Yoyo meet day. Nobody showed. Big surprise. Even got confirmations on my Facebook event notice…
My Facebook page, in case anyone cares:
Anyhow, it worked out for the better. Just me and my boy. He’s getting his side bind down. Front bind, as already explained, he’s got. Typically stuff, he needs more practice, but hey, not bad. Once he really has it to the point where he no longer needs to focus on it, it’s time to move forward. Oh, and how he’s snap starting his Protostar. I have mentioned he’s five and a half, right?
Onto 4A. He’s still having trouble wit the throw. He has thrown and landed it a couple of times. I think I need to shorten that string too. Binding might be an issue that can be dealt with later. I swear, the Fiesta XX can take a massive beating!
The side bind will translate to his adventures in 5A. I’m going to order him a red Magic YoYo T6 since he wants a smaller sized yoyo. I might have him try some other stuff that’s even smaller, maybe even a Littles. He’s working hard at this stuff. With summer break coming, he’s gonna have more time to work on this if he wants to. Plus, he wants a diabolo and he has to earn that. This is unlike his older sister who wanted a Kendama but now that she has one she won’t touch it. My son has a kendama, and he tries to use it a bit every day.
I figure one my boy has side bind down, I’m going to teach him front mount, back mount, split bottom mount, trapeze, 1.5 and double or nothing. I figure once he has those fundamentals, he’ll be able to just make up his own stuff. I don’t want to give him TOO much structure, mostly because at this point, he’s a clean slate and while I do want him to learn the “standard tricks”, I feel his self-paced creativity might be a better way to go for the time being and could lead to the creation of new tricks.
At some point, he’s gonna need a pair of loopers and a pair of throws for 3A, and he’s probably going to want something better for 5A than his blue Freakhand.
My days are numbered. That’s OK. It’s not about me being “top of the yoyo heap” in this household. But, I started at 39, He started at 4.5. BIG difference! I’m slow to get stuff. He’s not exactly fast picking up a lot of stuff, but sometimes he does. He’s gaining experience every day and growing more and more confident. It will be interesting to see if he ever decides to compete.
It sounds almost as if you’re treating your 5 year old son as a lab experiment! Maybe you should let your other son, (I’m right in thinking you have two sons, right?) learn through YoYoExpert tutorials so you can use him as a control. You could plot a graph comparing their respective progresses and by the end of the year you can release your results to the community so we know how best to teach newbies how to YoYo.
It’s a shame nobody came to your meet, I wouldn’t pass on an opportunity to meet you, which is why I’m hoping you can come to worlds. (Are things still in your favour as to whether or not you can go?)
I love these adventures in YoYoing posts too, they’re like a mini blog… Keep them coming!
Whenever I read about you and your family I allways think of the show “Courtship of Eddie’s Father” except you and the maid are married and there are a few other kids. You just seem like one of those nice tv Dad’s from the 70’s.
Tell me if you look anything like these pictures. Do you remember this show? omg I got a pic of him playing with a yoyo.
Kids this is the original Hulk btw I think he became the Hulk after dealing with his family.
I tried letting him follow the YYE tutorials. He has little to no interest in them. If he wants access to them, those and hundreds of other videos are on the media server. I’m not using him as an experiment. I figure, he’s already coming up with his own stuff, so I figure just give him the rudimentary tools to get started, then let him explore this on his own, and when he wants some tutorials, they are readily available. My thoughts are also to let him determine his own amount of enjoyment of this. When he wants more, more is always available.
Some people need structure, some people need some “freedom”. Once he’s done being so free, he’ll want some structure to get more tools to add to his skill set.
Top Picture:
No, that guy has WAY more hair than I do. You can see me in my YYE Forum Expert profile, behind my robot. My wife is Vietnamese, so the kid is “half and half”.
Yoyo meets: People are cleaning the pegs at the Toys R Us, so they are being consumed up locally. Shame nobody wants to “come out of the closet”. Yoyo is so much better in groups! Oh well. It gets me out of the house for a few hours.
Worlds is still unclear. The direction right now is leaning towards “yes”, but it can swing hardcore back to “no” at any point in time. The structure outside the house is rapidly changing with no notice or predictable pattern. It’s not a money thing, it’s a “can my wife take time off work” thing. Or, if I can just leave late Thursday and arrive sometime Friday, that may work out, then she’d only have to take off a day of her work, and Friday is usually a half day.
The eldest kid, a girl, goes back and forth in her interests. It annoys me that she made me buy her a Chaser at BAC, and she hasn’t touched it since then. She got a Legacy II for Christmas, she’s not using it. Shinwoo Loop: not touched. New Duncal Pulse(also got at BAC): sitting in her YYE bag. Her Starlight(that she can’t play since she can’t bind): unwrapped, untouched essentially. Demanded a Kendama, already done with it after 2 hours. Spintop: another demand, another apparent lost interest. My diabolo: no longer interested in that either. She’s 8, it’s to be expected, but she’s seen that I’m not “feeding this interest” unless she shows a greater interest. I figured rthose 2 kids of mine, seeing Andre and JD in person at BAC, as well as many of the other amazing players would at least have sparked interest in the eldest girl. It did, for a few days.
It will be interesting to see what future reports will show. My progress is very slow. After 2.5 months, McBride’s Roller Coaster STILL has problems, it’s the around the world tour to the 1.5 mount, doing the 1.5 mount. It’s improving! The rest is solid. Buddha’s Revenge: 9 out of 10 times it’s good. I keep popping the yoyo out on the third toss back to the 1.5 on the third round of it. Dismounts: I go back and forth how I want to dismount. I kinda like going to from that final 1.5 into a trapeze and bro, back to double or nothing, roll out and bind, seems kinda flashy and busy. Otherwise, once in trapeze and bro, pop back to trapeze, then bind it back(after popping out of the trapeze).
Current tasks for me: Wormhole and Eli hops. For some reason I can’t do wormhole, I get lost after dropping the ripcord. I’ll get it! Eli Hops: I’ve done like 2 baby hops, once. This is gonna be tricky! I skipped boomerang and boingy boing for now. I’m also working on improving my right hand looping before I get into left hand looping.
I’ll keep people posted. It gives me something to do between events. But this afternoon I have to rebuild my stage for my 3D model as the software decide to screw it up.
