The Kender Report — Kender Does Zumba!

An amazing thing happened yesterday.  Kender participated in a class!

A friend of mine teaches lots of Zumba classes, and she offers several at the homeschool co-op in which we participate.  She encouraged me to sign Kender up for her youngest Zumba Kids class on co-op days, even if all he did was curl up and listen to the music like he’s done before.  Honestly, I am not going to spend $35 for Kender to listen to music.  I can provide that for free, and we do it a lot at home.  I said that we would try it out, though.

At first, it was exactly what I expected.  He didn’t want to go in the room. Then he didn’t want to leave my lap.  He wanted to be held, he wanted to curl up on the floor.  I kept encouraging him to get up and go out there.  I walked him over and tried to lead him through a limbo game, but that only got him shrieking.  I sat down and let him wander, assuming child’s pose in front of the speakers, checking out the tumbling pads in the corner, playing with the blinds.

Then the miracle happened.  Kender stood in the middle of the floor for a minute, and then slowly started imitating the teacher’s movements, stepping back and forth, spinning around, waving his arms a bit.  It only lasted for part of the song, but it had me and her both nearly in tears, it was so amazing to see.  Kender went back to curling up and listening for a while, but a couple songs later, after some other kids had come into the class, Kender opened back up and copied them for part of a song, crawling around on his hands and knees and spinning.

After the class, I continued to see more interaction and tolerance of others.  We went up to the community room, where the other kids had already gotten into the toy box we bring full of balls, puzzles, Perplexus, legos, and more.  He spent well over an hour hanging out at the toy box with the other kids, pretending some blocks were phones, singing songs, etc.  Normally he won’t spend more than a few minutes playing that close to the other kids, preferring to wander around the room and climb on the furniture, stealing food, playing with the window blinds and the doors.  Again, an amazing and really cool thing to see.

When we went to leave for the day, we had to walk past the room where the Zumba class had been.  I had my hands full with a box, Kender was right behind me, and the van was parked right outside the door, so I hurried out and tossed the box in the van, expecting Kender to keep mosying on down the hall.  Instead, in the 30 seconds or so I was gone, Kender found the Zumba classroom (which now had a non-homeschool dance class starting), gone inside, plopped himself down on a mat with the other little kids, and the teacher had called the office over the intercom to report the little blind child who had wandered in!  Yet another thing I would not have expected him to do, especially the part where he paid attention to the other kids and joined them on the mats.

The rest of the afternoon, we heard bits of Zumba songs in what Kender was singing.  Last night, when I asked Kender to go tell Daddy about his Zumba class, this is what happened:

Needless to say, I have no problem whatsoever spending the $35 to keep him in the class for the rest of this term.  I am excited to see what he does next!

Published by solinox

I am a Wiccan priestess, a libertarian mother of triplets plus three, a wife and homeschooling mom to blind and autistic children, a fiber artist, and a Jane of All Trades, always learning and seeking to help.

Leave a comment

Leave a Reply

%d bloggers like this: