency.

Furthermore, we teach children how to diffuse confrontations with words and never to initiate physical aggression. If attacked, we offer techniques to non-violently neutralize the threat and gain control until help arrives. At Mash Gym we teach the children how to “fight fire with water.”

Besides equipping your child with all these skills on the mats, and playground, we have also added the character development program. Aside from preparing your child to deal with bullies, the other objective of our program is to instill your child the character traits that will lead to success in all areas of life. There are eight chapters in the character development program:

• Tolerance
• Perseverance
• Courage
• Responsibility
• Health
• Respect
• Strength
• Honor