Geetle (I finally got her name right in a post), Pookie and I are still going to Kyuki-Do classes twice a week. Geetle is getting ready to test for her next belt at the end of October. We’re still waiting to see if Pookie is going to be ready or not. I think on the right day he would be fine and on the wrong he would not. But there is still a month to go.

During the last class, one of the instructors made a huge push to get me to ignore Pookie while he tried to work with him. It had mixed results but two things were definitely true. I was able to get more out of the class personally. Pookie definitely responded reasonably well to the instructors and was able to get more from them (as opposed to constantly being told what to do by me).

I came home very excited that they are starting to get comfortable enough with Pookie in the room to start trying their own things with him. After all, most of the reason we signed up was so that Pookie would have another group of people that he needed to follow instructions from.

Then last night, we were wandering the mall looking for new winter coats. That same Kyuki-Do teacher was working at one of the kiosks at the mall trying to find new people to get to visit the class. While talking to him, we learned that one of their sister branches has a class specifically designed for special needs kids. They are a couple hours from our house but the teacher said that he was trying to schedule a time for him to go visit so he could see the differences in how they run that class compared to the other classes because he wants to start trying some things with Pookie.

Then he started telling us that he has been reading up on echolalia and started talking about what he has found out. The conversation got chopped at that point when the kids started wandering (they were getting hungry for snack time).

I have been a big fan of the three instructors all along. I think they do a great job of designing a class appropriate for kids and adults and have done a great job of understanding that Pookie is going to need to be taught a little differently than the other kids. But to find out that they are actually doing research on their own time to help Pookie is just amazing.

But I’ve found over the years that the amount of people willing to do these little things that are going to help Pookie so much over the years are greater than the people that won’t.