Jumping rope

Hi all, today I taught my son how to jump rope. For those of you who do not know he is on the spectrum. He has a hard time with cross body movements over the years the cross body stuff has improved. He is able to ride a bike and multiple other activities. The one thing I have neglected to teach is  jumping rope.

The issue with jumping rope for him is having the left and right side be on the same page and go the same direction.  This make it hard for him to be able to jump over the rope and turn his wrist at the same time to bring the rope to his feet without the rope getting tangled up in the process.

What came to mind to do was buy a weighted jump rope to teach the concept first and hopefully get the left and the right moving in the same direction. He kept stating that it was not working because they kept going in the opposite direction of each or one side was wobbly and jerky. Upon looking up from doing my planks I could see immediately that he was having a hard time moving his wrist at the same time and speed. The funny is I started to get frustrated took a deep breath and told myself that if he could actually understand what I was verbally saying and physically showing him by doing using the weighted jump rope he would be able to do it as well. In that moment my HIIT routine was complete and I was able to take a video of him using the weighted jump rope. When I had him stop he watched the video the took a video of how I was using it.

After the compare and contrast session he was able to understand better what I was trying to verbally and physically show him at the same time. I would post the two videos to show you what I mean but I have no clue one how to go about.

Now I need to admit that having a child on the spectrum is difficult to say the least and if I were to try to attempt teaching through his younger years on how to do so it would have been very difficult for me to not react. I am finally in the right frame of mind to help him with this part of childhood.

Don’t get me wrong I did help him with other childhood activities one being riding his bike. It is funny to think about now but I remember being six months pregnant with my middle child him being five years old and me being bent over trying to help him just pedal without having his training wheels on. Man that was back breaking work. It took from about may to about July being eight months along four me to finally give up and put the training back on. three years later a bunch of girls in Florida were able to get him to ride without assistance by telling him “you can’t ride with us if you have training wheels”. To bad we weren’t in Florida while I was pregnant.

Fast forward six years after diagnosis I am finally able to help him more on the cross body rhythmic movements without losing my cool. I know it makes me sound like a bad parent but I literally had a hard time processing and problem solving on how to help him. The only advice I ever received was to compliment, do sticker charts, immediately give a reward and praise. All of these I did only to make everything worse. The bad advice and not understanding why natural consequences and the intervention of me trying to do what worked me while I was learning had me a jumbled mess. Hence the reason it took me 10 years to help him learn how to use a jump rope properly.

Sorry for the long winded post! I guess I need to write about this a bit. The struggle is real. If you took the time to actually read this thank you. To those who love the pictures I’m sorry I do not have any for this post. I hope you enjoyed. Thank you for stopping by.