I knew when, before he could crawl, my 6 month old started taking down my 2 year old, that we would need a form of low contact martial arts in our house. Teaching my oldest how to safely defend himself without hurting his younger brother has been invaluable. I am happy to trade the common sibling hitting, kicking and biting for armbars and chokeholds with appropriate responses to tapping out. Even more important to me is the integration of functional movement and play. They do a fantastic job getting the kids to train functional movement patterns (like crawling), under the guise of playing exterminator or turtle tag. As a chiropractor with a focus on pediatrics and back ground in physical education, I can’t emphasize enough how valuable this is for kids motor and cognitive development.