Socal Mom’s post about her daughter’s schedule from hell hits so close to home.
I mistakenly thought that my life would get easier when my kids got older. But it didn’t — it went the other way, and in an entirely unexpected direction.
I had always somewhat breezily declared that I had no intention of letting my kids get immersed in team sports. I had a couple of reasons for this, not the least of which is my utter distaste for the froth that parents stir themselves into over their kids’ teams and team performance.
My oldest son, however, insisted on giving up speech team in high school and trading it off for the football team. Despite my resistance, I showed up for every single game and cheered the team on to victory through his senior year, when he headed off to the Army for 4 very long painful years. I still blame his defection to the football team for his subsequent enlistment, but it’s water under the bridge now. Fortunately he’s out and safely in college in Arizona with some government bucks backing him through his university education.
Sticks, on the other hand, has never been a team player at anything, for which I heaved a HUGE sigh of relief. That is, until he was 9 and Michael Flatley came to town. He was completely hooked on Irish Dance from the first time he saw the Riverdance video, and when he saw Flatley do his Feet of Flames thing, it was all over.
Our community is fortunate to have two highly-ranked Irish dance schools within driving distance of one another. The competition is fierce and fast between these two. It so happened that one of them was offering a month of classes free, so T indulged Sticks’ passion and signed him up. I was completely unsupportive of it. I thought he’d give it up in a month and that would be that. And of course, Dancergirl wasn’t about to be left in the cold — at the ripe old age of 5, she HAD to do what her brother was doing, so off they went to dance class with me grousing all the time.
Just like my friend Donna, I figured it was a passing fancy that would go away. I wouldn’t even watch Sticks compete at his first feis (pronounced “fesh”…or Irish Dance competition) because he’d had such an awful meltdown at a speech tournament that I was sure his (and my) heart would be broken if he had a meltdown at this. Only he came home with 6 1st place medals, 1 second and a trophy in the special competition. Geez.
Little did I know….I completely underestimated both of them. Sticks went on to compete for 5 years, placing 4th at regionals twice, 14th at Nationals twice and competed at the World Championships twice — once in Ireland and once in Scotland. He retired when he got involved in the marching band and drumline in high school — dance demands 10-15 hours a week of practice which was completely impossible for him to do with the Band schedule and demands of HS curriculum. But DAMN. I STILL have to go to football games. I am missing the one tonight because…
Dancergirl is in her seventh year of dancing. She is preparing for regional championships and the first pre-regional competition is this weekend. She dances solos and teams, but being Sticks’ polar opposite, enjoys much more team success than solo success. This is partly because she’s a girl and it’s much harder for girls than boys simply because there are more of them. It is mostly because she doesn’t have the will of steel that drives her brother — she just doesn’t have that competitive drive that he does. She wants to win; he HAS to win. It is a material difference when it comes to Irish Dance, Drumline and other assorted competitive endeavors. Dancergirl is much more at home with a team of 7 other girls who completely depend on each other for their final ranking. She has placed 1st with her team at regionals three years in a row and they have placed 6th and 13th at Nationals. Next year will be her first visit to Ireland, when she travels with the team to compete at Worlds.
All of this is great, but it’s hell on the schedule. And this week has been a special kind of hell. Every six months or so the dance school has a visiting teacher from Ireland come. We all love her, and she and her school are known for their world-class dancers. It’s a real privilege to have a week with her (one we PAY FOR…but still) and the kids love it, but it means an extra 10-12 hours of time in one week spent at the studio. We’ve been there every day since last Friday for 2-3 hours a day. Fortunately Dancergirl hasn’t had any homework issues, but she’s nursing a twisted ankle and stressing over her solo competition tomorrow.
I honestly don’t know how to balance things better. I told T that I would gladly give up the dancing, but how can I do that when we let Sticks have his best shot at it? We made sure that he had those opportunities — how can we NOT give her the same ones? This has always been something that I’ve been sensitive about. Sticks has the kind of personality and presence that will suck all of the air out of the room and not leave anything behind for anyone else. That’s not fair to her, so I tend to try a little harder to give her a chance to breathe and spread her wings even though he leaves such a huge wake.
So tonight I passed on the football game and opted for getting ready for tomorrow. She’s at practice till 8:30 tonight so I am polishing shoes, bleaching socks, and making sure the bazzillion dollar sparkly dress is together and ready for her tomorrow. We’ll braid and tie up her hair tomorrow morning, stick it under the bazzillion dollar wig, put the sparkly tiara on and glue the socks. Those are the things I can do. The rest will be up to her.
I try so damn hard not to be one of those parents that is pushy about this stuff that sometimes I’m afraid she thinks I’m not proud of what she has accomplished. It’s clear to me from her insistence on constantly wearing her little t-shirts from nationals and regionals and local feises that her identity is really wrapped up in her dancing, but at the same time, she has a great head on her shoulders about not reaching the same heights solo-wise that her brother has. For her, it’s all about the experience, the friends and the team effort. It’s just my job to play on the team, and I try to do that for her. In the end, what I hope is that she learns how to achieve through being prepared, self-reliant, and able to work with others. It’s not about winning, but I admit..
It does feel good when they do win.
SoCal Mom/Donna, good luck to your daughter this weekend! I hope we’re all blogging about being good winners on Monday.
