The Karate Kid

We've been planning for about 6 months to enroll Justin in a karate class, but we just never got around to actually doing it. The January doldrums and cabin fever were at a fever pitch this past week, so Tom finally called the place to ask about their program for preschoolers. It's called "Little Dragons", and is designed specifically for kids ages 3-4. There are 8 skills which are taught/learned as part of this class, but two of them specifically caught my attention: FOCUS and DISCIPLINE. Awesome. We can all use a little more of that.

So Wednesday was the big day. The day started out like any other, and I took Justin and Tyler out to meet our friends Jennifer and Logan for a playdate. Logan is Justin's best guy friend and he hadn't seen him in a while, so we were looking forward to it. We headed to the mall for some horsing around in their play area. All was well -- Justin was off and playing with Logan so I got down on the floor with Tyler. Jennifer stood up to take a picture of Tyler and I turned around to see what Justin was up to, and he was gone. I mean, poof, 10 seconds out of my sight, and he was gone. He was nowhere within the play area, and was nowhere in sight around the perimeter. I was positively frantic – he could seriously not have been out of my sight for more than 2 minutes yet there was no trace of him. I looked in the surrounding stores but it was obvious he was in none of them as they were really deserted. I called him, no answer. As I was trying to figure out what in the heck to do, Jennifer yells over to me, “Here he is!” I guess he and another boy (that we did not know) had climbed over the seats that surround the play area and had darted into JC Penney. I don’t know what made them decide to come back, but come back they did. Needless to say, this resulted in a stern discussion about never leaving Mommy without saying something, strangers, etc., etc. I’m not really sure how much of it got through to him – he was in no mood to listen.

So the FOCUS and DISCIPLINE that comes along with karate could not happen soon enough. We headed over there later in the day and Justin was excited, although he had no idea what he was excited about. As soon as we got there, he was given his own karate uniform and went with Daddy to change clothes. They had a short orientation for the 4 new boys (of which he was one), and then they got to join in the regular weekly class with the rest of the kids.

Justin is prone to not paying attention and frequently darting off to do his own thing, which he did several times throughout the orientation and class. The instructors are amazing with these young kids -- they just direct them back to the activity at hand with calm firmness and you can see that it really gets through to the kids.

One of the things he did during the orientation portion was run off and go slamming into a wall of mirrors, basically giving himself a big full-body hug and kiss in the mirror. The instructor addressed it immediately, and we managed to catch most of it on video.



Maybe I need to take a few karate classes and learn some things about calmness and self-discipline from these dudes. :) Behavior like that probably would not have been corrected that way at home.

Justin got to throw a few punches, a couple of kicks, yell a lot of "hi-YA's", and thoroughly enjoyed himself.








We are definitely looking forward to next week and hoping this reaps a lot of benefits for him.