Yesterday, the kids had a double play date over at our house. We decided to have an outdoor-only playdate because, well, we can (it's not raining! Yay!), but also because everyone is germy and borderline-sick, so we thought we'd minimize the germ-spreadage by keeping them all outside. It was great. They rode bikes and scooters, played with "swords", played on the sit upon spinny things, hid from one another, chased each other, etc. Juliette walked all over; played in the dirt; tried to get in the way of the bikes; layed down in the middle of the street. It was great.
At the end, the girls were playing with hula hoops. Annalise and Zachary just got hula hoops from my mom. My mom was buying one for herself and bought them for the kids as well. (Yes, you read that right. My mom bought HERSELF a hula hoop! She's 65 and she can still hula hoop like a rock star! According to my husband I look like Ozzy Osbourne when I hula hoop, so I guess I do, too. It's hard!!) Annalise has gotten quite good. She's confident and she whips that thing around. She almost knocked Juliette over the other day. A hula hoop can be dangerous. (I should have remembered this. "The Hula Hoop Incident" caused a trail of blood from my nose across the Paradise Canyon campus for years. It also covered my entire Brownie uniform. Deadly, those hula hoops.) Anyway, Annalise's BFF clearly hasn't had as much experience with the hula hoop, and so she wasn't as good. And that's when this weird thing happened.
They stopped hula hooping. When Annalise isn't good at something, she usually keeps going and going until she is. She taught herself to jump rope in one day. She's stubborn as hell (wonder where she gets that from?) and keeps trying and trying. But that's not what happened with BFF. But what's weird, is that it wasn't really BFF who stopped trying. It was Annalise who changed the activity. She saw that her friend wasn't doing as well and so she changed what she was doing. She started rolling the hula hoop. BFF immediately started rolling hers as well. And this was fine for a while until it was clear that Annalise was much better at rolling the hula hoop, too. So then she started messing up on purpose occasionally. And was saying weird things like, "Oh, I just got lucky that time. I'm not that good at it either. You're good, too." It was so weird. And then she got her condescending voice on, like she was an adult talking to a small child. "Good job! You did it!" It was like she was afraid to be good at something her friend wasn't. IT WAS SO WEIRD!
What's even weirder, is that I remember doing the same thing. Maybe I still do??? What is it with girls that we can't just be good at something and be good at it and that's it. Why does it have to be an issue. I remember lying about my grades to my friends because heaven forbid I did better than other people. I was SO SCARED to tell MY BFF (who was, admittedly, a scary person and SO not my BFF) that I got into UCSB. I knew that she hadn't heard yet and I didn't want to deal with that conversation. I remember downplaying my own strengths and boosting up others. Why do we do that? How does Annalise know to do this at the age of seven? Did I teach her that? God, I hope not! Is it something innate in women and girls that we are so sensitive to the feelings of others that it holds us back from our own successes? How do we counteract that? Of course I want Annalise to be sensitive to the feelings of others. That is one of her strengths. She has shown empathy from a way younger age than she should have been able to show such a thing. But is that holding her back from other strengths? How do we build our girls up without them feeling like they are keeping others down? In the long run, has this effected the success that I have had? Did I stifle my own talents when I was young and hence hold myself back from future success? I am so baffled by this. Maybe it's not everyone. Maybe it's just Weber girls? Does anyone else do this? The last thing I want is to have my daughter hold back on her own success on the hunch that it might make someone else "feel better." Annalise's BFF is one tough cookie. I seriously doubt she would be bothered by someone else doing better than her at something, especially when she has so many strengths herself. I am going to be seriously watching for this in the future; and watching what I do as well as my girls.
Katie tends to give up on stuff when she doesn't get it right away. I wish she would stick with it and keep trying until she gets it. I've tried and tried and tried to (supportively) urge her to keep at it, to no avail. I obviously can't punish her or force her to keep trying, because then the activity wouldn't be fun. I really wish I knew what I could do about this.
ReplyDeleteJulianna is not like that as much. Eric took her skiing a couple of weeks ago, and she got the hang of it on her third time down the hill. So exciting! But I don't know if she would have kept at it if it had required, say, 10 trips down the hill...
As to your main concern, I must admit that I never told any of my friends my grades, but I'm not sure that I was selling myself short. I believe grades are private. As a teacher, I really stick to this idea. On the other hand, in 7th grade science I remember purposefully answering one-two questions wrong on the test so I wouldn't get the highest score (the teacher always announced who got the highest score). Sometimes I still got the highest score, but usually one-two questions still gave me an "A" but let me stay "in hiding."
I think many girls really don't want to be seen as full of themselves. I know I don't. And I don't want to generalize about girls, because Eric is SOOOOOO like that as well. So are my dad and brother. We all keep our strengths to ourselves and just use them - without waving them in other people's faces.
This is with me...I must mull and ponder, but this is one for the discussion books. First thought...AWESOME that you are paying attention, just the act of noticing the behavior will begin the process of change. Change is a big word that I use carefully. We don't want to change her empathetic qualities, but we do want our girls to be proud of what they can do, oooooo it is a web, but NOT just a Webber, you are NOT alone- I beleive this is the beauty and challenge of raising girls. Helping these complex, layered individuals find balance and peace. Boys have a touch of this too, it just manifests differently, and tends to be more straightforward, maybe they just have a little less gray area? Not sure yet...but thinking....
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