chinese new year performance

Last summer, Lena took a week long ballet camp with some of the girls from her pre-k class.  On the last day, they did a performance for all of the parents.  They started by having each girl walk by themselves doing various types of ballet strides.  On Lena's second pass, something happened to her mentally and in the middle of the walk, or the skip as it was, she stopped and could not do any more.  She spent the remainder of the performance in my lap in tears, ignoring my numerous and varying attempts to get her back up there.  When we left, I remember walking to the car not with her hand in my hand or side by side but ten feet in front of her, disappointed, not wanting to show her love but to show her that I was not happy.  I asked our nanny who was also there whether I was supposed to give her the cold shoulder so she would not learn she can give up on things or if I should give her comfort.  She told me at this age, comfort was best.  She was right and I provided it as best as I could but I was still pissed about the whole thing for quite some time.  I didn't parent well that day.

And I don't think I parented particularly well today either but today, Lena had to get up on a STAGE in front of a lot of people and perform two songs with her Chinese class for their Chinese New Year celebration.  I had been fretting about the day for a long time, whether she would "choke" today like she had done at ballet.  We prepared her the best that we could, giving her a heads up that there would be a lot of people watching but reassuring her that she would be with her classmates and encouraging her to sing loudly because she knew the songs well and her teacher had been working so hard.

Well, she totally rocked it.  There were only five kids in the class and they are the youngest class in the school.  She ended up being directly in front of a microphone and there were many times during the performance that you could hear her voice over others.  I already knew that she knew the songs well but to see her up there actually doing it, it brought tears to my eyes.  Not only was she not afraid, but she seemed to actually enjoy it.

I guess our children's experiences feel like our own and that's why their defeats are so hard and their successes so gratifying.  I will do better with the defeats.  And I will beam with pride for the successes.