Competing, and MCdojo's is mine one?

[embm]

Talk to your instructor. Let him know your concerns. Having kids in our classes are not such as concern since if they start acting up, they are bowed out. We also don't accept kids younger than 7, since our chief instructor does not feel that the younger ages have the capacity to pay attention required in class.

[MichiganTKD]

With regards to the questions asked:

 

1. Young kids should definitely be separated from adults.

 

Their attention span is a lot shorter, they tend not to handle strong teaching as well as adults. Also, young kids' bodies are not as strong physically. it wouldn't take much during sparring for an adult to contact a child excessively and hurt him/her.

 

Finally, if the Instructor keeps stopping the class whenever a child misbehaves, it cuts down on everyone else's practice time.

 

2. Every class should include stretching. Kids can do with 5-10 minutes. Adults need 15-20 minutes. This does not include pre-stretch warmups and cooldown at the end.

 

3. I can't comment on ranks and belts. Every organization is different.

 

4. If your Instructor says don't go to tournaments, don't go. One of the 5 Tenets of Tae Kwon Do is loyalty. Your Instructor says, you do-no questions. His/her job is to guide your Tae Kwon Do life. Obviously safety concerns would be a factor. But no legitimate Instructor would force their student to do something unsafe.

[Ironberg]

Children can train at the same time as long as the training involvled focuses on yourself. If you are partenered for sparring or for self-defense you need a person of your own caliber - it's that simple. However, you sometimes need the humble pie of being paired up with a lesser able-bodied person. This means that you are learning how to be self-controled and able to be an example, or even teach, etc.