Extracurricular Activities

Ack!

The girl wants to get back to dance classes—perfectly rea­son­able. The girl will feel bet­ter if she moves more, and we’re com­plete­ly in favor of that. Dance class­es will also give her more social con­tacts. So we’re search­ing for a new dance stu­dio on this side of town.

She did­n’t take class­es last year (because of fam­i­ly issues, not her choice), but has oth­er­wise been danc­ing since she was about 3 years old. She wants to take bal­let and jazz.

At 13, appar­ent­ly, most bal­let dancers are on pointe (en pointe?). She did­n’t dance last year, she has hyper­mo­bile joints and fibromyal­gia, and I’ve read a fair num­ber of ref­er­ences to increased inci­dence of arthri­tis in young dancers due to being on pointe. I don’t hon­est­ly WANT her to go on pointe. She would, I think, like to try it—but agrees that her mus­cles are not up to it at the moment.

We’re hav­ing trou­ble find­ing stu­dios that offer class­es for her age and abil­i­ty lev­el that don’t require that she be on pointe.

Seri­ous­ly, is that nec­es­sary? She isn’t going to be a pro­fes­sion­al bal­let dancer. She’d love to move towards musi­cal the­ater stuff. I have trou­ble judg­ing schools and their claims because I’m not a dancer. I don’t have the background/vocabulary.

Oh—it seems that the expec­ta­tion at most local schools is that teens who are still danc­ing are SERIOUS and want to be in the dance com­pa­ny. That means three or more bal­let lessons a week, plus jazz AND tap. She has­n’t done tap since she was a tiny thing—she was­n’t real­ly inter­est­ed in it. 

She’d like to do more acro­bat­ics, but her migraines were trig­gered too often in those class­es so I’m being a meanie on that one. Mod­ern dance would be fine. Hip-hop would be fine (though she has­n’t expressed any inter­est in it). No acro­bat­ics, which involves putting too much stress on the neck.

We want her to start mar­tial arts lessons as well—she’s def­i­nite­ly inter­est­ed, but hon­est­ly this par­tic­u­lar thing is a high­er parental pri­or­i­ty than girl pri­or­i­ty. And she has stat­ed a desire to do voice lessons again, but we haven’t found a voice teacher. (Sug­ges­tions are appre­ci­at­ed if you know of one local to us.) I told her that if she’s seri­ous about major­ing in music in col­lege, she’ll also have to study an instru­ment. As I recall, her uncle was required to study piano as well as his choice (per­cus­sion). She wants to learn gui­tar. I haven’t even start­ed research­ing that one yet.

Do oth­er par­ents of active teens do any­thing oth­er than dri­ve them around? This will be even more fun in a one-car (and usu­al­ly one dri­ver) fam­i­ly. And it reminds me, again, of my sol­id belief that every child needs at least four par­ents. At a min­i­mum. To start.

Cyn is Rick's wife, Katie's Mom, and Esther & Oliver's Mémé. She's also a professional geek, avid reader, fledgling coder, enthusiastic gamer (TTRPGs), occasional singer, and devoted stitcher.
Posts created 4259

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Related Posts

Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel.

Back To Top