Jumping Jacks

I was concerned about Jory’s physical education requirements.  So I downloaded PE requirements for second graders.  I saw it was a lot of hand eye coordination, kicking, catching, yada yada.  I decided to start off with jumping jacks.

"Okay, Jory, let’s do 20 jumping jacks,” I said.

We started jumping and things were going well, until I saw his legs were staying open and not closing.  So we stopped, then started again.  This time his legs weren’t opening, they were staying closed.  His arms would sometimes meet over his head and sometimes in front of them. 

My son is retarded, I thought.  I’ve ruined him by not sending him to school.  I took a deep breath, I remembered a conversation I had with an acquaintance, Amy, about how people with ADD/ADHD process things and how many steps simple tasks actually have.  I knew then I had to breakdown the jumping jack.

“Jory, let’s just work on our legs,” I commanded.

Together we opened and closed our legs while keeping our hands by our sides.  Whenever I saw him forgetting to open them or close them, he had to start over.  I needed 20 good jumps.  When he got that, he was feeling good and tried to jump into the full jumping jack.  I wasn’t quite ready for that.

“Let’s not do a jumping jack yet.  Let’s do a half a jumping jack.”  I demonstrated by lifting my arms and extending one foot, then bringing it back in.  When he got 20 of those in a row, we moved on to the other side of his body.  And he got those right, so now was the test.  We were going back to the full jumping jacks.  After some false middles, he got it.  He got it.  Like Mikey, he liked it, he really liked it.  My son wasn’t retarded.  He just needed something he hadn’t done really broken down into mini-bites.