Gymnastic Fantastic

So my five year old, my eldest child has speech difficulties and some learning delays and I love him more than anything in the world (or at least joint equal with his brother!) I spend a lot of time worrying about his self esteem and thinking of ways to counter balance how behind he is in ‘school’ ways. Mostly he doesn’t notice or talk about it but sometimes he gets all sad and a little moody and refuses to try to do things because he knows it doesn’t come easy to him and he sees his friends do it quickly and with little trouble.

I enrolled him in gymnastics club, when I asked him about football club and multi-skills club he politely declined with a ‘No thank you Mummy’ so I did it in secret and just told him when he was to go. He’s great at running, jumping, rolling and climbing so I figured it would be easy for him to get at least BAGA 1 sewn onto his jogging top.

The first week he wet himself before the end of the session – the teacher was, he said, too busy for him to ask her if he could go to the toilet and he couldn’t find the courage to find the way there himself.

We weren’t down-hearted, he definitely enjoyed it and spent days afterwards doing forward rolls on the rug, sometimes aided with a line of cushions, he also took to climbing on walls with his arms out like a tightrope walker.

Tonight to my delight he was ‘Gymnast of the Week’ – that’s a title I made up really. What really happened was the big girl in the club gave out a sticker and he proudly got it.

He cheered when he got it, arms up in the air with a quick, ‘Yes!’ He skipped all the way home telling me about balancing and stretching and rolling and jumping still in his P.E. kit with the warm Autumn sun on his back.

It even made up for the difficulty I had in understanding what his model was – (this was despite actually seeing the model)

‘It’s a bally – eena’ he said.

‘Oh, I see a ballerina’ I said.

‘Well yes’ he said, ‘But not the type of bally-eena that dances’

‘The type of bally-eena that is in Africa’

‘Emm’ I puzzled.

He told me how one of the other little boys at school – a boy he is sworn enemy of, I might add – said his model was rubbish. I know that’s what kids do, but it still jags my poor Mummy heart!

He then told me about three other friends who said he model was, ‘wicked’, ‘good’ and ‘great’ and I felt warm again!

Then it dawned on me – ‘Is it a hyena?’

‘Yes, Mummy a bally-eena!’ 

‘It’s brilliant!’ I say.