Learning experience, right?

Molly had her dance recital tonight.  As with most things with Molly, dance has been a little rough lately.  She's not super excited about it and it sometimes takes rewarding with Slurpees after dance class to get her to be good.  She and I have been talking about her program for a while and building it up that she needed to cooperate, do a good job, and no crying.  She tried.

We got to Kearns High School for her performance and she was actually really excited.  We got her hair in a sort-of bun and her little costume looked cute.  She was pretty good backstage and when it was time to go on, she held hands with her classmates and off she went.

I went in the side door to watch the performance. It started great and then (Molly is 2nd from the right on the front row) . . . .



. . . for that 8 second part of the dance when Molly is supposed to spin around with a partner, she just became momentarily devastated.  She couldn't find a partner.  There are 11 girls in her class and all 11 were there.  I don't know what the plan for spinning around was, but somehow she was odd man out and hadn't been prepared for that (we only get to see the dance at one open-parent lesson and she had a partner that day).  I felt really bad for her because she had been trying so hard to be good.  It wasn't like she was being a stinker, she just didn't know what to do.  Ugh.  I wish I could have fixed it.

By the time it was all over, she was ok about it.  She told me she was sorry she cried and wondered if she could still get a Slurpee.  When I asked her what happened, she didn't really know, just that something went wrong.  We did get a slushee from the Holiday on the way home.  Afterwards we talked about how if we or other people make mistakes like that, it's ok.  We can just keep dancing and don't need to be upset about it.  Hopefully that was the right parenting thing to do.

I'm not sure if we are going to continue with dance or not in the fall.  We will just play it by ear and see what happens.  We are going to try swimming lessons again over the summer and then we'll see what activities the fall brings.