Giving My Daughter Space (And Learning When To Cut In)

The kids’ school has a Talent Show every year at the end of January.
The four Hergenraders perform a “show” (using this term very loosely here) just about every night in the living room, so the promise of an actual stage and an audience not related to them sounded like the very best way to spend an afternoon.
Ever since the start of the year, when Catie joined the twins at their school, the kids have discussed what they will do for a Talent Show.
Their conversations were funny, if not a little worrisome.
Elisabeth: I’ll probably sing a song.
Catie: Don’t you need to learn how to sing? Or learn a song?
Elisabeth: I KNOW HOW TO SING. EVERYONE KNOWS HOW TO SING! And I’ll just sing whatever song I think of when I get up on stage.
Sam: I already know I’m doing magic.
Catie: You have to learn how to do magic, though.
Sam: IT’S MAGIC! YOU DON’T NEED TO LEARN IT. YOU ARE JUST MAGIC!
Catie: I think I’ll make up a dance for the Talent Show. Maybe I’ll teach it to a whole bunch of other kids too.
Elisabeth: But, Catie! You don’t even take dance!
You can see why I had very low expectations for the Talent Show. My greatest hope was all the kids would just forget about it.
Which was kind of the case for the twins.
No such luck for Catie. She filled a binder with Talent Show plans, including a list of first graders who would dance with her, a spreadsheet of their gymnastic abilities, and a schedule for their practices. Every night she showed me her binder. And when I asked her what song they would dance to or what moves they would do, she assured me that wasn’t important yet.
In the mother/daughter dance of who is in control, I stepped out. Let her learn the hard way that learning a routine takes time. I would serve her best by sitting this one out.
But at school, Catie was busy recruiting first graders for her act. Naturally, the first grader moms asked me important questions like, “WHAT IS THIS TALENT SHOW CATIE IS TELLING MY DAUGHTER ABOUT?! WHAT SONG? WHAT DANCE? WHEN ARE WE PRACTICING?”
I told them about my hope that Catie would forget about the Talent Show, and we would all be off the hook. The moms all but said, “THEN TELL HER TO QUIT RECRUITING MY DAUGHTER INTO A DANCE THAT WON’T HAPPEN!”
The Talent Show permission slip came home this past Friday. Try-outs were coming up this week, and those who wanted to participate needed to submit their music, costumes, and be ready to try-out by Tuesday.
Like, tomorrow, Tuesday.
It was time to cut in. That night I told Catie that a binder full of plans did not make a dance. She wasn’t ready for try-outs this week and we needed to tell these other moms that. I told her that next year we would find someone with dance experience who could choreograph a routine much earlier than the weekend before.
But Catie wasn’t ready for me to cut in. She insisted she could pull it off. She had, actually, picked out the music, she had talked to the first graders about practicing at our house this weekend, she even had a schedule for the all-day practice she had planned.
She was doing the nine-year-old version of trying to dance by herself. (Literally, actually). It was time to cut out and give her the space to either dance on her own or fall on her face.
The other moms were relieved to have a plan for their daughters, and they agreed to come over on Sunday for a practice.
Which meant we had five other little girls (including Elisabeth) ready to learn a dance that didn’t exist. Catie had the vision, but she didn’t know how to go from binder to stage.
Neither did I. But we did have a bunch of other people giving up their Sunday afternoon, so it was time to step in and help her figure it out.
We dedicated Saturday to choreographing interpretative-dance moves to “God Girl” by Jamie Grace. The whole dance was cheesy, and cute, and perfect for an elementary-school talent show.
On Sunday, when the other little girls started to arrive, Catie told me, “I can do this. I can teach them the dance by myself.”
And she did. With all the giggling girls gathered in my living room, I stepped back and let Catie step forward.
Catie did a fantastic job of feeling out her audience, pinpointing where they were, and teaching them how to dance in-step and to the beat. She was sunshine, working her audience like Oprah or Beth Moore. Or someone else who feeds off the energy of teaching.
The little dancers adored her. The other moms all but kissed her that this was coming together.
And through it all, I learned a new step in the mother/daughter dance of life….
…the all-important one of stepping out.
I’ll keep you posted on how the practices go.
But for now, it looks like the Talent Show might really be Catie’s dance, which I will thankfully watch from the audience.