Performance Time

This past weekend, my 6 year old daughter E was finally going to perform in the dance performance she had been practicing so hard on. She was doing a performance in jazz and ballet, which was her first time doing two performances in a show. When the day finally came, she was so excited.

Now earlier in the day, I took my 4 year old son C to soccer. I was really proud of him for trying hard to stay engaged and get some touches on the ball. He had a lot of fun (which was the first time in a while) and wanted to keep going to these sessions because he is finally getting used to it again after a long winter break away from it. This tidbit in the story is importantly for later.

Fast forward to the performance and we had to wait a while for E to get on stage for the first time. When the lights came on and she was in her costume, I almost shed a tear. She looked so happy up there dancing and it was so cute. I am not a very emotional person and it surprised me that I was feeling those feelings so strongly that a tear almost came out. After intermission, we had to wait a long time for her last performance of the day. She also did amazing on it and was smiling a genuine smile for the whole dance. What a great performance! That’s my unbiased opinion of course!

When we met up with her after the show, she was so happy to see us! We kept telling her how amazing the performance was and E was soaking it all up. In all the praise, C was saying he wasn’t good at anything and that he was poo poo. It made me really sad to hear this and I told him how great he was, especially earlier in the day at soccer. I think he felt sad and left out that he didn’t have a performance himself, so he wasn’t being very kind to himself. I wanted to remind him that he was great too and I was (and always will be) proud of him. Sometimes siblings get left out in the commotion and it’s important to make sure they are also seen and heard - even if the spotlight was on E that day.