Thursday, March 01, 2007

A much better day for Drew

Today was class day for Drew. Unlike last week, where I could technically attend the same class, and did, I decided not to, since for the moment I go on the Wednesday morning adult class, and leadership on the same day, and then usually go on Saturdays. I might change that, but probably not. I just felt that Drew should have his own day, and I shouldn't be in attendence for distraction purposes. He needs to learn this stuff on his own.

It was just as well today, as it turned out to be a very busy day at work, and when I got back with Drew for his class, work overlapped. So I didn't pay that close attention (almost no attention) to what he was doing. But he decided that when the class was being divided up between kids working on tournament info and regular info, he figured that he was going to do tournament info. That was news to me! He hadn't indicated that he wanted to compete before today. Nikki was helping with that group, and she came into the office later (where I was doing stuff) and told me that Drew, considering that he had just made this decision, did well with his practice. At age 5, the Tiny Tigers are not expected to do their forms by themselves, and they have an instructor do the form with them. Nikki told me that he told her that he didn't need her to do it with him, but she could tell him. According to her, sure enough, he was right! She just had to tell him the next move, and he could do it, and do it well. He also "practiced" a jahng bang routine (the bo staff for the non TKD'ers), and she told him it looked good. I'm sure he was just improvising most of the time, as that's his nature. Him come up with a consistent routine? I don't think so! But Nikki has a good idea of what she's doing, as she won 1st place in her age and rank for ATA Extreme in weapons at Nationals last week. ;-) So, in that respect, I didn't hear anyone disciplining Drew too much, and he seemed to be doing well with his tourney material, so I was happy, and I think Drew was too. Oh, and he got his first stripe on his belt, so he was happy.

At the end of class at lineup, he did have the wiggles at one point, and RA caught him on it, and made sure that Drew said "Yes sir!" to acknowledge him, and Drew did it without protesting, of which I was very glad to say the least. You know, he might be finally coming around a bit.

Sweet relief that today was, from what I could tell, a better day for Drew! Onto the interschool tournament!

2 comments:

Miss Chris said...

Wow. Wanting to compete at such a young age! My daughter wasn't much into that until about a year or so ago when she decided trophies were cool.

Unknown said...

Believe me, I was surprised too when he said he wanted to do the tournament. He knows that at his age, he will automatically get a medal for participating (he's only a Tiny Tiger, which is ages 5-6, and they still get help on doing the forms and don't have to spar), and he gets a silver star for his uniform if he does weapons. He likes the trophy aspect of the bigger tournaments too, but doesn't have the patience to wait all day between his early morning ring and my late afternoon ring. There is a regional next weekend, but it's too far away for him, and too long a day for him, so he's not going. This one tomorrow is at our school, so no biggie. But it's good experience for understanding what to expect at all tournaments, as the formats are all the same. Hopefully as he gets older, he's TRULY compete for placement and all.