Thursday, October 9, 2008

Stage Parents

It is interesting to watch parental reactions (including my own) to children's lack of cooperation in activities. When your child misbehaves, it is embarrassing, especially because you might start to think the other parents are thinking that you should have better control. And sometimes they are thinking that. And sometimes they say that.

Ian had his first gymnastics class with the new teacher and he was horrendous! He had been crazy these past few weeks so I felt additional internal pressure to try to control him. During the warm up, I tried to hold him and make him do the tasks. He fought me and screamed. Then, the rotations started. He did well on some apparatus and not well on others. I got control of myself during the rotations and just moved him through. If he didn't want to do a particular station, we kept moving. Towards the end of the class, I just let him run. You can harp and yell and restrain and then you are both miserable.

He's only two.

But, we just had a moment of sweetness. Ian took my hand and said,"Come see the moon." He led me to the window and showed it to me.

1 comment:

Connie said...

How sweet! Brian and I used to talk to 'Luna' all the time together.. I loved that.

Brian, at 2, gave me a hard time about holding hands in public.. I was pregnant then too. Couldn't let him loose, forcing made us both miserable, letting HIM choose to wear a toddler leash helped a lot (most of the time) but people looked at me strange. As you said, he's two. Just wait, 3's are even more 'interesting'... sweeter though. Or maybe I am thinking 4's? 5's? 6's? 7's? ... no matter! Just hang in there, and say hi to the moon for me.