Suddenly, the other boy was punching my son in the face with full force over...

Suddenly, the other boy was punching my son in the face with full force over and over again.

Today I dropped my son off at his kickboxing class and went to do my workout in the gym in the next room.

When I went to pick him up, his face was red and bruised, and he was unusually quiet.

“One of my punches slipped and hit the other kid in the face, lightly. Then he got angry and started to hit me full force in the face over and over again.”

“What did you do?”

“I thought the first couple of hits were accidents, or maybe he was joking, but then I realized he was seriously trying to hurt me. It was against the rules to strike him in the face, so I hit him as hard as possible in the body and knocked him off his feet. I had to knock him down twice before he gave up.”

Then the other kid came out of the kickboxing studio. He tried to explain why he was hitting my son in the face. “He hit me first, then I got mad,” was the gist of it. I asked both of them if they were okay, and they said yes, so I had them shake hands, and they walked away on good terms.

As we walked home, I asked my son, “Once he started overreacting, you didn’t have to keep following the no head-hitting rules; why did you take it easy on him?”

“I didn’t need to use that much force to get him to stop,” he explained. “I knew I was stronger than him, and he was so angry that his punches were out of control. He was swinging all wild. I didn’t need to hit him in the face to stop him.”

Today, my son learned valuable lessons in the use of force, reasonable escalation of force, and deescalation. It was a productive conflict.

These are the powerful lessons that only children involved in combat sports will learn.