A kick in the can’t

My little princess came home a week ago from school, bearing the breathless news of “MOM! You’ll never guess what I have in my. back.pack. AND I WANT TO DO IT!!!!!”

Well heck, with an intro like that, what mother is going to ignore it and pretend nothing is in the backpack? Probably a mom of children who bring home crazy WWE like flyers, or frogs, or the like. (though, I don’t mind frogs, but if we found them on a regular basis in the backpack, I wouldn’t jump to check it out after a while)

My child generally doesn’t do these things, and for the most part doesn’t care what’s being sent home in her backpack. I”m sure, once she’s older and a note from the teacher or the like starts coming home (we all know girls get into just as much trouble as boys), she’ll start caring. But for now, generally no big whoop.

But, with a breathless, screechy, OMGOSH YOU MUST LISTEN TO THIS RIGHT NOW voice from the backseat…

It’s a thing for WRESTLING and mom I want to do it can I doitprettypleaseireallywanttoanditsoundssofun!!!!

So…we wrote the check and signed her up. This girl has energy to spare and just THRIVES in sports in general. (See: Basketball the last two years running)

Monday, I show up and hang out for the first day of after school wrestling, to make sure I”m not missing out on any important information for parents or anything. Nope, clean, simple program. It’s run by the high schoolers, with the head coach overseeing them, and it’s SO cute to see these big teenage boys wrangling about 50 grade schoolers in the small wrestling room.

It’s also cute to see those little kiddos pulling a half nelson on each other without mercy!

About halfway through, the coaches pull them all to the middle in a circle, and go over the rules. The rules of wrestling at M’s school are quite simple:

1. Take a knee and shut your mouth when your coach is talking
2. You are not allowed to say “can’t” in that room. If you do, you have to do push ups
3. HAVE FUN

That’s pretty much it – the kids respect each other and the coaches (ah, would that we all still had that respect for each other as adults), and it’s a happy, sweaty, loud room to be in during practice.

Yesterday, I worked a little later, M’s gramma picked her up from wrestling. This was the plan.

Picking her up early was NOT the plan. The coach called gramma a little after 4 (they start at 3:30) and said M was having a hard day, requested to be picked up, etc.

Ok fine…so when I get home, I chat with gramma, and find out that M said “can’t”, and thus started the downward slope of the day. I”m sure it was a combination of being embarassed that she had to do pushups, that she “got in trouble”, and that frustration of not being able to do something that was asked of her.

When I talked to her, she was begging not to go back, that she’s “used to going home after school” etc. I told her I understood, but she’s going to go back, that she simply had a bad day, and that’s OK. Everyone has bad days, you just give it another shot the next day. At this point, I think she realized that she won’t get away with just whining, and I will make her go back in there.

Matt and I have both talked to her about it doesn’t matter whether you can actually accomplish what your coaches are asking (highly unlikely on the 3rd day of wrestling), you simply need to TRY. That’s all we want, give it a shot, and have some fun. So, today she’s going back, and I’m headed over there after work to observe, and make sure she’s giving it a good shot today.

I’m also a little jealous, wrestling looks like FUN! It takes me back to middle school, the first time I encountered a wrestling room…where it was a gymnastics room if you’re a girl, a wrestling room if you were a boy. I was a bit bummed I couldn’t sign up for wrestling, but as I was taking gymnastics outside of school, I was looking at it as a chance to show off.

Gotta love 12 year old girls!