Three Weeks Without a Post

... And finally things are getting back to "normal"! When we came home from vacation, the house was an incurable mess, we were constrained to long mornings and afternoons killing time at the gym, my mood was one step away from the bottom, we had issues with the upcoming gymnastics season, my good friend and social anchor moved away, and we almost had our nephew come live with us for a semester. Those of you who know me know that I don't thrive living on the edge. Well, I was well below the thriving level, where mere subsistence was the rule.

One question I kept asking as I looked around at the mess that was in my house and in my head was, "What sense was there in my spending so much time and energy last year focused exclusively on taking care of my husband, my kids and my house when things can fall apart so easily within the space of a month or so?" My mantra last year was, "If I didn't marry it, mother it, or mortgage it, forget it," and yet it seemed like it hadn't yielded much in the way of order and happiness, judging from the state of the house and my nasty mood. This has been a conundrum, because I have been in search of a plan for the upcoming year, some goals, a theme, and I thought that continuing what I had done last year was a good thing, because, last year was really great on all accounts. Yet, it has been so demoralizing to look around the wreck that is my house and think of how I probably spent literally half of my waking hours putting things away, with seemingly nothing now to show for it.

Then the thought occurred to me. The result may not show in the state of my house or my mood right now, but it shows in the fact that we did, in fact have a great year. By doing what I did, I gave my kids one year of peace, space to be heard and to develop. My husband enjoyed a tranquil existence where he didn't have to come home to a frazzled wife or environment. I can look at it as a daily, and cumulatively huge, deposit I made into the psychological "accounts" of my family. I may be withdrawing funds at the moment, but there's a good reserve, and I know we'll be getting back to more "fiscal" responsibility once school gets into full swing.

Getting Inside My Gymnast's Head

Here's a video of someone doing a straight-arm kip. Helena was giving up halfway through and throwing her torso at the bar where she ended up with bent arms.



I'm writing this just in case there are other parents that find this through Google who struggle with their younger gymnast's inability to become proficient on a difficult skill that they have done before but can't seem to increase their consistency (my regular readers can just bear with me on this one). Here's the story: My seven-year-old level 5 gymnast had very poor bars coaching all year where basically she "got" her kip early with bent arms and then was allowed to continue doing that all year. Imagine the thousands of times she has done that bad kip! Discussions with the coaches yielded little in the way of corrective measures or progressive drills. By the end of the season she managed a few good ones, once at States, but then when it came time to decide who was moving up to level 6, her bad kip was the main reason she would have to repeat level 5.

We went to Houston, where she trained for a month under the skilled coaching of Stars Gymnastics. They quickly isolated the problems (tap-swinging into the kip, and not allowing the bar to slide up her legs enough) and the coaches worked -- hard -- to unsnarl the bad habits. She pulled off some beautiful kips in that time, but only sporadically.

When we got back to Pittsburgh, Helena would often say, "I hope I get my kip today." Or when I would ask her how her kips were at practice she would say, "I didn't get any today" with the tone of voice as though she was telling me mail didn't come today or the weather didn't turn out the way the weatherman predicted. I got the sense (after a long while) that she was "hoping" for the kip like someone hopes to win a game of chance. Perhaps because everything else in gymnastics has come pretty easy for her, she thinks getting her skills just "happens." She can't understand that up until now she has been basically getting by on natural ability. Maybe she thinks the kip will just happen to be consistent some day, just like everything else, I thought. But in the case of a kip, it takes thought and timing to do it just right.

Armed with the insight that she's just hoping to perform kips like a game of chance instead of making them happen with her brain and skill, I decided to demonstrate to her the difference between the two things. Remember, she's seven and doesn't get abstract thinking.

So, a couple of days ago I gave her a die and told her she had one minute to roll as many fours as she could. Every time she rolled the die, I would pick it up and hand it to her to roll it again. She got four fours. I could see her frustration building each time she failed to get the number. Then I told her, "This time I am going to hand you the die (ok I said 'dice'), and you can look at the die and put it down to get the four." Each time I handed her the die I turned it so she would have to work to get it upright again. Her little brain and hands worked together feverishly to get over 20 fours, consistently, evenly, each time. Afterward I asked her if she could feel the difference between hoping something would happen and making it happen. She clearly saw the difference. I explained, "You can do a straight-arm kip, you have done it several times before, now practice using your head to make it happen every time."

The next day she gleefully reported that she did two in a row at practice.

A Choice: Either Shut Up or Deal With It

I've been agonizing all day over speaking my mind about something to people who don't necessarily care that much about me. You know, those groups of people with whom you are associated, but whom you aren't friends with, either. Like the soccer parents, or the church group, or your co-workers. Well, in this case I spoke up, pretty loudly, about a proposed change in who was going to coach Helena's gymnastics team. Basically, she stood to lose the one coach that would have made it worthwhile for her stay at that gym. I don't want to move, as there are no other viable options that wouldn't require enormous sacrifices, but I also didn't want her to waste a year marking time with inadequate coaching. So I spoke up, and then I got accused of "gossiping" and "threatening to leave" in front of the entire group of parents. It's not gossip when one is trying to figure out the truth, goes to the source and has the suspicion confirmed. And I didn't threaten to leave, I just said that there was only one coach that would make it worthwhile, and please let me know what the final decision is so I can make other plans, if necessary. Everyone is free to do whatever they want.

ANYWAY, I agonized over this all day long. "What do they think of me?" "Should I just shut up and obey the powers that be?" How come nobody has emailed me back after I sent a nice explanation and expressed gratitude that things were able to work out well for us?

My husband, who is always full of great advice about these things, having ample experience at being honest and principled, and, therefore, unpopular, said something very wise, which I must contemplate. He said something like, "Listen, because of the way you are (obsessive about stupid things like this) you can either say nothing and rest assured that everyone thinks well of you, or you can stand up for something and be miserable like this. It is not OK for you to fall apart after taking a stand, but you do. Embrace that about yourself, then try to fix it." I know this in general, of course, but what struck me is that I, in particular, have a challenge in front of me, because of the way I am. Oh, yeah, what is necessary is to embrace how I really am and start from that. Other people do just fine spouting off and not caring. But I'm not one of them. Start there, and I have hope, avoid the truth of how I really am, and I am lost. Got it. Hearing that actually made me feel better. I love my wise husband.

Home Again to the Junk Pile

Right now I want to move into a small house, take only the bare essentials and rebuild my junk. And I want to live like they presumably do in those 800 square foot IKEA sample apartments. Living out of a suitcase for six weeks shows me how little we really need. Everything else is a psychological drain.