we are the dancers..

well Im not..but maybe like to think i am but i have girls so there is much dancing in our house..the boys get involved too!

Both my older girls dance at the same balletschool. One of them recently had a bit of an issue with going to a lesson which resulted in a nearly half hour stand off between said daughter and me about whether or not she would go into the class. Has to be said this was..outside, in the cold and there were 4 other kids slowly getting cheesed off. I tried every thing possible to convince her to go back in but she wouldn’t have it and in the end, to cut along and gory story short, I told her that we weren’t going to freeze waiting for her to decide what she wanted to do and that she had to come home with me, as she had missed most of the lesson anyway and then she would be going to apologise to her teacher at the next lesson.

At the next lesson, after my daughter had gone happily in. The ballet teacher grabbed my OH and told him that our daughter was very talented at ballet and had exactly the right kind of personality for it!!

er…excuse me? so the right personality for ballet is to be obstinate and stubborn? hmmmmm….really?

She obviously felt so strongly about it that she repeated it to me next time i dropped the girls off and also added ‘its important not to squash these strong characters!’

to which i responded… ‘yes i totally agree with you..but parenting those strong characters is no picnic!’

She gave me a wry smile…im thinking she may have, herself, fit into that category. 😉

 

themondayclub

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under pressure…

My daughter has a ballet exam today, maybe just as you are reading this and tonight while she was going to bed there was some definate nerves going on. She was being that jumpy, silly, almost naughty way they act when underneath its all nerves and anxiety.

“you are going to be great” we re-assured her over and over again. Along with lots of ‘just do your best and thats all that matters’ type comments that we know we have to say to our kids so that they don’t feel like they are failing or not doing well.

Thing is..i know that her ballet teacher pushes them and probably does openly praise the kids in the class who get the dance right straight away or have the best pointy toes (or whatever). So there is a bit of tension i would imagine in the mind of a small child when their parents are saying in a floaty fashion ‘just do your best, we will be proud of you, whatever you do’ and then they are hearing their ballet teacher wondering out loud in a ballet lesson ‘SO who will get a distinction and do me proud then girls?’

Im never sure where to pitch it when it comes to this sort of dilemma. I read an article at work today about Louis Smith (the olympic gymnast) and he was saying that his hero was his mum. awwww. Now im guessing as the mother to a young guy who eventually went on to be part of the olympic team and then a medallist..you must have to do a fair amount of pushing…and yes, applying a bit of pressure to do well. Otherwise how to they make it? Is that just the job of the coach or do we, as parents, wade in and start applying the ‘thumb screws’ too, so to speak?

Im not sure. what do you think?

(btw, for the record I have never actually heard the ballet teacher say those words) 😉

 

themondayclub

 

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