“Ugh! I will never allow my daughter to be a cheerleader!”
Those words were said directly to my face, during a normal, innocent conversation with a fellow mom friend. We had somehow started talking about our past high school activities, and it just so happened that I was a cheerleader in high school. Never mind that I graduated with honors and also did time on the track team, madrigals, choir, and school musicals – It was the cheerleader in me that she was determined to be pissed about. She spat out that sentence, with her eyes narrowed in disgust, and then immediately followed it up with a half-assed apology:
“I mean, no offense. But you can’t tell me that you would want one of your daughters to be a cheerleader!? Over my dead body will my daughter be a cheerleader.”
Well then. Offense taken, lady. I wouldn’t mind if one of my daughters was a cheerleader. In fact, I also wouldn’t mind if she was in theater, football, band, science club, tennis, student council, softball, chess club, soccer, mathletes or any one of the hundreds of clubs and athletic programs offered by their school. Extracurricular activities are a huge part of the whole “growing up” experience. Each extracurricular activity I participated in helped prepare me in a different way for the big, bad world – including my participation on the dreaded cheerleading squad. I actually learned some really great life lessons there!
We all wonder where on Earth kids learn how to be so mean to each other, and the answer is:
THE GROWN-UPS!
It breaks my heart to hear parents talk about children, and their participation in activities, in such a negative way. Examples of REAL QUOTES that have come out of the mouths of people I know:
“Ugh. Their poor kid. (eyeroll) They signed him up for band!”
“They keep letting her try out for the traveling team, but she never makes the cut. Why would they encourage her to keep getting let down every year?”
“Over my dead body will my daughter be a cheerleader.”
Do you know who overhears this nonsense?
Our children. And frankly, this makes me mad.
We need to encourage them to participate and excel at the things THEY love, not the things we love. If one of my daughters shows interest in music, then of course I will sign her up for band and choir. Why wouldn’t I want to foster a genuine interest and talent in my child? Why would I hold her back from the possibility of something great because of some old-school, played-out social hierarchy that says participation in music isn’t “cool”? The choir and band could be life-changing for her. She would be surrounded by people with a shared interest in music. She would learn life lessons, responsibility and teamwork, all in addition to nurturing her talent.
It is our job to encourage our children to participate, even if that means they might fail. They might not be good enough, and that’s just fine. If one of my daughters loves to play soccer, but isn’t the best one on the team, you better believe I will be cheering for her just as much as her talented teammates. If she wants to try out for the traveling team, then HELL YES she will try out with my support. It doesn’t matter if she makes it or not, because she went out there, did her best and TRIED. She might not make it. I might have to wipe her tears off her cheeks. But that’s life. She can’t win everything. She won’t learn how to be successful in life without taking risks, believing in herself and putting in hard work. Watching her try will make me nothing but proud, and she damn well WILL have the support of her Mom through it all – no matter what!
Saying your children will be allowed to participate in a chosen activity “over your dead body” might seem innocent enough now, but do you even know what you are doing? You are imposing your own negative opinions on your child. You are saying that their interest in said activity is not up to your standards. You are hindering them by not even giving them the chance to try something new. Just because you had a bad experience growing up doesn’t mean your child will have a bad experience. The last thing I want to do is let my own negativity and preconceived notions rub off on my kids. So far, they don’t have a clue about the stereotypes that go along with participating in certain activities, and I am praying it will remain that way for a long time. I sincerely hope they have the chance to experience as many sports and extracurricular activities as they want to – and consequently form their own opinions of what they think is fun. I want my girls to participate because their heart is in it, not because somebody else’s heart is.
So now that those words are said, I will get down off my soapbox and leave you with some life lessons I learned on that terrible, unthinkable cheerleading squad:
- Respect
- Time management
- Multitasking skills
- Personal responsibility
- Leadership
- How to preform under pressure
- How to be a member of a team
- How to work with small groups
- That it only takes one person’s mistake to lower an entire team’s score
- That no matter how bad that person’s mistake hurt our score, I still needed to support them because they were my teammate
- That you can’t please everybody
- How to work well with people I love, as well as people I don’t love
- That practice makes perfect, even if practice is early Saturday morning
- That if one person didn’t hold their own weight, the entire stunt came down
- How to feign enthusiasm
- How to be eternally optimistic
That’s right. I left high school cheerleading and entered college with all of that knowledge.
Being a cheerleader sounds like a horrible life experience, doesn’t it?
Perfectly stated. #wellrounded