I Survived!

So I survived last night's stint at the dojo with my sanity in tact. I did have help, which was good. She just got her black belt and has been an assistant instructor for a long time now, so she helped me with the things that had changed or I'd forgotten in the three years or so since I was in some of these classes.

We did have only one issue that I feel a bit badly about. A brown belt student that I'd never had came to a white belt class. I didn't talk to his parents before-hand, so I had no background information whatsoever on the child, who appeared to be about 10 or so. I try to treat everyone the same. So when he talked back to me as I was trying to help him, I told him to give me ten pushups. After all, he is a brown belt and should know by now to respect whoever is teaching the class. He told me that he wasn't going to do pushups. I told him that he had the choice of either doing the pushups or bowing off the mat, because I wouldn't be spoken to that way. He sat down on the mat and howled. It clicked to me then that he had special needs and no one bothered to let me know. Not that I would treat him that much differently, but you know not to go quite as hard on the kid when he/she doesn't exactly behave as expected. I feel bad to a degree about what happened, but do feel that the mom should have not assumed that I knew what was going on with her child. I suppose it's a very tricky situation for the parent, too, because you don't want the child to be known only for the special needs that they have. I went out after class and talked to the boy, and told him that I wanted him to try class again next week. I hope that he's ok.

The rest of the night went really well, actually. I am feeling more and more comfortable up in front of the classes, but know that I have a while to go before I feel like I do a good job with it.