Softball

Miss Mouse started her second season of homeschool softball today. This followed a week of dance camp. She chose to do both tap and ballet this year; we had limited her to one last year, but this year she was allowed to choose two options. It was a wild week, by our standards, in that I shuttled Miss Mouse and Sunny, who also participated in the tap class, to class by 9 a.m., picked up Sunny at 9:30, left Miss Mouse to play with the instructor's daughter for 45 minutes before her ballet class, picked up Miss Mouse at 10:45 from ballet, and made it home in time for Mighty's nap every day. Yikes. It was so fun to see the girls perform their routines yesterday. I love the summer camp weeks because they tend to be really small classes (4, as opposed to the 20+ in the school-year dance classes), and the girls get to try out different styles of dance than during the year. Miss Mouse fell in LOVE with tap. I've asked her no less than four times if she really liked it or just is saying she liked it because she knows how much I would love to learn tap. She is determined that she loved it; they were really sweaty after the tap class, and she says that's part of what she loved about it: it is fast-paced with fast moves. She likes ballet but less so than tap. She was beautiful in both. Sunny gets to take a tap/ballet class in the fall, but Miss Mouse is out of the age range for that class, unfortunately. I'm glad they'll be in separate classes, but I wish there was a tap available for Miss Mouse, too.

Anyway, onto the title of the post. The girls were both planning to be in softball/t-ball this year, but today Sunny refused to participate. It's been a big week for her, following a HUGE week three weeks ago with VBS, so I didn't really bat an eyelash. She hung out with me and the boys the entire two hours of Miss Mouse's class. Last year Miss Mouse was in the youngest class and ended up usually playing around for about an hour; they just learned which base was which, practiced catching, played tag, batted from a t, etc. This year, Miss Mouse has moved up to the intermediate group, so they were learning really how to catch (more than just "grab at the ball"), how to hit, how to function in a game. They even played a couple games (innings?) at the end of the full two hours. It's still very low-key compared to the park district programs and such, but it's fun that she's learning some of the skeleton skills of baseball. They ran hard; they played hard. It was h.o.t. out there, too. I was so very, very proud of how hard she worked. When we arrived, I sunscreened and bug sprayed Miss Mouse first, and she headed off on her own (yes, I watched to make sure she was safe from cars and arrived at her destination) to join the big group of kids and adults congregating to start the day. I stayed back at the car and got sunscreen and bug gunk on Sunny and Mighty before unloading and packing the stroller and then finally arriving as they were all already saying their beginning prayer. She had gone right up to the leader and introduced herself and was totally comfortable since she recognized some of the coaches from last year and several of the kids from softball last year and from her homeschool p.e. class this spring. If I wore button shirts, I might burst them!  It's possible I'm overly proud of this girl because those are things I would NEVER HAVE DONE. Not in a million years.

That, however, that fact that I would not have enjoyed learning softball with a large group is why I can understand my little Sunny. She's considering joining in next week, mostly because while we went over and watched her group play today she noticed that one little girl had to partner with the coach for catching practice because there wasn't an even number of kiddos in that group. She figures next week if she decides to join, she could be that little girl's partner. Yep, that's my sweet Sunny.  My shockingly timid little Sunny. She's so very proud of taking piano lessons this summer, but she's terrified to practice in front of anyone for fear we'll hear her make a mistake. She's her mama's girl so much it makes her mama's heart break.

While Sunny and I were standing watching the youngest group practice, I noticed a mom with two littles who were apparently supposed to be participating in the 4-5 year old group. They appeared almost the same size, so I'll call them 4-year old twins. The little boy was quietly refusing to join at all, and the little girl was much more interested in inspecting the grass in between the bases than she was in running around them with the line of other kids. So, mom was out there pulling her along, hissing at her to "run! run! stop looking at the grass and RUN!". I felt sad for her. I felt sadder when I heard the little boy ask mom to stand by him and heard mom, again hissing, say, "You are choosing not to play, so you just stand here ALONE".  I'm all for encouraging kids to try their hardest, to make mistakes and learn from them (we're working hard on that with Sunny), and to "give it their best shot". But if a just-out-of-toddlerhood-preschooler doesn't have an interest in participating in softball? Or violin? Or name-your-activity? Who cares???!?  Little boy didn't throw a fit or make a scene. He just stood quietly all alone and stared at his feet. And I wondered if he was learning the lesson his mama hoped she was teaching him. Or if he was learning something far different.

I don't want to be too hard on that poor mom. I'm sure she was doing her best. She'd probably busted her hind end to get her kids to softball this morning - she had others in the older group, I believe - and it was, no doubt, incredibly frustrating that the little two, who probably had been super excited about it in the car, were chickening out. I get that and feel her frustration. I think that's what hit me most about the scene....how often I probably do the same thing, just over different issues. Maybe we all do. But it was a definite wake-up call to me to be aware of what I want to teach in each circumstance and to make sure that I'm teaching what they need to learn rather than just taking out my frustration on them when they don't or can't help me fulfill the expectations that *I* had for the day or the experience. I want to be there to encourage them, challenge them, and help them learn. So often, though, it's a fight to do that when they just won't/don't/can't help the experience that I designed work the way I planned it to work. If I weren't so tired, I think I could have written this in a more profound way, but for now, I'm hoping it makes sense the way it's worded. At the very least, a DIScouraging morning for this mama and her littles was an ENcouraging experience for me to witness, encouraging me to remember that what we're doing with these little people is not about us and our expectations and plans but about them and their potential. Thankful for the grace and forgiveness that let us - me, Mike, the mama in the park, all of us, I suspect - to keep on refocusing our parenting on what really matters.