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A wrestler stands on the mat in the hot, humid gym, nodding at his coach’s advice, adjusting the protective headgear that hides his ears from an opponent’s sweaty grasp. He’s next up, and he’s nervous. He wrestled a big guy last week and it hurt.

He is 5.

He’s not the only one feeling uneasy. As his mother, I, too, have my doubts. All those years spent as playground watchdog, protecting my child from bullies bold enough to take his sand toys, and now suddenly I’m supposed to let another kid straddle him and force him to turn over while I sit by and watch?

Wrestling is a tough sport for everyone.

So what are we doing here? Why would parents who cringe at violent cartoons, who want their sons to grow up to be models of love, joy, peace and patience, encourage them to go out on the mat with other kids and—well … fight?

It’s a hard question, one I’m pondering myself since both my boys are wrestlers.

At the pre-season physical, my sons’ doctor said wrestling earned high marks from sports medicine professionals as one of the best sports for children, offering strong cardiovascular conditioning and a low incidence of injury.

That isn’t why we signed them up, of course. We signed them up because their father was a wrestler.

Mark wrestled in high school, as did his two older brothers, and the three of them count it as one of their best school experiences. One of Mark’s high school friends started a kids’ wrestling league in our area; it seemed the perfect fit for our two rambunctious boys.

Never having seen "real" wrestling before, I had no idea what to expect. Mark assured me it was nothing like the WWF-type theatrics I’d occasionally glimpsed on TV. In my pre-season naivete, I pictured the sport’s moves and counter-moves as analogous to a chess game played out in three dimensions. Wrestlers would use their problem-solving skills to get out of tight jams.

Another mother, also new to the sport, told me she hoped it would lengthen her son’s attention span.

All this was before my son got his first bloody nose, which happened a week after he’d given somebody else’s kid a bloody nose. This is the moment I realized that wrestling is perhaps not so similar to a chess game. This is when I began to wonder if a kid who asks to bring his G.I. Joe to practice is perhaps too young to learn moves like the "bulldog takedown" and the "gut wrench."

At my sons’ first official tournament, I noticed how few females were present, either as participants or as spectators. Most of the fans in the stands were men, startling when you consider the gaggle of moms at most swim meets or soccer matches. I wondered if wrestling was simply too hard for most mothers to watch. Perhaps we don’t possess the requisite level of testosterone to enjoy such undisguised aggression.

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