Well, that was quick!
posted in Gymnastics, OmegaDotter, Parenting |The dotter is not on the team anymore. No biggie; we really had doubts about the whole thing, given her maturity level. Too long, too hard, too “boring” doing the same things over and over, longer than in a class.
So we’re switching her to an intermediate class, and we’ll see how that goes.
It was rather embarrassing, though–she wasn’t listening to the coach, she was lying down, she was distracting one of her buddies who is on the team, and poor coach Jay obviously got…um…frustrated with the attitude. But a lot of that was really a reflection of the above: her maturity level. And a reflection of an incredible ability to be unfocused, scatter-brained, flitting from one thing to another.
She focuses very well on some things; when she gets into a particular drawing, or a creation of some kind, she sticks with it and comes up with creative solutions on her own.
One problem is that she catches on quickly to some things, so that when something is hard and she doesn’t do it right, she gets frustrated quickly and starts putting herself down: “I can’t do it. I’m no good. I’m doing it wrong.”
Sigh. Oh, do I know that feeling!
On the other hand, she is showing flashes of emotional maturity that surprise me. (Flashes, mind you, not ongoing, steady emotional maturity!)
She was the one who wanted to make a card for her new teacher, asked OmegaDad to buy it, and asked me to help her write it when she got home, and kept focused about remembering to take it in to school on the first day.
She pulled OmegaDad aside to talk privately to him about something that was bothering her, because she knew talking about it might hurt me and someone else, and she didn’t want to upset us.
And in a spectacular combination of creativity, scatter-brained-ness, and emotional maturity, she decided that her new tie-dyed hoodie, with sleeves that were too long, needed to have holes for her thumbs so she could have the cuff as a sort of mitten. All well and good–a cool idea. The application of the idea, however, left a great deal to be desired. When I woke up after OmegaDad had gone to work and snuggled with her in her bedroom, I noticed two huge holes cut into the sleeves of her hoodie, down by the cuffs. Somehow or other, I didn’t blow my top (it was a somewhat expensive hoodie) but let her know in no uncertain terms that (a) it was a very bad idea, (b) daddy would get just as angry as me, (c) she needed to talk to him about it, and (d) it would be a hella lot better telling him than him discovering it on his own.
She tried to get me to not tell him and keep it a secret. Har. As if. Not only would I not keep something like that a secret (which I let her know), but…well…it was pretty damned obvious.
That night, when OmegaDad got home, the first thing she did was to drag him into the bedroom, close the door, and tell him all about it.
Frankly, that amazed me. That she would remember it on her own, first off. And that she would do it on her own, secondly.
