Tae Kwon Don’t

I’m having my first legitimate parenting crisis since The Boy started sleeping through the night; a parenting crisis by definition being the realization that, “Oh shit, I’m about to make the same mistakes with my kid that my parents made with me!”

Specifically, shoving them into extracurricular activities they will inevitably grow to loathe and resent. (I’m looking at you, Webelos and Kid Wrestling and especially Little League, which seemed to go on forever, summer after interminable summer. No wonder I spent the rest of my off-time pursuing a dedicated course of juvenile delinquency.)

Now I’m on the Evil, Interfering Dad side of the same ugly equation and it sucks, too. And I definitely don’t want to drive my kid to a life of petty crime, either; these days, nobody gets away with anything. You can’t be as bad a kid as I was and expect to get away with it, or as bad a parent as mine were allowed to be, either.

It just isn’t done.

The Boy wants to bail on Taekwondo because he feels foolish being the only kid on the floor who doesn’t have every move and every line of every oath (with accompanying hand gestures) committed to memory. I should have known this was coming when I watched him out there the last couple times and thought, “Man, I’m glad that’s not me out there.” It’s the same way I felt in Tai Chi class a few years ago. “Why is everybody else getting this and not me?” I felt like a dolt and couldn’t wait for the run of classes to be over, but I’m pretty sure I stuck it out on principle.

Which is what I tried to get him to do, but I failed. Daddy gets an “F” and that stands for FAIL.

I honestly don’t mind him bailing so much as I mind him not sticking with it long enough to give it a fighting chance (no pun intended). We paid for a six-class course and he still has a couple to go. Now we’ll never know, and I can’t get him to fully grasp how frustrating not-knowing gets to be down the road. I similarly have failed to convince him that none of the other kids were born knowing kung-fu moves either; they all had to stick with the program until they got good enough to intimidate him into not wanting to come back. But he grows more intractable daily on the matter and I’m at the point where I either have to force him bodily, or throw up my arms and walk away from the thing.



Which I suppose is what I’ll do. Maybe if he gets his bottom handed to him by schoolyard bullies a couple of times, he’ll show some renewed interest in self-defense if I don’t make such an issue out it now that he decides he’d rather take ass-kickings at school than admit the Old Man was right.

We can be stubborn that way.

Which is how I came to find myself hopelessly stuck between my conscience and his will. Check and mate, sir! This round goes to Fang, Jr.

I wonder if the Salvation Army takes very slightly used children’s taekwondo uniforms?