I am a black belt at a school in san diego CA, we have had an autistic student for the last 6 years in our school.

He has progressed through everything necessary to become a black belt, and teaches with us at the school.

It’s hard for him to keep his sensory input in check, he likes to run around, jump, clenches his teeth, etc. But everyone knows and love’s him in the class.

I think you should learn at his own pace like you were saying, it truly is the only way, and he will get use to the overload of input.

Hope this helps!

-Ryan

We just recently started having him wear noise reducing headphones (like hunters use). They let him hear what is going on but filter a lot of the sharp loud shouts. It seems to be going well.

The biggest issue right now is attention span, I think. He is doing very well for the first 20-25 minutes of class then having trouble for the 25-35 minutes and then normally pulls back together very well for the last 5 minutes.

I think it is one of those things that if we do it every week for a year we are just going to be shocked at how effortless it becomes. It will just take him longer to get acclimated. Since he still is having fun and still gets very excited when we start to get ready to leave for class, I’m perfectly happy letting him learn at his own pace for now.

Maybe a single “one-on-one” with a intructor and you there to show stratigies tat work then a few where 1-on-1s with only the instructor then phase into the group class?

(I only just found this entry and didn’t ralize it had been posted back in June.)

Our regular park district is huge and has a ton of offers for kids and since they will assign an aid for Pookie for any class we sign him up for, we normally go that route.

I might have to look into what kind of martial arts classes they offer at the park district.