Whaleyville youth battles attention-deficit disorder with martial arts

Staff

Published Wednesday, July 31, 2002

Karate is a martial art that develops, among other things, self-confidence, self-control, and discipline. For a person with attention-deficit disorder (ADD), these things can be hard to learn.

Diana Jones understands this; three years ago her son Brandon was diagnosed with ADD. "He was jumping from seat to seat to seat when he was in first grade," says the Whaleyville resident. "When he was at home, I never knew where he was."

Around the same time that Brandon was diagnosed, he and his older brother Joseph began taking lessons at Jeff Bateman's School of Karate.

"They were having a thing where they were giving out free lessons," recalls Joseph, 12. "I started it one day, and he started it the next day." The brothers and Diana have stuck with the art; Diana has a green belt, Brandon a blue, and Joseph a brown, which he tested for last Sunday.

"Before karate, Brandon wouldn't do anything else except play his Playstation," says Diana. "But he can't drop out of karate now; he's come too far to turn back."

When he first met the youngest Jones, Bateman suspected something might be wrong. "I've worked with a lot of kids with ADD, and I saw that Brandon didn't have the attention span that most kids do. Most kids yell things out when they do their moves; he just said things softly. We knew that he didn't have a lot of self-confidence."

Over the next few years, Bateman, Diana, and Brandon worked to improve the eight-year-old's social facilities. Last weekend, they took a big step in the right direction; Brandon competed in his first tournament, the Commonwealth Games of Virginia in Roanoke.

"The competition made me nervous, but it was cool," says Brandon. "I had fun working with the bo staff." He won gold medals in weapons and kata (forms), and a silver medal in sparring.

In the stands, Diana was overjoyed at her son's progress. "We were all really excited during the whole tournament," she says. "When he got first in kata, you could hear me all the way on the other side of the gym."

When asked if he's prepared for another tournament, Brandon nods vigorously. "I'll be ready then, because I'll know what to do."

He prefers Bateman's karate classes to the schoolroom. "School's kind of boring sometimes, because I already know most of what I learn," says the Robertson Elementary School student. "But I don't know what's going to happen in karate class."

His work there is improving, says the renshi (high instructor). "He's been working harder. Just about everything we ask him to do, whether he likes it or not, he does it."

Brandon still isn't entirely clear on what his disorder means. "I don't know why I have to take my medicine every day," he says (he takes the drug Concerta every morning). "But when I don't take it, I get pretty hyper. I'm just getting tired of taking it."

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