Children's minds are sponges

I was talking to another parent in the playground about Kung Fu. She actually used to study under a student of Bow Sim Mark (me and a bunch of friends I used to hang out with actually were part of her kids class through Kwong Kow.)
We were talking about forms and how a lot of students apparently left Bow Sim Mark because of that focus on forms.. too much to take in etc. I was surprised to here this because I always thought of her school as the model for business success. In any case, with my recent classes I have been emphasizing basics. Woo Ching White Crane emphasized basics but I remember a lot of the American studnets mentioning that they didn't practice at home because they couldn't remember the order of the basics.

So for my First Baptist class I started out just teaching 4 moves. But even that was a lot because a student mentioned that they would forget it all as soon as she went home and to show her ONE thing to work on. I think that is actually the beauty of boxing. The jab and the cross, thopse are essentially just straight punches. And that is mostly what you will do. In fact, at Peter Welch Boxing club. Peter told me to do "200 jabs before your shower, 200 jabs in the shower and 200 jabs after your shower" you talking about just jabbing with just one hand, the non dominant one. What I am saying is, if you do that, for 6 months, yeah you'll have that move down. And there is something to be said for that in fighting, to have the move down.

For my Curley Class, I did some Tai Chi warm ups (really Mein lei jum but since I separated the moves out, there is hardly any difference now.) and some kick boxy type moves and what I focused on for Kung Fu was just the straight punch. But after doing 30 of them I could sense the children's minds wandering.

 So I moved on. But the next day a parent tell sme that her daughter, who was watching from her stroller showed her father all the Tai Chi warm ups. What? That's crazy. She absorbed tat just by watching?

I realized that for adults... yes work on ONE thing, because an adult can do that. Work on one thing over and over. But kids will just pick things up. I mean it would be good if they could drill like that... but you can't really make them. Even in Shaolin Temple they don't. I mean they all line up and do drills, but you can totally tell that some of the monks are faking their effort, not giving it their 100% effort or focus... and what's the point of that. In fact, that's why I suspect that climbing and running ar such a big part of Shaolin Temple. You can't fake travelling over a certain distance.


My point is though that these kids, if I showed them a form every day, they would know it in a week. I know because I knew forms in a week. So why hold them back? I mean I don't want to commit to everyday practice. But Maybe I could just start doing it informally. And if I could get this other mom in on it too.. that would be fantastic. It would be like my little Utopian Kung Fu village, at the Curley... I mean these kids could theoretically get good. And I wouldn't have to worry about the whole "overdrilling" thing because the kids can always just go play. They wouldn't be forced to do  Kung Fu. It would be an option. And maybe some kids could pick it up just watching.