Parenting

This parenting gig sure is complicated at times!

Case in point is the high school cheer tryouts last week. For months, Ainsley has been talking about how awesome it would be to be an HHS cheerleader.  She begged for tumbling lessons, and an extra cheer tumbling class... in fact it was all she wanted for her birthday and according to her it would make the difference of being selected as a HHS cheerleader.

Being a parent is a funny thing... it's a fine line of being completely honest with your child and keeping your child's dreams alive.

There were talks with Ainsley that went something like this... "IF you really want this, you should be practicing your gym skills, in the basement when it was yucky outside and in the yard when it was nice."

There was ALWAYS an, "I know or I will in a minute!" but it was never a priority for her.  Friends on Snapchat or calls on Facetime were always more important.

As the months ticked down other interests became a priority like track.  I remember asking her if she really wanted to divide up her time between cheer tumbling and track and she had a good comment... "It will keep me in shape!"  As true as that was it was also an extra time commitment and sometimes she was too tired from school, had too much homework or was exhausted from 2 hours of track to head to tumbling to work on her back handspring... even if she was close to getting it on her own.

Last week was the grueling week long tryouts for cheer.  Interviews were done, headshots taken, letters of recommendation from 6 people were required and she had to have a current GPA filled out by the registrar at school before she could even learn the cheer, dance and the prance!

Mid week she became stressed... majority of the other girls had not only had their back handsprings down they were doing complicated aerials in the air... she was pretty sore... check out her knees...

She also requested special athletic tape for her ankle that had to be applied by a chiropractor (that was a No.) had tons of homework and was often still up when we went to bed... so you imagine the crabiness around here!  Ha.

I had a hunch she wouldn't make it... but tried to keep her spirits up without saying, "If you would have practiced... etc."  She needed to come to that realization herself.

Friday tryouts came and afterwards a very long wait to see if she made one of the 8 spots available... 11:30 pm to be exact!!  She hung out with friends, I took her and BFF (her cheer BFF who 3 weeks earlier had broken her leg and was unable to tryout) to get frozen yogurt at 10pm!

(yes, I'm hanging out in the car taking pictures... evidently it's the place to hang out on a Friday night... I stayed in the car to avoid embarrassing the teenager.. plus she needed to process it all and prepare herself for the results with a friend and not her Mama.)

On the way home from frozen yogurt we stopped by the high school and sure enough there was a large gathering of girls hoping for one of elite 8 spots!  She hugged girls along the way up to the door to check the results... I again stayed in the car and literally held my breath...she did not make the team.  And she was really okay with it... she was bummed of course but I think that not having any other close friends make it helped. Only 1 from her current Middle school team made the group.

The competition was so good in fact the most of the soon to be freshman made the JV team putting the soon to be sophomores back on the freshman team!

She and broken leg BFF have a summer plan to get ready for next year's tryouts together and I think/hope Ainsley learned the valuable lesson that if you REALLY want something you need to put in the work to achieve it.

We personally as parents were glad she didn't make the team this year... first off it was outrageously expensive, would have been extremely time consuming and we really want her to enjoy all areas of high school next year.