Okay I'm sorry. I fully intended to dedicate some weekend hours to formulating a mom-tastic blog extravaganza. The problem was that it has been 80 bazillion degrees out and my house is a sweltering sauna, and it was a jam packed weekend-o-fun. It's coming though, don't you worry pookies. In the meantime, this oldie is timely since my girl is currently grappling with the decision about whether to end her reign of terror at the ol' dojo:
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Dojo Mojo
Labels:
by Jacquie
We spent much of last weekend at the dojo.
Friday
was movie night. Every few months, the kind Senseis reward us with
movie night, which coincidentally falls right after the humiliation of
parent workout. Movie night is great,
you drop off the kids at 6:30 armed with pillows and raw, palpable
energy. They eat pizza, watch a movie, and whack the shit out of each
other in what they call a “pillow encounter”. We pick them up at 9:30,
happy and spent.
Sunday was the
in-house tournament. I always give my kids a choice about whether or not
they want to participate in tournaments, there is no pressure either
way, but if they commit to it they don’t get to complain about it. I
encourage them to practice their forms, but also remind them that there
is no losing in a tournament, if they go out there and try hard and look
sharp, they should be proud of themselves.
The
problem is that being proud of yourself sometimes takes a back seat to
the prospect of a big shiny medal. Those medals can be tricky. Ever
since that one time when my boy was in a group of 7 kids and 6 trophies
were awarded, he has come to associate tournament success with the
extrinsic reward potential. You might
imagine that he is up till the wee hours of the night practicing with a
focus rivaled by Daniel LaRusso, but you’d be wrong. A big part of my
boy feels that he deserves the rewards just for being the ray of sunshine that he is
upon this planet. He’s pretty busy; it’s hard to squeeze in the
practice. He is writing another autobiography, this one is called “My
Painful Stories.” I wonder if he’ll get past the intricate cover art this time…. But I digress. The tournament.
I
have two children, one of each flavor. The boy is older by 28 months.
He started karate during Kindergarten, and is now sporting a brown belt.
My girl has been watching karate classes for the duration, and this
year she started attending as well. She’s up to an orange belt, and
she’s on fire. She is no Macchio either, but she did practice her form
about 700 times on the morning of the tournament. To his credit, her
brother was the one to show it to her and offer lots of tips and
corrections on technique. He ran through his about a dozen times, and he
did look sharp. Off we went.
In the
car, they talked about the order they hoped to get. They agreed that
they wanted to go first and get it over with, but also discussed how the
scores usually get higher with each kid. My boy’s belt level was
scheduled first, and the kids were grouped by age. There were 4 nine year olds, and mine was called up first. He did great; he snapped his 24 motions and never faltered. When I saw his scores, I thought “uh oh”. The
other boys did fine, none really stood out, there were even a few
errors, but as expected, the scores crept higher each time. My boy got
the bronze. He wuz robbed.
He got
another bronze in sparring, which was accurate and he knew it. He did
have his first chance to practice head contact though, and you should
have seen the grin he threw me after making first contact with the skull
of his opponent. Remind me to worry about this later.
It
took forever for my girl to get up there; we were all bored silly by
the time the orange belts were called to the mat. She was in a group of
6, the only girl. She went last. She had watched the others start too
close to the judges and wind up nearly punching their faces on the last
motion, so she stepped back and bowed deeply before she began. She had
practiced sounding off with her brother; no one else in her group had
done so without prompting. She threw each of her 45 pounds and 45 inches
into her eight motions, and she was great! Naturally, she got the gold.
She
totally deserved it. So why was I wishing she’d get the bronze? Because
she doesn’t care about the medal, she loved the whole thing – just
being up there and doing well was reward enough for her. But which comes
first? Does my boy need the external reward because he doesn’t feel it
inside, or does he not feel the reward inside because he keeps getting
the message that when it comes to the shiny prizes, he’s never quite good enough?
We
love their dojo, they are great with the kids and really help them
develop strength in ways that go beyond muscle mass. The Senseis are
young and dedicated. They command respect, which they give as well as
receive. The twice weekly workouts include public speaking, “bully
busters”, character education, and of course traditional forms in karate
and sparring. After the trophy fiasco, the big honcho talked to my boy
and commiserated that it really was not fair, but this would only make
him stronger and he hoped that my boy would continue to compete and do
his best, and he has. He keeps going back for more, and I am very proud
of him for that. I know that this is an important lesson, that life is
full of hard knocks and kids need to learn to handle defeat and failure.
It would be easier to stomach if there were a lucky break thrown in
every once in a while. Just for my boy.
2 comments:
Wait, which one's the dojo?
Ha!
What a lovely blast from the past. Your chitlins were so young and tiny -- nine? Nine? Yeesh.
And for the record, I still have a crush on Sensei Willy.
xoxo
Ellie
My painful stories?! Now that is something I would read. I bet the big bronze would have made it in there, too! I scarcely remember this post, we've been at it for so long.....
Because Ellie is (a) married and (b) way to far away to do anything about her crush, maybe get Sensei Willy's # for me, k?
xo,
Beth
Post a Comment