The Kicking Worm

“Worms fly,” Rockstar, then aged under 3, once declared. Because birds eat (them).

Jumping Turning Kick (And yes he is now a blue belt… More on that someday…)

There are mums who really freak out and spend a lot of their time keeping their boys from scrapping about in their rowdier moments. That has a lot to do with what their kids are like, what they know their kids to be like. This is my Proud Mum Pic because of what I know my kid to have been like.

Used to be, physical contact from any little push or shove could really bother younger Rockstar. Add to that the temper and fusspot-ness and we were looking at that oldies flashback in the opening credits of Phua Chu Kang where skinny, bespectacled little Phua Chu Beng huffs after them yelling “Hey! That’s my ball!” as the rest of the not-so-fussed boys chase after the soccer ball.

https://youtu.be/6k_ydTqAwjk

Back then I even worried that putting Phua Chu Beng Rockstar in one of the sports camps affiliated to his school would affect the rest of his attitude to school, IF it went badly. (He’d dropped out of an external swimming class in our development previously and to this day I haven’t been able to get him back into one so it’s not like this is totally out of the realm of possibility, though now he loves PE in school which includes swimming.) He was also starting primary school (i.e. new big school) at the same time the Miss was born.

That was why we tentatively tried an external taekwondo class. And then we kept coming back. We’ve never looked back.

Glory Hallelujah, now we have a Flying Turning Kicking Worm.

ps: Contact only with protective sparring gear on, of course 😉

pps: It can be a misconception that martial arts has much at all to do with aggression – a large part of Rockstar’s last sparring session was about learning to correctly dodge and defend an attack. They spent some time on which way to step or turn depending which side an attacker was kicking from. Blindly attacking is actually much, much easier than defending or practicing restraint – martial arts is a lot about discipline and self control – you are supposed to be able to stop fighting/attacking the moment they say stop. And you can’t do that if you’ve lost your temper…