Practice Makes Perfect

Last week my oldest and I were talking about what activities she might want to participate in for the winter. Her weekly tennis lessons are over soon, and since she thinks they are "boring" I figured we better start lining up something new and a little more up her alley.

We didn't sign up for soccer this fall because she said she wasn't interested. I revisited the idea when we were talking about different sports. Not that she could do it until next year, but I asked about it anyway. Her reply was that she liked the soccer camp she did last summer, but it was "boring".

There it was again. That word.

When I poked around a little I found out that she thought it was so "boring" because you didn't actually play any other teams. She wanted some game time action and all they did were drills.

I explained that practice is where you learn what to do in a game. I tried to emphasize that you won't know when and where to take the ball during the game if you don't practice first. She still didn't seem sold but at least she bought the idea a little.

Then she asked about playing softball. I liked this idea since I played it a little when I was growing up, and I think it's a great team sport. So I looked into it the next day and explained to her what I knew about the season. Practices start in February, games start in March and are every Saturday through April.

"So if we start practice in February, how long do I have to wait until we play a game?" she asks.

Here we go again.

This time I started asking her about the sport and how it's played. She had some answers but it was clear that her main idea of the sport revolved around hitting the ball, which she loves to do. I explained quite a bit of the game and she seemed to catch on pretty quick.

But she still wanted to know how much they have to practice.

"If you don't practice, how are you going to know how to catch the ball with a mitt? How are you going to know where to throw the ball when it is hit to you during a game? And will you know where to run?" I asked her.

She conceeded and said she'd still like to play, even with all that practice time. Apparently she's never heard the phrase "practice makes perfect". She thinks you go out there and automatically know what to do, or else figure it out along the way. Which means she's in for a big surprise.

And a surprise is exactly what she got a few days later.

This past weekend we had her friends over for a sleepover, and they all wanted to ride their bikes around outside. This gets a little tricky since her friends have been riding a lot and are now proficient without the training wheels. On the other hand, my daughter learned to ride the bike without training wheels in late August, but is still hesitant to practice and we haven't really pushed her. The result is that she can pretty much ride fine in a straight line, but when it comes to turning, and sometimes stopping, she gets nervous and tends to fall or need help.

Now you see where this is going.

After a few minutes outside with her friends, and my husband helping her, I hear her run inside crying. I go find her and she is already a pint of tears and a few shrills into a major tantrum. I try talking to her, but she escalates so fast that within seconds she is saying that she hates herself and she hates that she can't ride her bike. And she wants nothing to do with me.

Now I have to fight through my own pain of hearing her in such despair and try to rebuild this crumbling bit of foundation in front of me. I explain that we haven't helped her practice and it's our fault too that she's not as far along as she wants to be. But I also note that it's okay if you aren't as good at something as someone else and it's all still fun as long as we keep trying. She of course wants none of this reasoning and continues right along with her tantrum.

"I want to be able to ride my bike like them RIGHT NOW!" she yells with fury. "I want it all to magically happen NOW!"

Yes, she did actually use the word "magically". Which means she knows in her heart that it's not an instant thing and that it does take practice.

Now it's all making sense why she doesn't want to practice anything. She doesn't like not knowing how to do something and all the frustration that comes with it. In her magical thinking, you don't have to deal with that frustration if you just throw yourself into the game.

But alas, you do. In my experience you feel that much more like an incapable nincompoop if you are in the middle of a pressure situation and can't perform. Which is exactly what was happening at that moment.

I finally got her calmed down, but it took a while. This one was a doozie. And in the meantime we had to convince her friends that this sleepover would still be fun, even though their host was in the midst of a meltdown.

Eventually everyone was happy again, watching a movie and eating popcorn. And the rest of the sleepover was a great success.

Case closed, right? Not so.

Now we have to keep moving forward. It's really tempting to just sit in this middle space of not knowing how to do something, like help her through this phase of life, and just ignore it and let time pass and things happen as they may.

But now I realize we we have work to do together. And it starts with me and my husband. We have to teach her that being on the beginning side of the learning curve is okay. She has to learn that there is no getting to the other side without going through the middle.

And I need to get over my own feelings of being a nincompoop because I have not been able to instill in her the sense that it is okay not to be perfect. You see the trick here, right? I have to accept and learn from my own limitations while teaching her to recognize and accept hers.

Once again my children teach me that as hard as we try, there is always more to learn.

Instead of "practice makes perfect" I think we better concentrate on "there is always room for improvement".