The Changes in My Kids after the M.E.L. Camp

Wen Hua (Shenzhen, China)
Mar. 1, 2013

Having taken various Kinesiology courses for a year, I am increasingly curious in this field of study and confident in Teacher Conrad Ho. Therefore, in 2012 summer, I sent my child Aibor to the M.E.L. Camp (Movement-Enhances-Learning Camp) in Dalian; his cousin, two years older than him, went along. At that time, his situation was that a lot of his body movements were uncoordinated, and he felt anxiety and dislikes towards schooling and studying. His cousin performed quite well in school, but often had confrontations with her parents. Her parents thought that she was cold and did not like to express herself; sometimes she was even a little apathetic and showed no interest in many things. Although she was already 15, she insisted on sleeping in the same room with her parents, even though that meant she had to sleep on the floor.

In the M.E.L. Camp, the two children went from feeling so-so in the beginning to getting more and more excited day after day. Through phone calls and e-mails, their lightheartedness and happiness could be felt. Now, after more than half a year, as my sister and I look back on their experience, my sister, who has no background in Kinesiology, has discovered in amazement that her daughter has changed a lot.
(1) After coming back from the M.E.L. Camp, she still insisted on sleeping with her parents, but not every day, the frequency dropping from 5 times to 3 times a week. In the past, sometimes she would call for her mother to accompany her in the middle of the night; now, she no longer wakes up during night-time and does not call for her parents anymore.
(2) She has become more talkative obviously and loves to talk. Her mother has discovered that her daughter quite likes to talk nowadays. Her daughter even says, “I can talk a lot from the very beginning.”
(3) She is willing to express her feelings and actively communicate with her parents, and has expressed some of her fears and dissatisfaction of being left alone at home in her childhood.
(4) She has her own opinions. Even though she was very tempted to go to Maldives during the winter holidays with the whole family, she eventually adhered to her decision of staying at home to study according to her own plan. She even arranged to have her friends celebrate her 16th birthday with her.
(5) School starts in March 2013. She calmly faces her less-than-ideal results of the final exam of the last semester, and shares endlessly with her mother her plans for the new semester, down to such details as her plans for each subject and her analysis of her own ability in various subjects. We see more and more sense of security in this child, including feeling secure enough to share her own thoughts. To see that she can perceive the environment she is in, to see her confidence and ability to make decisions independently, to see her standing firm in the face of setbacks, and to see her planning better and better and taking responsibility for herself – these changes in her makes her mother very happy. I also admire my sister greatly for her patience during her daughter’s adjustment period, which allows her to slowly adjust and improve.

As to my son, I must admit that because of examination-oriented education and his mother who did not know that the body was the teacher of the brain, his brain was disconnected with his body, and he was nervous and fragile. After the M.E.L. Camp, he also has some changes. For example:
(1) His body becomes much more relaxed; when I observe his posture, there is less tension and stiffness and more lengthening.
(2) He also becomes more talkative and is very alive. He likes to share, he likes humor, and he likes to bicker with his parents.
(3) His rope-jumping has improved.
(4) His concentration has improved, and he can finish a very complicated model in one go.
(5) He is more responsible about his own studies.
(6) He spends less time comparing with other people, and is more accepting towards himself. I’m happy to see these changes. Of course, I want him to improve more, and I expect changes like his cousin’s to happen on him. This is my expectation, my homework, a part of me that should be balanced. When I see that I still get disappointed, frustrated and worried, I see room for my own improvement: in the continuous process of balancing, I still get anxious and sad.

Anyway, on behalf of my sister and myself, I thank the M.E.L. Camp. I thank Teacher Conrad Ho, Teacher Chen Yan-bing, Teacher Lo Gang, Teacher Huang Jin-kun, and all the other trainers and staff that have helped my kids at the M.E.L. Camp. Finally, I must sincerely thank myself, for my own persistence; I have prepared to continue to persist, and I thank myself for having the insight to learn Kinesiology.