Today, my daughter’s lesson to me was have a little more faith in her.  My 5 year-old has been ice skating since she was 2 1/2 years old.  She saw a cartoon of Minnie Mouse and Daisy ice skating and that was it, she was hooked.  She won 1st place in a recent competition although it surprised everyone, including her coach and myself.  When she has lessons, the focus level can be negligible.  Sometimes, I really wonder about what goes on in her head because it is literally like talking to a brick wall.  Her coach has to come up with extremely inventive ways to keep her going like making up completely silly stories or crazy adventures on ice.  

In the past, it was the violin. She absolutely begged to learn violin with a passion rare in a kid so young.  It was about a year before we agreed to let her take violin lessons.  When her teacher demanded that she actually get down and focus after several months of playing, she wanted no part of that.  She quit ballet as well.  The two things she has stuck with are ice skating and karate. Both of these are activities that require a high level of dedication.  She persistently refuses to practice karate outside of class even though she loves karate and talks about getting her black belt when she is older. She talks about how important it is to practice, but that is as far as it goes.  If I take her for extra ice time just to skate for fun, she sits on the ice and plays with the snow she makes with her skates as if it was a snowy sandbox, oblivious to anyone around her.

I want her to have fun with her activities.  All work and no play makes for absolute misery.  At the same time, I want her to learn how to practice a skill.  Today, after the lesson, her coach asked her to practice doing figure skating pumps around in a circle 5 times.  Then her coach went to go teach another student.  To our delight and complete shock, she just kept going.  She kept practicing for half an hour entirely on her own without any additional coaching, a complete first!  I’m just sorry I didn’t believe she would even stick with the 5 times around the circle.  But then, it wouldn’t have been such a great surprise.  

I have loads of confidence in my daughter, and my goal is that she can have confidence in herself.  But I find myself looking at her with a critical eye, just like my parents would look at me.  I am furious with myself for it.  I think my daughter is amazing, and I know I am blessed with a very special child.  I always swore if I had a kid, I wouldn’t be critical.  I’m learning the great extent to how a person is raised is totally imprinted onto the natural parenting style.  I never realized the critical voice would be so automatic and persistent.  I find myself biting my tongue quite a lot.  I try so hard to remember what it was like for me. I never felt like I would ever measure up to an invisible bar that reached way past the sky.  I don’t want my daughter to ever feel like that.  I want her to have self-confidence that I didn’t get the chance to foster when I was young.

I am concerned because she recently began having lengthy conversations with her My Little Pony toy.  In her make believe play, Princess Cadence is a bully.  The pony is quite insulting to my child.  For example, if my daughter is painting a picture, the pony says it’s a terrible picture.  My daughter then reports Princess Cadence’s insults and bullying to me.  I tell her Princess Cadence is a toy, and even if she wasn’t a toy, she shouldn’t let words get to her, or allow herself to be bullied.  Then my daughter runs off to yell at Princess Cadence for being a bad friend, then all is fine.

I don’t know if these conversations stem from genuine worry my daughter has, or if they are just because projecting confidence is a subject that is frequently spoken of in her karate class as way to avoid being a victim of bullying.

I am constantly trying to find the balance point between teaching my child about fun and working on something diligently.  The two aren’t mutually exclusive, but the more one works on a skill, the more fun can be had with that skill.  I know she desperately wants to learn spins and jumps like she sees the bigger girls doing. In karate, she loves doing kicks and working with nunchucks.  All of which require practice.  

I’m learning that the maturing process is one step forward and ten steps back.  So is learning how to parent.  Where does encouragement become criticism? How much do you push?  I don’t believe constant praise does a kid any good either.  Kids have to learn to accept some form of criticism, otherwise they aren’t living in reality.  However, the constant criticism I was raised with didn’t help me at all.  Where is the middle?