Discipline

I guess I'm starting to get all traditional on my kids. Noah and I do Kung Fu everyday now and the class, though not necessarily physically intense, went over an hour today. Actually the most physically intense part is choice time, and it is the only part that Jonah really participates in. Basically each person gets to choose some drill we will do. Usually the kids drills involving running around a circuit in the house. Today Noah actually did punches for the first time so technically that is the most traditional thing out of our training.
I was doing free style forms but I noticed that Noah's forms are better when he has a set out technique to do. Some of the ones he makes up are good, but some lack power. I guess the first time he did this I was amazed at how he looked like he could have been an old generation herng ha Kung Fu guy. But somehow fancier moves crept in... which is okay. But the thing his those moves are fancy and higher level because it is hard to put power in them. Anyway there's another reason why I've gotten all traditional on them. Jonah walked by while I was showing Noah a stick technique, basically lecture style and got hit in the head. So now he MUST participate or play cumbals to the side or something, no going off by himself during that class time.

Plus he ran into the street on purpose today and I had to yell at him real hard. It was right after Noah ran into the street because he was somehow confused about which way we were going. But he failed to follow my instruction when I told him to stop. He took a second and then was able to listen. But a yelled into them that a second is too long in that sort of situation. You can be confused and take as long as you want learning times tables, or history. But this kind of stuff has to be immediate. And so part of my Kung Fu class is seeing how well you can obey orders. And I guess I'm getting tired of bending over backward for kids doing songs and dances. I'll do it. But I want to to teach real Kung Fu. It's hard to do that, when most of the class is trying to make sure the kids have fun. And some kids at Noah's school are good. They have physical talent. Others don't have talent but they listen. But as a group, it is difficult to progress, beyond the simplest stuff unless the GROUP can pay attention. They pay attention fine when we do what we have been doing and are rewarded with sword fighting. But they lose interest when learning a form. Or at the most they can copy a form, but will not hold interest enough to memorize it.
Next year in addition to these small children's classes  I'm going to see if I can have a club of some sort with older kids so that those older kids can then help with my younger kids classes and I can actually split  the kids into groups, so that we can have a real lion dance and Kung Fu team at Noah's school. But what I hear from teachers talking it seems like for some reason the older kids are even more difficult to teach, and that the 8th graders are somehow the worst. Well we'll see.