My little one has been in Kung Fu for a little while now, and I was ecstatic
when she said she wanted to try it out. I have always taken the position to
support and let her try whatever interest she decides to partake and let her
discover it on her own. If she enjoys it and wants to excel, then all the power
to her and I will help no matter what. If she wants. Not because I feel it is my
right to. If she chooses not to, so be it. I have no interest in forcing my
daughter to continue something she doesn't like. I also don't think its healthy
to stand over her and constantly bark out what she is doing wrong, forcing her
to practice and then of course the lecturing all the way too and from class. I
feel that would stunt the creativity and remove the life lessons of
discipline,challenge, defeat, triumph, self confidence, and of course setting
her own life path that she absolutely needs in order to evolve and mature
properly with out me taking that experience away or shielding her from it. I
also did not want to install a type of resentment towards me because perhaps I
lacked patience or smothered her when she was trying to learn and out of my own
selfishness of not letting a kid be a kid regardless of the interest she
observes. I mean she's 8 years old and has a long road of discovery ahead. But
what a better tool could be introduced than Kung Fu to help her see ahead and
handle obstacles. Although this interest was a little different because her
Dad practices it too, but I still wanted to keep my distance and see what
transpires. I felt that the only way to really see if she takes to Kung Fu or
not was to let her find the bug and learn on her own and patiently see if she
would approach me for help. Sometimes there were moments of struggle to not tell
her what she was doing right or wrong or pay attention and stop jack assing
around. In other words, stop being a kid and you will be a little satellite of
me. Not cool. So the only intervention I really imposed was the praise of what
she did do, and did you do your Kung Fu homework. A few times I did ask her if
she was really that interested or are you doing this just for dad. She told me
she still liked training but may want to go back to being a cheer leader. She
missed it. So I thought well lets see what happens. Much like Sifu
Masterson's observations of her son, I thought perhaps I should just pull her
out because she was fooling around and didn't really seem that interested, then
something changed. As I watched her I seen she was trying alot harder and you
could see progress in her form. She was telling me how very excited she was that
she was going to be in the banquet demos. She started to practice more at home. Cool, the instalation of a goal.
One night I heard this little voice coming from down stairs shouting every
step of Hsiegh Chien, and then the moment I was waiting for, my little one
looking up at me asking if I would come see how she knows the whole form and
would I help. I couldn't help but beam with pride. So a few nights here and there we are practicing our forms
together with the goal of doing our best for the banquet. Throwing in push ups
and sittups and some other training. I still tread lightly but am grateful for
stepping back and witnessing young discovery. For letting her be.
Brian
Chervenka
YEEESSSSSSSS!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteAwesome post. Also, glad to hear that there's at least one kid practicing their forms at home
Eva has improved tremendously since she began in the Beginner class with us. I'm glad to see that she is taking what she's learned in the studio and applying it at home. I really enjoy teaching her =)
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