Standards

Ahhh...

Woke up today with my belly feeling like Natalie Gublis on a dewey summer morning. Bad news is that SW woke up with it attacking her--so I guess it was a virus rather than food poisoning. Either way, I'm back.

Monkies had their first real Tae Kwon Do test yesterday. With kids being this age, I guess there really isn't a way to fail these tests. The bonus was that Princess was in the top two of the group of about 25 kids, getting invited to go on to a more advanced level of training. Unfortunately there's a down side--Cowboy wasn't invited, probably due to his age/size. So the dilemma now appears: do we allow Princess to get this "extra" training while not allowing Cowboy to do the same? He didn't seem to notice anything special about his big sister being called up to the front for her special recognition after the test--although the first thing she said was that she was disappointed that Cowboy wasn't brought along.

Another issue I have here is her interest level. Right now it's super-high. Ironic--because the only reason we got her into this was because we had gotten her brother into it. Moving her on in the advanced training is another coupla hundred bills for the equipment, plus a surcharge every month. But if she were to actually stick with this, she (and her brother, should he stick with it) could be a Black Belt before she was a teenager. Very cool.

Next subject--during the test there was this kid that got me thinking. Whereas most of the other kids were demonstrating to the crowd of parents behind them the newfound discipline and exceptional behavior they had developed, this kid was out of control. I mean seriously out of control. Even the instructor, during the kid's test, had issues trying to calm this kid down from laughing and generally being a good advertisement for Ritalin. Of course, he passed the test and moved on--either due to the instructors not wanting to fail one kid out of 20 (there was one kid who spazzed and was too scared to take the test, so he failed) or because everyone had to pay $35 per kid to take the test and they didn't want to lose their money. What was getting me the most was that while this kid was yucking it up during a formal test, his parents in the crowd were laughing at him, which just encouraged it. Every other parent there was probably thinking what we were--that we'd be absolutely mortified to have our monkies act like that.

It genuinely perplexes me--how what is perfectly acceptable to some parents is so far out in left field to others. I'm not talking how some kids say "yes, ma'am" to their mothers while others say "yeah"--I'm talking seriously whacked behavior that some people just think is natural. It carries on into adulthood. I see people at the mall acting like complete jackasses--in groups--and it seems perfectly OK to them. I guess it's just part of life, that the standards of behavior among people are so diverse. It's too bad that voicing your opinions about it aren't as acceptable.

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