My grandson Charles was having a sleepover with us this past weekend. On Sunday morning he awoke bright and early and declared, “Poppy, I’m ready for you to start teaching me karate.” And with that and a smile on his little face, he handed me his mums (my daughter Tash’s) white belt from 20 years ago. He quickly snapped to attention, bowed, and dropped into his meditating horse stance. Then arms and legs started going everywhere as he morphed into a ninja turtle lol.

Charles is 6 and has Autism and ADHD. I’ve been hesitant to teaching him anything more than standing in a meditating horse stance to develop his discipline, control his breathing and become still. In this position he knows the only two things he is allowed to do is blink and breathe. Seeing how highly stimulated he was, I took this opportunity to give him his very first lesson in Paxtial Arts.

I’d been thinking about how to teach what we have learned thus far in the philosophy course and I figured if I can teach Charlie, I can teach anyone. So I plugged my laptop into my 75” TV and put up an image of our glyph wheel. I asked him to get his colouring pencils, some blank paper and to take a seat.

I asked him what do you see? He said, “this isn’t karate Poppy”. I asked more specifically, tell me three things you see. He answered, “circles, lines and colours,  it this isn’t karate Poppy, I want you to teach me what you taught mummy and Chloe (one of younger students preparing for her junior black belt exam). Time for a “pattern interrupt” and so I told him that his mum and Chloe and I had to start at the beginning, pointing as I said that to the mind section course glyph. I asked Charles, what does that look like and he answered, “my brain”. Perfect I said, and asked him if he could use his brain to draw the glyph wheel.

After drawing this and writing, “Charles my glyph wheel” on the paper, I asked if he could name the colours of the course glyphs. Interestingly he went counterclockwise starting with the colours for Certify, Qualify, and Freeflow rather than clockwise with Philosophy, History, and Law.

Time for another pattern interrupt. I said, “Hey Charlie, you’re good at math right?” and handed him another set of paper. I asked him to write down the number zero. What does that look like I asked and he replied, “a circle Poppy”.  Show me how you right that down, I asked. He did that and I then asked what is zero plus one. He wrote that down and I asked what that looked like and said, “a line”. “ Hmmm”, I said, “don’t you think that’s funny that the first two numbers are a circle and line and that’s what you said the glyph wheel looked like to you?” He said, “I know what comes next”. I asked what was one plus one. “Two”. What’s two plus one? “Three, Poppy I know what comes next”. This is where the teacher became a student.

I fully assumed that he was going to say that four was the next number, so I asked Charlie, “OK what is it Mr. smarty pants?” To my astonishment he pointed to the figures on the page and said, “three plus two equals five!”He had picked up on the Fibonacci number sequence progression. We then worked through this all the way to 144. Not only that, but then I showed him how to graph that out and he then drew the boxes and the beginning spiral line!

Then I directed his attention back to the glyph wheel on the T.V. pointing to all the lesson glyphs I asked him to count them all. He said, “I don’t have to Poppy, I already know, there’s 144.” Schooled again by a 6 year old.

“Poppy, this isn’t karate”, he declared. “Stand up, show me your attention stance”, I asked. Up he got and I mirrored that. “What do I look like?”, I asked. “A straight line”. Now hold your arm up and open your hand I asked him. “What does that look like?” “A straight line Poppy”. Now make a fist. “Is that like a circle?” “Yes, Poppy”.

I went back to the glyph wheel. “Tell me what you think are the three most important colours in this circle”, as I pointed to the section glyphs. “Red, yellow and blue, Poppy”. I then asked him what he thought the images within those colours looked like, and he replied with “my eyes”, “my ears” and a “hi-five”, lol.

From here I went on to showing him how to do an upward block and pointed out how the path of the movement of his arm went from a straight line into a curve has it passed over his head. His little face lit up, “That’s like Paw Patrol but more, with a little bit extra”.

This entire event only went for about 15 or 20 minutes being the limited of his attention span, but within that space of time we touched on , colours, math, reading, writing, sight, sound, touch, and physical movement.

When he left to go home later that day, he gave me a hug and a kiss goodbye and said, “I will keep practicing my mind Poppy.”

I love this little guy so much.