The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2020 67 Karate for FS Kids Alix Bryant ■ Gainesville, Virginia On March 30, when Governor Ralph Northam announced a stay-at-home order for Virginians, our kids had already been home for two weeks (Virginia was the second U.S. state to close its schools for the remainder of the school year). Our two boys were quick to provide “research” on the mental health benefits of playing video games on a daily basis, and our daughter petitioned us for access to the House- party app (we said yes) and to TikTok (nope, still too young for that). When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and more and more authorized departures were announced, I was prepared to help Foreign Service families cope with their new realities and adjust to their routines at home. I had already been homeschooling my kids until just this year, and had created a business around providing online resources for kids. Since many FS families were struggling to find the balance between too much academic online learning and the alterna- Black belt world champion Hanshi Darren Cox with the author (right), also a black belt in karate. tive—too much screen time—I invited families to participate in an online karate program I had recently developed. More than 500 FS kids signed up within two weeks! Karate has been a passion of mine since childhood, and the overwhelmingly positive response from parents—most of them grateful for an outlet that allowed their kids to burn off a lot of pent-up energy—made me happy to share this course with the young members of our community. I also gave away nearly 1,000 PDF copies of My Life as a For- eign Service Kid , an activity book I created for FS kids, with fill-in-the-blank pages to write about the places they’ve lived, their unique experiences, their favorite foreign foods and souvenirs, their goals and their dream destinations. While I’m not on the front lines, as a Foreign Service family member I’ve been uniquely positioned to assist our FS community in my own way. By offering FS kids a creative outlet, families might see this time as a gift rather than a challenge. Alix Bryant is the wife of Foreign Service specialist Trent Bryant, the mother of three kids, a serial entrepreneur and a self-proclaimed dessert critic—in that order. MATTHEWSAUK Karate has been a passion of mine since childhood, and the overwhelmingly positive response from parents made me happy to share this course with the young members of our community.