OmegaMom

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.

Ah, the first day of first grade:

Much to my dismay, the picture is blurry, goodness only knows why.  Here’s the first day of kindergarden, as a contrast.

It was also her first day on the gymnastics team, three hours of which wore her out completely.

It was also the day of the first…

Eggs!  Yes, we now have hens that are laying!  Here’s the egg in the nesting box:

And here’s the dotter discovering the egg (okay, it’s a re-enactment, but, hey…):

And here’s the dotter showing mom the first eggs:

All in all, a very momentous day.

In the meantime, OmegaDad is sick and miserable.  We thought he had pulled a muscle over the weekend.  I hauled him into the doctor, and we decided to do a two-fer:  him for the pain, me for my horribly itchy, scratchy head, which I feared might be lice.  But according to the doc, it’s a staph infection.  Um.  This is good, right?  Rather than lice?  Anyway, OmegaDad got progressively worse over the course of the day, and when we returned from the gymnasium, he was running a fever of 102F.  Which does not sound like he pulled a muscle, after all.

The first reply to my angsting about OmegaDotter maybe joining the gymnastics Tiny Team was Johnny’s:

But….if it’s her DESTINY?

Johnny being Johnny, I can’t tell if he’s being serious, or commenting on some people’s tendency to think in terms of DESTINY, or just poking fun at my angst.

Seriously:  I don’t think it’s her DESTINY.  Frankly, I think her DESTINY is to become a chef or an artist.  Or maybe just a salesman.  Or something.  ;)  But I do think she has a talent and a love for gymnastics.  But I don’t want her to end up like Z:

I was your daughter back when I was that age. And I joined the team.

20+ years later: I have had 10 surgeries, one for a broken back, all for orthopedic issues caused by or exacerbated by gymnastics. When I look back, it is not fondly.

As a child, I loved jumping and flipping and tumbling - and I was good at it. I could do a backhandspring by myself at the age of 6, a back tuck less than a year later. I chose to join the team, and become a “serious” gymnast - it was not something my parents forced on me. But once in, things changed. Gradually, but inevitably. Gymnastics changed from something I loved and looked forward to, into something I had to do - every day, for hours on end. It became my life, and though I grew to hate it, I didn’t know how to stop it because it was all I knew. My parents, I know, would have supported me no matter what, but I just didn’t know how to tell them I wanted to stop. After all, I was good. And I’d chosen it. And it would get me a scholarship and an education, so… I couldn’t just quit, could I? (I remained a gymnast until my injuries sidelined me at the age of 18)

And then I broke my back. On top of the foot and knee injuries I’d already been suffering through. And that ended it. And as much as it sucked, I was relieved, too. It was over.

So: my admittedly completely biased perspective? I’d try to keep it as fun and light as long as possible. Then let her choose. And always keep checking in on her to make sure the choice remains the one she wants… (I wouldn’t advocate taking her out mid-way through a season she’d adamantly committed to in the beginning, but at the end of each one, have a serious discussion about the next one)

Also? Every gymnast I know got injured. Some more seriously than others, but I don’t know of one yet who hasn’t spent a good portion of time on crutches. Yet another thing to consider…

Trust me–I consider it!  A lot!  (Angst.  Lots of angst.)  I worry about pushing her into something she really doesn’t want to do, but she does it because she thinks we like it, and keeps quiet about her anxiety because she wants us to be happy and love, love, love her, and blah, blah, blah.  I worry about her getting injured, and Z’s tale is eye-opening.  I worry about the cultural pressure in gymnastics to stay tiny and lean towards anorexia (like YouKnowWhereYouAreWith says) (which is, of course, another angst-y thing).  I worry, like Blog Antagonist did, whether putting her on a “team” will turn something she loves into a chore.

In terms of “destiny”, though…well, what if she is really good?  What if she keeps on loving it?  What if she keeps getting better and better?  What do we do then?! 

And on the other hand–well, there’s Johnny maybe poking fun, quietly saying:  Hey.  It’s not like you’re setting her life in stone by doing this.  She joins the team, she has fun, she learns stuff, and maybe it works out, maybe it doesn’t, and in the end it’s no big deal. 

To top it all off…well, this is all foreign territory for me.  Truly foreign.  I am about as athletic as a three-toed sloth hanging in a tree, slowly peeling a banana and munching on it while staring off into space.  My preference has always been to just hang out on a sofa or snuggled in bed and read.  My experience as a child was being the one who was always chosen last to be on the team; my only inkling of athleticism was in early high school, when a buddy and I discovered that you could play badminton hard, and we took to pairing off during phys ed and running across the court and slamming birdies over the net at each other while most of the other girls were tip-toeing around and daintily bouncing birdies oh-so-gently off the racket.  I have no experience at, say, being on a team.  Or being the mother of someone who is on a team.  It’s a time commitment, is what it is, and probably a you’ve-got-to-volunteer kind of commitment, and there may be driving off to kiddie gymnastics meets and what-not.  (Trust me, I’ve read BA’s posts on being a baseball mom, and my main response is “omigawd, that’s a lot of work!“)  I’m lazy at heart.  In the middle of winter, I want to be curled up on the sofa reading (see?), not coping with icy roads on the way to Big City for gymnastics meets.

Angst, angst, angst.  Trust me, Johnny, I’m rolling my eyes at myself about this navel-gazing.

We’ll probably give it a whirl for a year, see how it goes.  At least it’s not too terribly expensive; it could have been horses.

I’ve been fairly quiet about the dotter and gymnastics.

I originally put her in a beginning gymnastics class last fall because it was one of the things her occupational therapist had strongly recommended as a channel for her need to bounce, thump, tumble, move.  Before we left Small Mountain University Town, one of her buddies had hauled her along for a “friends’ day” at her gymnastics class, and the dotter seemed interested.

Shortly after I put her in gymnastics, it was obvious she loved it, so I decided to add a second class per week.

Last spring, her teacher approached me and strongly suggested that I move her into an intermediate class.  It was late in the teaching year, so she didn’t think it would be good to just move her then and there, but as soon as the summer session started, in she went.

It’s been pretty obvious to OmegaDad and me that the dotter has a natural talent for gymnastics.  When she focuses, she’s “on”.  And fellow gymnastics parents, watching from the sidelines with me, have made comments.

Then there was the time that one of the main coaches substituted for the dotter’s beginning teacher and shepherded her out to manage a nosebleed in the bathroom.  While we were there, she stooped and murmured to my dotter, “OmegaDotter?  You’re really good at this.  How’d you like to be a star?”

To be honest, that really freaked me out.  Fer cryin’ out loud.  She’s only six, dudes.

It so happens that the Tiny Team trains at the same time she’s taking her intermediate class; the TTs are 5, 6, 7 years old.  They had a tryout a few weeks ago, and I thought about having the dotter try out for the team, but decided that I’d wait.

Well, maybe that waiting is over with…Mr. Jay, coach of the Tiny Team, cornered me after the dotter’s class.  “You’re OmegaDotter’s mom, right?”  I allowed as how I was.  “Have you ever considered having her join the team?”

Um.  Yeah.  So.

He made it pretty clear that I could just put her in; he emphasized that even though the kids are doing a lot of work (we’re talking three three-hour long practices per week), they have fun and goof off and are silly; he suggested that we might consider “trying it out” for the remainder of the summer session, or just join up in the fall.

On the one hand, I really think it’s good for her.  It helps her focus.  She loves it–she’s always tumbling and doing cartwheels and practicing handstands and begging for help doing bridge-overs and backwards bridges at home.  Being able to do it on a regular basis, getting the confidence that being able to do the more complex things–these are good.  The discipline would be good.

On the other hand…damn.  She’s only six, dudes.