Thursday, August 16, 2007

"you karate do, yes--ok ..."

A month ago, we started taking karate as a family. It's been a lot of fun and has really done wonders with helping Austin focus and use more self-control. The life lesson we've been highlighting is self-discipline. We talk a lot about different ways to show self-discipline and the benefits of doing so. When either of the kids is getting off track with behavior and choices, Tim and I can quickly and fairly easily get them back on track with a few questions about using self-discipline. It's been really effective carrying over the terminology from class into the home scenario. They really respond well to it.

The other thing that we emphasize in class is using the 3 rules of focus--focus your eyes, focus your body and focus your mind. That has been an amazing tool for working with Austin. He has been doing pretty well with pulling himself in to show all 3 rules of focus whenever one of us--or the instructors--mention it. He still has a good, long way to go ... but we're happy to have another strategy to use.

We have our first test for belt promotion (from white to yellow) next week. Hopefully we'll all be wearing yellow belts in about 10 days!!

1 comment:

JenC said...

Pretty cool! Maybe you'll be a family of Black Belts one day!!