More new experiences

Because I'm off dwelling under canvas today, here's a post I prepared earlier.

My 12 y.o. is doing a sport at school this "term" that I've never seen in schools in Australia. He's doing Freestyle Wrestling.

Just to prove to myself that kids do wrestle in Australia, I went looking on the internet and found this young man in Western Australia. But he's having trouble finding people to wrestle. It really isn't a common sport in our home country.

Our son's been training three times a week after school and then coming home and watching Youtube videos like this:

He's really enjoying it, though he hasn't yet had to wrestle anyone his own size who knows what they're doing. 

What intrigues me is that there are only two middle schoolers at CAJ doing wrestling. And it doesn't seem to bother him that none of his friends have joined him. It confirms to me that he's not really influenced by peer pressure. This can be a good thing and a bad thing. There is a certain amount that you can learn from your peers and what they are doing, especially if you have good friends. Peer pressure usually gets bad "press", but to be totally oblivious to it can be a problem too, especially if adults use it to get cooperation from a group of kids. Thankfully CAJ doesn't use that strategy as much as Japanese schools do. To say, "Do it because everyone else is" has a minimal effect, if any at all on our son.

Anyway, back to the wrestling. It is a foreign world to me. He's learning many strange terms and strengthening muscles he barely knew existed. So it is a challenge to talk about it with him, because I feel like he's learning a new language. Oh, and the thing, the outfit they wear, it's called a "singlet" (for non Aussies, that has a different meaning in our country, it means a sleeveless shirt, sometimes an undershirt worn in winter).

But I did have some fun with him one morning this week. I've been curious as to how he feels about being touched like this. He's very ticklish, so I wondered if that would be a problem. But he doesn't seem to have an issue. He did have an issue with the tickle-wrestle that I tackled him with in the kitchen the other morning :-) Thankfully it ended in smiles. But he did tell me that tickling is prohibited in wrestling. Good thing because he'd never get anywhere in wrestling if tickling were allowed!