difficult child takes Tae Kwon Do. For over a year he has been going to a TKD school that I would describe as warm and fuzzy. The instructor is a woman who is very tolerant of difficult child's special needs and admires his enthusiasm but does not hold his behavior to a high enough standard in my humble opinion. He talked constantly, and has this thing about always yelling after everyone else so HIS voice can be heard or if everyone else is stretching out their legs by touching their toes, difficult child will have his feet overtop his head instead. As the class size grew, difficult child became more and more silly, his moves were over exagerated to the point where he was falling all over the place and interfering with other students. I could barely stand to watch. Despite this, he claim to love TKD and wants to be a blackbelt! His contract was up but I didn't want to quit entirely so we found a smaller school. When I talked to the instructor on the phone, I explained that I wanted difficult child to be held to the same standards as any other student. We agreed to go for a trial lesson.
This new TKD school is not warm and fuzzy. It is run by a big guy who works security for concerts when he's not teaching classes. He is gruff and intimidating which is just what I was looking for. I'd be scared of him. Unfortunately difficult child is not so he began testing the waters to see what he could get away with right away. This guy was not mean to difficult child but strict and more patient than I would have expected, correcting move after move, reminding difficult child to focus, cutting off his constant chatter, and after the trial lesson, he didn't banish us from the dojo so we signed up for a six month commitment. Today was difficult child's second lesson and he was more wound up than the first time. The instructor pushed and he pushed back. He tried his best not to follow directions and the instructor corrected the moves and watched him to see that he continued to do them correctly. I figure one of two things will happen, this guy will break difficult child of some of his attention seeking habits and he will develop actual skill or difficult child will explode form all the corrections. I'm sure I will find out soon enough!
Christy
This new TKD school is not warm and fuzzy. It is run by a big guy who works security for concerts when he's not teaching classes. He is gruff and intimidating which is just what I was looking for. I'd be scared of him. Unfortunately difficult child is not so he began testing the waters to see what he could get away with right away. This guy was not mean to difficult child but strict and more patient than I would have expected, correcting move after move, reminding difficult child to focus, cutting off his constant chatter, and after the trial lesson, he didn't banish us from the dojo so we signed up for a six month commitment. Today was difficult child's second lesson and he was more wound up than the first time. The instructor pushed and he pushed back. He tried his best not to follow directions and the instructor corrected the moves and watched him to see that he continued to do them correctly. I figure one of two things will happen, this guy will break difficult child of some of his attention seeking habits and he will develop actual skill or difficult child will explode form all the corrections. I'm sure I will find out soon enough!
Christy