Back to Tae Kwon Do

Both boys have decided to return to TKD. I'm very excited for them. When we first signed up, Firstborn was very excited. It has served as a sort of occupational therapy for him. He gets to follow complex verbal directions and translate verbal directions into body movements. This stuff is very difficult for him. He also gets a great sense of accomplishment and confidence -- when things are going well. This summer, he became overwhelmed with it though. He wanted more free play time. The classes were also getting very big and he didn't get the personal attention he needed. He felt like he wasn't doing well. The form was also the most complicated form they do before getting the red belt. Red belt is the last color belt before black belt.

I had to do the same form and it was even harder for me than Firstborn because I'm only a camo belt where Firstborn is a blue belt decided. But on the other hand, Firstborn is a kid with much less practice at memorizing. He just gave up. He had learned half the form and would show up to class with no memory of it at all. He complained about having to go to class. So I decided not to fight with him. We took the month off.

Lastborn was also having a hard time and needed a break. Now he wants to go back and so does Firstborn. So we will see how he does after the hiatus.

Update and Observations at a Birthday Party

So it has been about 4 weeks since Firstborn completed TLP for his first round. Our home has calmed down significantly. His overall personality is much more happy and he seems to be much more calm and confident. He even gets my jokes sometimes. This is very important to me. I must have an audience.

Firstborn is now getting comfortable with the homework load at school. He seems to have developed the executive function skills to handle the teacher's assignments, but I still have to watch him. For some reason, he still wants to crunch as many words on a line as he can when writing his spelling words 3X each. Totally unreadable.

So there was a birthday party yesterday at Funworld. I was able to talk with some of the other parents and found that their kids are also having problems with writing neatly, knowing how to organize information and just the quantity of homework and the number of quizzes. We all agreed to mention to the teacher that she gives too many tests. She's new. She's excited and trying a bit too hard. She'll get it.

But in terms of the auditory processing thing. Boy did I get a great example of how this affects Firstborn. He has been having problems with some kids at the new school. Sometimes they don't want to play with him. They really don't know how to handle him. Here's what I saw.

Funworld is really loud. Lots of video games blinking and beeping and ringing. Lots of kids and parents talking and laughing and running around. The acoustics don't help at all either.

So Firstborn has turned off his ears. He's not hearing anything. He's totally hearing using bone conduction at this point. All his friends are hearing normally though their brains are probably a bit overloaded with all the noise as well. Firstborn wants to participate in the party and have fun with his friends. So he shouts in their faces. He can't hear himself. His voice sounds tiny as he explained to me this summer. So he is talking louder and reducing the space between himself and his friends. Because he's so overloaded, he's not reading the body language. They are looking away from him. Sometimes they get up and walk away. He does notice that. He clearly doesn't understand why.

The other kids have no idea why he is shouting in their face and because they are already a bit in overload, they have little, if any, tolerance for this. But they don't know that they can ask him to quiet down. They don't know that he doesn't know what he's doing. So they try body language. It doesn't work. By the end of the day, they are working on strategies to avoid him. They are playing tag, but Firstborn is always it.

The lunchroom is just like Funworld. Loud and busy. So maybe he shouts in their faces at recess. He got in trouble last week for touching a kid during lunch. He says he just touched him to get his attention. The boy was probably trying to avoid being shouted at by turning away and Firstborn touched him to get his attention. Touching him to get his attention is better than shouting at him in my book. But there is no touching in the lunchroom.

Therapist lady called a couple of weeks ago and I told her that I was a bit disappointed in some areas of progress. She told me that the second round on the program is where most kids take on the greatest improvements. We are also planning on doing the 1/2 hour program that will take 10 weeks instead of 20. Firstborn is happy with this as he finds the program a drag and likes that he will not be doing it for so long. We will start again at the end of the school year and complete by the end of the summer. I can't risk doing it during the school year. I hope that at some point, he will maintain his usually sunny attitude even while doing TLP, but for now, it really messes with his personality. I'm not talking hallucinations and serial killing here. He just gets frustrated easily and is unwilling to do new or different things.

On other school notes, his teacher is beginning to see that he is not like the other kids. While I was volunteering in the school library, he walked into a door. He was hyperfocusing on the book he had taken out. Didn't see the door. Didn't hear where the kids in line in front of him were going. So he walked into the door. She asked me does he walk into doors often? I responded, not all the time, but often enough. She was surprised. I'm sure she sees him in the face of the other kids too. I think I'll have a conference with her and see if she can give the other kids some skills for dealing with him.