This week, I am leading a volleyball camp for 5th and 6th graders, and my two oldest girls are participating. It's been fun to step out of the Mom role with them and get to be Coach.
Hannah, my oldest, has done camp twice before and is very confident this year. Her skills are good, and she is excited about how well she's doing. Since she tends to be less active, it's awesome to see her work hard and push herself to continue to be one of the best.
Emily is actually a year younger than the girls at the camp, but loves team sports and being part of a group, so I pushed her to come this year. She isn't great yet, but she's improving every day and is willing to try to do the skills right. Today, she was doing a drill and I pointed out something she was doing correctly (probably for the first time). Her face lit up and she repeated her success over and over. I was so proud both as coach and mom.
It makes me think about how I parent. Unless we intentionally look for and point out things our kids are doing well, they tend to hear mostly criticism and correction from us. My husband complimented Hannah on keeping her temper when one of her sisters was testing her, and her smile was beautiful (she's more in the eye rolling and shrugging stage, so we love seeing the emotion on her). I'll have to watch today to see if she makes a bigger effort to repeat her success since she knows we are watching.
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