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Sun, Jun 02 2024, 19:53:56 [ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, [4], 5 ]

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Date Posted: 22:05:14 05/16/24 Thu
Author: Older dancer
Subject: Check what makes her interested in dance
In reply to: Mumo1 's message, "Feeling discouraged" on 16:39:02 05/13/24 Mon

It may be that her interest is waning if up until now she’s pretty quickly moved up through levels and now she’s at the point (age and/or competitiveness-wise) that that’s not happening. Despite probably your best efforts, she may have internalized that winning often means that you’re the best, and low results means you’re not a good dancer. For her to have gotten to champs (even prelim champs) means that she’s good and has a handle on a lot of the basics. A lot of kids quit early high school (and then there’s another exodus into college), in part because people in their age groups start working really hard mid/late middle school and therefore are really good (also just physical body control gets better around then), so the competition gets harder for those with natural talent or who started when they were tiny. If she’s just not interested anymore because she’s not winning all the time, a break may be beneficial for her to reassess what role (if any) she wants dance to play in her life. My sister kept up on a whole bunch of extra curricular activities because she didn’t want to disappoint our parents by quitting them and she was burnt out by the time she reached high school as a result.
If she wants to put in the work, find out (if you don’t already know) what her weakest and strongest points are- eg does she have fantastic timing/rhythm? Is her extension subpar?- and figure out ways to target the weak points in practice while still allowing her to really show off the parts of her dancing that she’s proud of. Support her through the results, or even separate yourself from the results completely and base your reaction to her dancing on how much effort she put into being onstage. The mom of someone I danced with was super involved in getting her kids to be *their* best but didn’t usually care about results (unless it was something where she’d need to do something as a result, like if one of her kids WQed), and often would skip out on results. She still cared about how they felt about their placements (like if they were upset about not doing well, she still would help them through it), but by her decentering that, the kids didn’t focus on that as much either and focused more on how they felt about what they prepared and put onstage. That approach may not work with some kids, but it may be a relief to others because they know that as long as they do their best, their parent(s) are proud of them.
In any case, best of luck to your daughter in wherever her dance journey takes her. I hope it brings her happiness and joy.

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