So here is a question for God (if there is one)....When do you know you’ve pushed your kid too far, or not enough?
The RedHead does very well in school. She enjoys it and can’t wait to go. I fucking hated school so I’m still amazed that she likes it. Freaky! So recently she was asked to try out for her school’s.....let’s say for these purposes, “pizza making” team. It would give her a chance to compete against other schools in pizza making. She was so excited (because she’s really good at “pizza making”) she jumped in with both feet. But the coach had one thing on his mind: winning, and it had taken the fun out of something the RedHead used to love. Now she hated it and wanted to quit.
Which brings me to my next question...Do we let her quit? I mean what are these competitions about? Are they about learning to work together as a team? How to pursue a goal thru study and hard work? How to learn to commit to something and not to give up? Or are they for the parents? So the parents can say their child is the best and most smartest? The gold medal the child receives proves how great they must be to have such a smart kid?
The parents of the kids on the pizza making team made their kids study pizza making morning, noon and night. We didn’t. And the kids on the “pizza making” team are sort of professional students. They’re the kids that take a lot of classes after school and on weekends so they’re sort of up on how to do this kind of thing. We just let the RedHead kinda do her own thing. Are we not pushing her enough? And if we aren’t, should we push her more?
The RedHead became sullen, angry, moody....not the usual kid we knew. She hated anything to do with “pizza making”. She told us she was bad at “pizza making” and would let the team down if she stayed. We thought the competition would empower her in some way but it was having the opposite effect. What should we do?
These are the days when I just want a martini and put my feet up and watch “The People’s Court” over and over and ignore it all.....kinda like the way my dad did when I was a kid only for him he hid behind a paintbrush and a pan full of pasta sauce.
The answer for me came when another parent took the opportunity to make a play date with the coach’s kid so his kid could pick the coach’s brain on “pizza making”. This parent also stopped all play dates and only “pizza” studying was allowed. I realized that this just wasn’t our thing. Playing and drawing and running and laughing are just as important as schoolwork and “pizza making” and to stop all of that, stops the kid from being a kid. You don’t want your kid not to be a kid, do you?
So we had a talk with her - and maybe you’ll agree with us and maybe you won’t....I’m still not sure we were or are doing the right thing....being a parent is sucky sometimes.....We gave her the choice to quit or not. We told her that the winning wasn’t what was important, it was the working together as a group and trying your hardest to achieve something and if she felt that she couldn’t do it, then she could quit. But she’d have to tell the coach, not us. It was her decision and hers alone.
She decided to stay.
She didn’t make the team and she’s not even sure she’s an alternate but she’s really happy.....she’ll still be able to go to the team pizza party!
I’m not sure we’ll do anything like this again but if we do, I’ll make sure I have plenty of vodka on hand. And of course deep down, the Tiger Mother within secretly wishes the RedHead could have kicked those kids asses without all that extra hullabaloo that all those other tiger mothers made their kids do.
A girl can dream!
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