That earned him a treat!

While I plod along with my curriculum these days, Drew continues to work on his. Because he missed class on Tuesday, I brought him to a Saturday specialty class. Usually that's a half hour class on one thing, like just sparring, or just forms, etc. Today, I was bringing him to forms class, as that's what he needs the most work on. The sparring class was before that, and while he has control issues, he does like sparring. "I want to be in that class the next time," he told me. I told him that the next time we come on a Saturday, he can do both. I think he likes one of the teen instructors, JK. I like JK too, he's very good. Between JK and BP on Saturdays, I think he responds to both those teen guy instructors well. I think part of what surprised me about going today was that Drew said he'd go willingly, and he didn't fight me about going. Maybe because he knew it was a shorter class, but he almost volunteered, which is not like him.

We get to class, and he has the wiggles, but he does try his best to control them, and he does lose his focus a bit, but no more than usual. There were two main highlights for me. The first highlight was that he was being very patient and behaving himself during drills. They were doing some floor exercises where they had to jump through a ladder-like thing for speed and footwork techniques. There were a lot of kids in the class, but at no point did he get in other kids' faces, and he kept his hands to himself, and didn't jump all around. He was patient and just waited his turn to go across the floor. That was a big deal in itself. But the bigger deal was when they were practicing the form. He's still the youngest and lowest ranked in there, and between that and his inability to always focus as much as he'd like (ADHD is SO much fun that way!), he was starting to lose his place and was having difficulty keeping up. He finally piped up, and told BP, who was leading the class at that point, that BP was going too fast, and could he please slow down a little bit? Oh, it was music to my ears! And I have to say, it was to BP's, as well as SW's when she heard what he did. We have been waiting for Drew to say something if it was going to frustrate him, to speak up if someone was going too fast, or if he needed some help. He finally did it! And of course, BP was more than happy to slow down a little bit, especially since it was a part that Drew didn't have to know, but he was trying to keep up with the kids who did have to know. This was huge! I don't think he's ever done that, and he did it very politely--not shouting it out or crying or having a tantrum or anything!

After class, I gave him positive praise, as did BP and so did SW when she heard. As she said, this is what we've been working towards for SOOO long. Let's hope he can keep this up! To appease the instant gratification in him (as we all have), I let him get a piece of candy from the convenience store next door to the do-jahng. He was very happy with his Wonka "Donut".

I really hope that some things that we've been working on at home, school, and at the do-jahng are really starting to click with him, like speaking up politely instead of flipping out, and he can still get a positive resolution in most respects. Let's see if this sticks now, now that he's seen that what we've been telling him actually works....