Future Bullies: Take Note

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Last fall, Mister Man read The Karate Mouse as we was working his way through the Geronimo Stilton series (a hilarious series about a mouse who is an editor of a paper and has all sorts of adventures with great illustrations).

He immediately announced that he wanted to do karate. And then he showed me what he'd learned from the book - he already knew how to do karate.

Well, he thought he knew how to do karate anyway. He knew about as much as what you'd expect a six year old to know of karate who'd never seen it in person but only seen illustrations in a children's book and read about it. It was pretty cute, but pretty inaccurate.

He let it go, but every once in awhile after Christmas he'd tell me again that he wanted to do karate. With our schedules the way they were (e.g., me working and him having multiple therapies each week), I told him that we'd look into it once school ended. He was amenable to that, but he did continue to bring it up.

Score one for him for not having it be a passing fad. This was truly something he wanted to do. Several kids from his kindergarten class do tae kwon do and have for a couple years. We have other friends who take tae kwon do from a different studio.

I finally decided upon a studio relatively close to us that does a lot of work with special needs kids, something that will make a stimulating class easier for Mister Man. The class meets twice a week, which is a huge commitment (as is the six month contract we sign - ouch!), but after watching it and trying out a couple classes, he really wanted to do it.

Mister Man has officially taken three classes as a Little Ninja. He's pretty proud of what he's learned so far.

He knows his ready position.

And his listening stance.

And horse position (I think that's what he told me it was anyway?).

He learned his punches - at least the white belt ones.

In his second class, he worked pretty hard in his small group with two other children who were also relatively new to tae kwon do. And by the end of the class, he'd moved from having a blank white belt to having three skill stripes on it - for knowing his listening stances, his punches, and positions. I had to explain to him that he will probably never again earn three skill stripes in a class, which he seemed to understand.

This week, we're practicing his blocks so he can earn his next stripe - and boy is he proud of what he can do! He insisted on showing me his kicks, even though he hasn't quite gotten to that point yet in his classes.

Apparently I'm not going to be a soccer mom, and I'm ok with that. Just call me a Tae Kwon Do mom!