The karate kid scores

with a fourth-place trophy in his first-ever sparring match. I'll take it. First of all, I'm thrilled he even got out there on the gym floor, got his gear on -- after just getting the gear for the first time last week -- and kinda sorta remembered his moves enough to spar with someone (although he appeared to have forgotten he could kick as well as punch). Second, not every single kid walked out of there with a trophy, meaning some merit was involved. He also got promoted to orange belt level 1, which struck me as a possibly fast promotion given he just got yellow last time around, but DH thinks the first couple levels are easier to get promoted in, and after that you have to really work at it. So, fine.

I know I sound like a bit of a killjoy here, doubting the belt promotion, but I am severely allergic to the "Everyone gets a trophy! Everyone's a winner!" mentality and frankly wouldn't send kiddo to karate twice a week, or pay for the gear and the shiai entry, if I thought he wasn't really earning his wins. As they put it in my favorite Pixar movie:

Helen: Everyone's special, Dash.
Dash: [muttering] Which is another way of saying no one is.

Kids should be allowed to be bad at things. How else will they ever figure out what they're really good at?

We did have one issue early on. Kiddo and kiddette and I were wandering the gym floor, looking for his classmates so she and I could go find seats in the bleachers, when a few of the classmates ran by. I sent kiddo after them, but he came back, upset, because the girl leading the pack told him to stop following them. I thought maybe he'd misunderstood, and sent him their way again. Nope, the girl definitely told him to go away. He came back in tears.

Now, he's had a little bit of a crush on this girl, and has been known to goof around when standing next to her in class; his way of showing off. Add to that his usual inability to read social cues, plus she's a little older than he is. I totally get where all this would be annoying to her, and if she by herself had told him to scram, I wouldn't have said anything about it. But there were other kids following her, so suddenly it was a group rejection, and I was left standing there with one crying boy, his bewildered sister and no idea what to do with either of them.

I marched them both across the floor until I found one of kiddo's instructors, and explained that the other kids were being a little mean. He promised to take care of the situation and of kiddo. Walking back through the room, I spied the girl and her cohorts standing near the entrance. I had a brief mental argument with myself -- do I say something? do I keep walking? -- and then the little devil on my right shoulder won out. "Are you always that mean to my son?" I asked her, and kept walking.

Probably I shouldn't have said anything. Probably the girl didn't mean to make him cry. Probably no one in this situation is old enough to react appropriately to anything, except me, and I still didn't. But his heart is so much on his sleeve, and it's going to keep getting broken, because he has no idea that some of his behaviors annoy people. And I can't protect him from that, and I won't always deal well with that knowledge.

At the very least, I'm starting to nudge kiddo to stay away from the girl from now on. Better for everyone involved.

Still, even with that incident it was a good day. Kiddo got his trophy, he'll get his new belt in class (what do we do with the old ones, anyway? Donate them somewhere? Make funky art projects out of them?), and he got to scarf pizza and cookies at the after-shiai party. All's well that ends well.

... and then a yellow belt

Things did not start out well on Sunday. In fact things had not started out well for several days. Kiddo has gotten increasingly bouncy and has had some issues at or after lunch -- though frankly I think being in a crowded cafeteria for any length of time is going to ping his hyperactivity/hypersensitivity to surroundings/sensory issues. He loves being with his buds, but it sends him into this giddy, goofy frenzy in which he does everything they do, except more so, and gets in trouble. The school has been pretty understanding and they're looking for ways to help him, not threatening to suspend him (have I mentioned the official who did that last year has been reassigned? I don't know why, but I'm frankly glad of it). But still. So his pediatric psychiatrist changed up his medication slightly. The result so far: It's nearly impossible to get him out of the house in the morning or in bed at night because he melts down and collapses on the floor whenever you ask him to do something he doesn't want to do, like say, wash his hands for dinner or brush his teeth. I've been researching ADHD for a year and a half and such things are still maddening. I don't think they ever stop being maddening.

No word on school behavior yet, but no news is good news?

Anyway. The shiai -- that would be a karate exhibition, involving several of the area dojos -- was on Sunday, and kiddo's sensei, who's quite a nice guy, always has his students and families back to the dojo afterward for a big party. Kiddo was looking forward to it. At least he was until we told him it was bathtime, and we made him get dressed, and we made him quit looking at the book to finish getting ready, etc., etc. There were so many blowups and meltdowns I finally started taking my coat off and telling him we would stay home. That got him moving.

Here was the problem. When kiddo first started karate, we already knew a few of the families there, so he had buddies in class. They've since moved on to other sports. So when we walked into the high school gym, and he was supposed to join his school on the floor, he didn't know anyone and he flipped out. I had to walk him over to his sensei, who cheerily waved him in the right direction (and tipped me off which side of the gym to sit on for a better view), but as kiddette and I turned to walk back to the stands, I felt a tug on my other hand. Kiddo refused to go. I stood there in a sea of white-uniformed people, keeping kiddette in tow, trying to convince him to rejoin his group, finally resorting to "then I'll go get my money back and we'll go home right now!" Which I'm not proud of. I'm even less proud of what I did next: I left. I said, "You need to go over there," and guided kiddette toward the stands, not looking back.

I have no idea what I was supposed to do in this situation. Relaxation exercise? Taken my place next to him and done some front-leg kicks? (Says the person who just got a steroid shot for her herniated disc.) Gotten my money back and gone home?

Somehow, what I did worked; by the time the shiai started, he was sitting with the other kids, exactly where he was supposed to be. He got up when he was supposed to, he went through the routine of kick-punch-kick, side-front-side just like all the others. And he looked pretty good. The only downside? He spotted me in the stands and kept waving, grinning widely. This was fine the first two or three times. By the 10th or 11th time, other people in the stands were starting to turn around to see who he was waving to, and the official serving as MC genially said into the mike, "You don't need to keep waving, they know you're here!"

I want to note here how goshdarn nice everyone is in karate. No angry competitive people. No screaming parents. Everyone in the stands claps for everyone. The moment that got just about the biggest applause was when the MC stopped everything to run over and retie a little boy's belt, which had fallen off. (I can empathize. It took a few tries before I got the hang of kiddo's belt.)

By way of contrast, one of my mom friends recently pulled her kid out of football because, in part, of the angry parents cursing out the kids for screwing up. And people wonder why I don't like football.

There was no sparring this time around, but the various schools offered short performance pieces instead. For instance, the karate routine choreographed to "Wind Beneath My Wings." Or the mock fight between Snow Miser and Heat Miser, broken up by a surprisingly spry (and thin) Santa. I'm aware how all this sounds, but it was rather charming. Also, the kids on the gym floor found the Santa thing pretty hilarious.

And after all that, kiddo was promoted from yellow novice to yellow belt. Hooray!

So I think it's good that he's stuck with the classes, and that he stuck it out at the shiai. Success breeds further success, or something like that. Do I expect him to practice karate for the rest of his life? Who knows, but probably not. We'll see how far he takes it.

The one problem? I can't get "Wind Beneath My Wings" out of my head.

Good news generally

We had another meeting with the school in which they said how much improved kiddo's behavior was and how well he's doing academically -- apparently he's jumped a few reading levels and is now slightly ahead of where he needs to be. The takeaway was, basically, "Keep doing what you're doing." His OT also sees some improvement but plans to continue working with him on motor skills and such.

I am a little concerned that his daily check mark quota on the behavior chart has gone down of late, from eight or nine to four or five. That might partially be the new-and-improved chart structure, which more closely tracks the specific times of day on his behaviors. It might be a more or less attentive substitute teacher, since his teacher gets a sub for conference days. What I'm afraid of, of course, is the medication suddenly not working anymore, because sometimes that happens.

Friday seemed to bear that out a bit; he got two checks. And was hitting kids and pushing them again. This literally a day after hearing the school officials rave about him.

Saturday, I took him to Trader Joe's. He likes these trips, because there are always free samples of food, and because if he finds the giant stuffed lobster hidden somewhere in the store, he gets to take a cereal bar from the prize box. And everything went great. I mean shockingly so. No running in the aisles. No hiding behind displays. No tantrums about wanting to ride in the cart even though he's grown way past the cart-riding stage. No throwing himself to the floor because he wasn't getting his way. I always knew where he was, and when I told him to go somewhere, he went. I almost wanted to pinch myself.

Saturday afternoon, the kids and I went for a walk, he on the tricycle he really shouldn't be riding anymore because his knees stick out at the sides (but he refuses to switch up to the bike). Things were fine until he and kiddette decided it would be fun to race ahead of me, and then kiddo thwacked the toy monkey right out of her hand and kept riding. And kept riding, even though I was yelling at him to stop. I caught up to him, confiscated the trike and made him walk right home.

Definitely he and kiddette egg each other on in a bad way, which might be what happened here. Occasionally if I want one of them to do something, I'll kick the other one out of the room, just to squash that tendency.

Today was the Spring Shiai for kiddo's karate studio (and a couple other studios/dojos as well). I hadn't originally signed him up for it, because we were going to be out of town this weekend, but change of plans (boo strep throat). But since we suddenly had no plans, well. A shiai is a combination exhibition and sparring competition, plus the announcement of any students who are being promoted to a higher belt. Before today, I did not know this. 

Kiddo only just started, so he wasn't ready for sparring (plus we haven't actually dropped the $65 on the padded gear yet). He sat out that part, then rejoined the students for the demonstration, sitting on the floor with the other white belts until it was his turn, following along as best he could, then sitting back down. All this took several hours. And he was a total champ about it. He didn't freak that we weren't down there with him. He did the moves. He sat. No defiance, no refusal, no running. A little goofing around. At one point, when they were supposed to be standing still, he appeared to be doing his own version of the chicken dance. But really that was it. He didn't even get upset about no trophy or no new belt.  He followed directions and behaved. This is better than any trophy.

It did occur to me, sitting in the bleachers with an increasingly bored kiddette, that we were now doing the official parent thing -- sitting through your kid's athletic meet. On the plus side, better this than football. On the minus side, everything I know about karate I learned in "The Karate Kid," so I kept thinking "sand the floor" and "wax on, wax off" and "Do the crane, Daniel!"

So the good really outweighed the bad this weekend. Hoping to say the same about the coming week.