Sometimes It Is The Little Things

Our daughter was taking ballet last year. We would take her on Saturday mornings for the 30 minute sessions. For these classes, parents were forced to wait in the dressing rooms and couldn't view the practice. Once a semester, the parents were allowed into the dance studio for a demonstration.

For a variety of reasons, we withdrew our daughter from ballet and put her in an Irish dance class. While parents are allowed into the dance studio during practice, at the end of every class there is a somewhat formal process where the parents parade into the classroom and are then given a ten to fifteen minute demonstration of the moves rehearsed that day. Again, this happens every class session.

It was kind of hard for us to judge if our daughter was getting more out of Irish dance than ballet. Whenever we asked, it was hard to discern if our daughter was simply giving the answer she feels we wanted to hear or what she truly felt. But while taking her to the Irish dance class this week, I asked once more if she preferred ballet over Irish dance. And this time she responded, "I like Irish dance because my Dad is allowed to see me dance."

Until she said that, it never occurred to me that the tiny after class performances were important to her. I had always thought these were done for the benefit of the parents. It made me smile and drove home the point that children like the involvement of their parents.