My Toddler Isn’t the Only One Who Repeats Mistakes

I really feel like a broken record a lot of the time. I will explain to Emma why to do or not do something and there she goes doing the exact opposite. I have started to realize that with young children repetition is just a part of learning. The thing I don’t do is to think of how I might need to apply this concept to my parenting. And I am of course referring to enrolling Emma into gymnastics.

It all started several months ago when I thought it sounded “cool” to become a soccer mom. Seriously what was I thinking?!? I guess it was a fun “organized activity” that got us out of the house but honestly having a ball and a field would have worked just as well. 18 month olds (at least mine) are not meant to follow directions…like at all. My real light bulb moment should have been when a few minutes into the last soccer session Emma spoke her first sentence, “I want to go.” It blew me away (grasping so much vocabulary!) and then the actual meaning behind the sentence finally struck a chord with me. After weeks of her running away from the coaches and throwing tantrums every few minutes what should have been obvious from the start finally came to me, my child was not ready for organized sports. I guess somewhere inside of me I clung to the idea that maybe, just maybe she just didn’t like soccer. Soccer to me was the negative balance in the equation when it should have been so obvious that she just wasn't ready.

Fast forward a few short months and the polar vortex must have frozen my short term memory because there I was signing Emma up for gymnastics. In all fairness, I thought gymnastics would really be more her thing since she loves climbing and tumbling. So far on that front I have been right on. In fact, she climbed out of her crib for the first time THE DAY after her first class, so at least she learned something. The problem? She will not sit still or follow directions. Yup, we’re right where we left off with soccer, only this time it’s me running around an enclosed, echoy gym after a screaming toddler. I hope I haven’t scared her for life because each experience was only me trying to share a something new with her but I’m pretty sure that’s not how she saw it. It was more like here, come to this awesome place where there are soft things to climb on but you can’t climb over there, the big kids are gymnasticsing over there and oh yeah now it's time to sit still for 10 minutes to do stretches. 

Again, it’s been great to have an indoor activity to go to during this unbearable winter but this past Saturday, we barely made it half way through the class before I couldn’t take the tantrums anymore and we just left. I’m starting to wonder if following directions isn’t Emma’s thing at all or if she is just testing boundaries with me or maybe it’s just what I need to own up to…my kid is too young for this stuff. It’s not her thing yet, although I hope it is one day. I really want her to find something she loves doing, something like what basketball and girl scouts where for me, a way to express herself and fully embrace who she is.