Dancing Shoes

I got to thinking the other night about how we as parents often put our mental junk on our kids and how it is like fighting an uphill battle not to. My daughter started Irish dance in September. She's nine, and was in the beginner group; four to seven year olds are generally in this group. But she's petite, so at least she didn't stick out like a sore thumb, and for once she was the oldest in her class. At school, she's always the youngest and smallest. She really excelled compared to the little girls and after only 6 weeks, the teacher pulled me aside and said that she wanted to move her up to the next group. Hooray! She was thrilled and I was so proud.

Then we all got strep, so, since last Wednesday I've had sick kids home. Literally could not leave the house except to take the kids to and from school. On Monday, the day of her first new class, she tested positive for strep. She was beside herself that she would miss the first class, but in spite of my better judgment, I allowed her to go to the class. (she didn't feel sick and had gone to school that day) Unfortunately I never got the chance to go to the dance shoe store and get her the real Irish shoes, Ghillies. She had her black ballet shoes and was feeling a bit nervous, but she sucked it up and went in. I could see how embarrassed she was that she didn't have the right shoes. My heart was breaking for her, because even as an adult wearing the wrong thing feels, well, wrong. I almost discouraged her from going because I knew the shoe thing would be an issue, but I didn't want to squash her enthusiasm and pride for starting in the next group. To make things worse, all of the girls in her class were also starting to wear "hard shoes" for the first time in this class. A little heads up from the teacher would have been great. Now, not only was she the only one wearing ballet shoes, but she was the only one not wearing noisy hard shoes. My stomach was in knots for her, and when I went in to watch the last 5 minutes of the class, my pale streppy girl had 2 big red splotches of embarrassment on her cheeks. The steps were new, the shoes were wrong and she was sick. The trifecta of a bad first experience.

I was wracking my brain, trying to come up with the lesson here. We walked out, with her on the outside of me so the cursed ballet slippers would be less visible to the other dancers, and when we got outside, she leaned into me sobbing. All I could tell her was that she was very brave and would never have to go through that first class again. Next time we would have the right shoes, the right warm up clothes, she would be healthy and she would have a week to practice with her tape to get caught up. In a way we were almost better off  because even if she had the right shoes, and was feeling better, her focus would have been on being the worst (her words) one in the class. In a way we were lucky to have the shoes to blame it on.