hanging up her dancing shoes…
if you follow me on instagram, then this is old news. but i wanted to talk a bit more about this here.
to those who don’t know – my oldest daughter kiana, “retired” {for lack of a better word} from dance six weeks ago. after devoting most of her life to dance, 12 years to be exact. yes, she is only fourteen {almost fifteen} but my petit woman had given hours and hours, weeks, months, and years to rehearsals. she was committed. she stopped.
the choice to stop was something she had been deliberating for the past couple of years. after a lot of thought, and a few tears, she is taking all of her good memories, experiences, and lessons from dance and moving on. she has other plans for her life.
yet, this moment – or moments. while she was deciding what to do. i didn’t know what to do. isn’t parenting such an unknown territory most of the time? husband and i first thought, “she can’t do that. she can’t just quit” we know her potential. that seems logical, right? we’ll just tell her she can’t stop dancing.
then the more i thought about her decision, the more i knew this wasn’t the first time she’d thought about this, the more i had to breathe deeply and realize we had to support her… do we persuade our children to become who we want them to be? is that fair? is that being a good parent?
self reflection is so very much a part of these parenting moments. i have thought about why this was so hard, what i could have done to have a different outcome. we chose to move to boston which i think greatly impacted kiana’s decision, and i don’t regret that decision at all, even though it may have made this phase of her life a little more challenging. i’m constantly wondering what things we can do to help smooth out her teenage years, and we are trying lots of ideas–some our own, and some wonderful suggestions of friends. the thing is, there are a hundred billion ways to raise a child–to nourish them, to teach them to think on their own, to instill confidence, and independence, to show them kindness, to challenge them to be respectful, to educate them, to help them develop their talents, to show them the world – and to encourage them to love all it has to offer. and when you choose a way to do these things–a way that fits and feels good for your family and your child–i think it’s only natural to wonder if maybe one of the 99,999,999,999 other ways might have worked better.
i have never been very good at forcing my kids to do things. forcing them to go to dance class, forcing them to practice piano, forcing them to go to church, forcing them to eat certain foods they repeatedly dislike. i try to encourage and encourage and encourage with a huge amount of positive fuel, and occasionally bribe reward them for good behavior or reaching a particularly hard goal.
but, in this situation i am always going to question myself if i’ve done the right thing. i know kiana is happy with her decision, and has a long life ahead of herself to find who she should be. to find all her other passions. she is an amazing kid.
as a parent – have you ever watched your child have an amazing talent and then decide to not nurture that talent? it’s so hard.
***
in this post i mentioned that the blog-community lacks in the teenage parenting department. after a little more thought, i’ve decided it’s challenging to write/post about our teenagers because they are reading! they are in our community. we can write/talk/blog about babies, toddlers, and young children so easily because they don’t know it’s going on! i feel like the hardest phase of parenting, the phase that presents the most challenges – we must remain silent. thoughts?
{picture by me, i literally hung-up kiana’s last pair of pointe shoes in her room…}
