Tag Archives: uncomfortable

Flexibility, Parenting, Self-help

Be a Panda in a Heat Gym

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Whenever I coach volleyball, my eldest son loves to come with me. He insists on wearing his “coaching” shirt which is a University of Alberta Pandas volleyball shirt. This shirt is precious to him (and me!) as it was given to him by my coach when I played. Her daughter had worn the shirt until she grew out of it.

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I love this shirt too! But last week, I was coaching at the University of British Columbia Okanagan Club Volleyball tryouts (Whew, that was a mouthful!). I chose my wardrobe carefully, wearing a Heat shirt of course! He wore his Panda shirt and I must admit that I received a comment from someone on the Heat coaching staff.

It made me realize how immune my son is to doing something simple that made someone else feel uncomfortable.

How often do I do the “comfortable” thing because I don’t want to offend anyone? How often do I do something because I don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings?

EVERY SINGLE DAY!

I am so outwardly focused on wondering and worrying about my actions or words and how they are perceived by people outside my immediate circle. My inner circle gets the “real” Joanna, but others get a watered-down “comfortable” version of Joanna.

This simple shirt incident made me realize that I need to be more like my five year old son. Every day, I need to put on my ‘coaching shirt’ of my choice, do my best and have fun! Sorry if it makes you feel uncomfortable!

Parenting

Be an advocate

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Parenting is often very uncomfortable. You need to do things you never thought you would do, like wiping a snotty nose on the sleeve of your best shirt or wiping bums or my personal favourite cleaning up vomit!

Parenting has become very uncomfortable for me personally as my eldest son, JC, has started kindergarten. In the time I am living in right now, full day every day kindergarten is the norm. My child has never been in daycare, but he did do preschool 3 days per week. (Everyone asks me that so I had to throw that in there for some sort of validation!)

With support from a letter from his preschool teachers, we are “that family” (words directly from our principal), that is having our son go to kindergarten only until lunch time. I know that we are the only family doing that in the school, and probably the whole town.

So here is my rationale:

1. Full day (8:45 – 2:45) is too long for 5 year olds in one room with 21 other 5 year olds and one teacher. They need to be with different ages with different adults.

2. My son naps in the afternoon.

3. School isn’t everything (quote me on that!) and I think he needs to be doing other things in the community.

4. School is not daycare (don’t get me going on that!)

5. When the school day for kindergarteners went from half day to full day a few years ago, the curriculum didn’t change, so why does he need to go?

6. I don’t want to deal with the screaming and crying and behavior issues that other kindergarten parents are dealing with in the evenings! I want to enjoy family time.

Enough said!