I never thought I'd be teaching cubs to bellydance!

Fifteen Cub Scouts, half of them autistic, all of them highly excited. And all swinging sticks around like mad helicopters. Not for the first time in my career as a bellydance teacher, I seriously questioned my own judgment.

My sister is Akela of her local Cub Scout pack and had asked me if I'd teach the Cubs some Egyptian-style dancing as part of their Faith badge. Bellydancing may be primarily a female dance form, but men are also keen dancers in Egypt. And in Luxor, near the Valley of the Kings, they are famous for dancing with big sticks in a stylised martial arts dance called Raqs Tahtib.

Teaching the Cubs how to do stick dancing had seemed like a good idea when she had first asked me - I thought the boys would appreciate a more masculine style of dance. So my husband visited the local wood merchants to buy lengths of wooden dowelling to cut to size and I choreographed a simple routine involving lots of mock fighting.

Ten minutes before I left on the day itself, my sister rang: "Just to confirm, we'll have around fifteen boys. Oh and by the way, seven of them are autistic or somewhere along the autistic spectrum."

Huh? Boys. Sticks. Fighting. Autistic spectrum. Help!

I'd better give you some context here. I'm childless. By choice. I trained to be a primary school teacher but gave up half way through because I realised I was useless with children. I've got a bit better since becoming an aunt but really, I don't do children.

And here I was, going off with armfuls of dowelling to teach 15 lively boys, half of whom had communication or behavioural problems, how to fight-dance with sticks.

My first contact with the Cubs was a little unnerving. A solemn boy marched up to me and demanded to know why I was wearing makeup. But my response that "I always do", seemed to be acceptable. And when they were all gathered together it was clear that for many of them, keeping their attention and channelling their energy was going to be quite a challenge.

My sister was brilliant with them though. She told them stupid jokes, bossed them about and managed to keep their focus on all things Egyptian rather than on beating each other up or racing around the room. And there was always the bellydancers time-honoured way of gaining attention - a zhagareet (high-pitched ululation) stopped them in their tracks most effectively!

It turned out to be a great day. The boys were certainly challenging, but they really did learn how to stick dance. Not brilliantly, but with bucketloads of enthusiasm.

There were particular areas of appeal: I had choreographed some sections of partner dancing where they would do some very stylized mock fighting. That went down particularly well, although as you can imagine, we had to calm them down a couple of times during practice sessions.

Then there was the salute. One of the characteristic things in this style of Egyptian dancing is to touch the hand to the forehead in a sort of salute. Of course this appealed enormously to the Cubs and one boy insisted on saluting through the whole dance - even when he had the stick in that hand!

And the autistic boys particularly enjoyed counting the beats in the music. As my sister pointed out - counting is a big thing with many autistic people and they loved the regularity and repetition of the beat threading through the music.

At the end of the afternoon the Cubs performed their stick dance to an audience of parents and siblings. As I stood at the back of the audience, discretely directing, I was overcome by the look of utter pride on the parents' faces.

I had thought I would be pleased just to get through the day without someone losing an eye. I didn't expect to be quite so moved by this funny little bunch of boys.