With Nyan turning six in July, he moved out of the introductory ‘kinder’ class at his taekwondo studio, and into the true first level. There are a range of kids there, from about his age to maybe 10 or so. Everyone is very nice and Nyan has fit in quite well.

It wasn’t an easy transition though: after a successful first class with his new friends, the little dude flat-out refused to go for the next 2 or 3 classes. Lots of tears and bawling and general stubbornness. It was pretty rough. And totally expected, the staff nicely told us: lots of kids have these issues when transitioning to a new class. (Whether that’s true, or they were just being nice, we appreciated them saying it!)

But we persevered. And we broke through, and now? he’s back to loving it.

Here he is, not long after he went back to having fun, with Mr Lee still giving him extra attention:

A few weeks later, during warm ups:

Practicing his moves. He’s getting good!

And his kicking. Still some work to be done, but definitely making improvements.

He’s still a white belt, but he’s getting better and better, and hopefully before long he’ll qualify to take the test to get a yellow belt. That will, we think, make him even more excited to continue with taekwondo.