Explaining BJJ's transformative power to a parent

Master Carlos Gracie used to say that BJJ could even fix a stutter. While we won't go into the scientific merits of that claim, it's safe to say that a person immersed in jiu-jitsu for a long period will probably experience some unexpected benefits. And the younger they are when they start, the greater the chances that they'll live their whole life without missing some important skills. 

But how do you convince a parent to enroll their kid in jiu-jitsu class? Find, below, a couple of arguments you can use, coming from Rickson Gracie.

"Jiu-jitsu is an amazing art, because it's not only a practice that develops your coordination, your sense of mobility, your sense of timing and breathing; but also, emotionally, it plays a lot in your subconscious to empower you. And, sometimes, for kids, they come in with a very insecure state of mind by being bullied or feeling somehow uncomfortable in any situation. Jiu-jitsu can immediately transform that attitude of an insecure state of mind, because, based on the exposure to balance, leverage, base, angles, pushing, pulling, receiving, deflecting energy, the kid starts to become exposed to a natural ability he did not know before. 

"And, normally, you cannot let kids interact normally, because they're gonna get hurt; so, at home, you cannot let them fight, or let them expose themselves the way they should; in the school, also. But in the jiu-jitsu school, they can express themselves with much more freedom; and as they express themselves, the teacher will recognize sometimes a little too much aggressiveness, and then he'll say, 'Hey, you did great, but be more calm: he's smaller than you; you don't have to be—' So you start shaping the form: for the too-energetic one, you polish a little bit and reduce that kind of level of aggressiveness; for the lazy one and soft one, you start bringing energy and motivation and empowerment."