My daughter, on the other hand, sees no obstacles and blows off any warnings provided. She is a dreamer. Case in point would be the following example from last year at this time. It was cold and sleeting outside just as it is cold right now with high chances of inclement weather. She built a rocket with her brother and before launching it outside in horrible weather conditions for rocketing, she wrote detailed instructions on how to return it when the rocket landed in JAPAN! The note was almost as big as the rocket. No one could ever convince this girl who had studied friction on more than one occasion that it might cause some drag. Needless to say, the rocket did not fly higher than her face, much less make it to Japan.
This same girl watched Gabby Douglas win the gold for all around at the 2012 Olympics and then said to me without any hesitation and in a matter-of-fact, unquestioning tone, "I'm going to do that some day."
Pragmatic, logical, realist me said something totally inappropriate to her such as, "Well...you should have set that goal long before now because you are probably too old to start now, and besides, you inherited my inflexibility and will have to work hours a day to ever learn to do a split", but hopefully I did not use such harsh, crushing words or tone.
Still, we signed her up for beginner gymnastics lessons until she was ready to move onto something else, but I asked the coach to advance her to the next level as soon as she seemed ready since she had already had gymnastics, skating, dance, etc. in spurts over the years. By May of that year, they still had not advanced her, and she was still doing things she learned as a tot at Little Gym. I insisted they advance her but experienced negativity from the gym owner. So we started sending her to Christian gym in a different county with an amazingly loving, supportive environment. We moved in July, so that commute became 30-60 minutes each way (over an hour during rush hour when anything falls from the sky) several times a week with me sitting there for two hours each trip. Thankfully, her brother can take an intermediate class during a portion of those two hours, so he only waits one hour each time. I've continued taking her since we started there in June. They wanted my son to join a team a well, but that would mean five days a week of driving back and forth at 4 hours of waiting each time since their lessons would be back-to-back instead of at the same time.
She has done well in gymnastics, but has to work extra hard on increasing flexibility and had a huge fear of the beam, completely unable to even get on it some days. So I assumed it would get hard and she would want to give up as she did with piano but hopefully with fewer tantrums along the way.
Her coach put her on the introductory competitive team as soon as she started (whereas the previous gym owner kept making me pay for beginner classes), and she advanced quickly. Her first gymnastics meet ever took place on January 19. During her first event, the bars, she scored a 9.25 and my tears started flowing...and did not stop until after the entire meet was over 3 hours later. The next event was the dreaded beam (Note: Strength and speed, which she inherited from me, often work against balance and flexibility, so the beam is exceedingly hard for her as it was for me). She nailed her turns, jumps, and even her splits. But her dismount...oh my! She thought about changing from the twist off to a tuck jump because she felt shaky but could not decide mid air and ended up doing a crazy combo of both in her indecision, so her beam score was less than stellar, and her face expressed a crushed spirit.
So, if this were piano, she would be throwing her books, yelling at us, and storming upstairs to have another fit because if she can't reach perfection during her first try, then she will not usually persist.
Her teammates prayed with her and encouraged her with scripture and bang, my girl was back. She rocked the floor routine and seriously blew me away on the vault. For her first meet, she took home first place medals in every event except the beam and even won first place all around for her level. She learned that one mistake or one disappointment does not mean defeat. How we respond to that mistake makes all the difference, and we can still be champions even if we aren't perfect here and there. What a great day of learning to persevere she had that day. I am still in shock, but mostly just excited to see her persevere.
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