I Let My Daughter Drop Out Of Track Team To Learn About Teamwork

teamwork for kidsIn more than nine years, my daughter and I have not had a fight. That is until she joined the track and field team at her school a month ago.

When I saw the schedule for the track and field track practices, I almost cried. Twice a week at 7:15 a.m.

”Dude, what were you THINKING joining this?” I asked my daughter. ”You hate getting up early!”

But she thought it would be fun and didn’t know the practices were so early. Because I support my daughter, I was willing to get her to the practices — even though I too hate waking up early.

She made the first practice and liked it. She made the second practice and I could tell she wanted to tell me that she didn’t want to go anymore. By the third 7:15 a.m. practice morning, I tried to wake her up and she begged me to let her sleep.

”Listen,” I said, pulling the covers off of her, moodily. ”You wanted to join and now it’s not about you. It’s about the TEAM.” I continued to rant. ”You are letting the TEAM down if you don’t show up. Do you think I like to get up this early to take you? No! But I do it because you joined.”

My daughter jumped out of bed. She was miserable, but I hope she understood that she couldn’t be selfish when you are a part of a team.

A couple of weeks ago, I was furious with my fiance when he allowed his daughter to miss a play rehearsal (his two girls and my daughter are in an after school play together) to hang out with her friends. I was on a high horse.

”When it comes to a play, you are only as good as your worst actor!” I tried to tell him. ”She wanted to join the play and it’s not a dinky play. These children are serious about it. How can the other children know how to follow their lines if your daughter isn’t there to do hers?”

He didn’t seem to grasp the concept that, when it comes to teams or everyone working on the same project, you really are only as good as the worst one in the group. His daughter ended up hanging out with her friends.

My fiance was like, ”It’s only one rehearsal.”

And I was like, ”Yeah, the ONE rehearsal right before the actual performance!”

I hated myself in both these moments:  being mad at my daughter for joining a team that I knew she wouldn’t end up liking and also being angry at my stepdaughter for wanting to hang out with her friends. I know I was right. I know I am right. What’s that annoying saying? Oh, right. ”There’s no ”˜I’ in ”˜team.’”

All this is good in theory, right? You’re all thinking, ”Yay! Eckler is a good mommy.” Well”¦I have to be honest. My daughter dropped out of the track and field team. What happened was she started bawling uncontrollably to the point of hyperventilating.

”I don’t want to go,” she cried. ”I’m not good at it and no one will care if I’m there or not. I’m not lying.”

So there was the love of my life, sobbing over track and field and I thought, ”OK, I can’t have my daughter crying over track and field. She’s only nine!”

So I told her, ” OK, forget about it. I’ll write the teacher a note and just forget about it. You don’t have to go anymore.”

I don’t like quitters in general. However, let’s be honest. In adult life, things get so busy and overwhelming that we quit too, don’t we? Maybe not our jobs, but we may have to forgo the gym, or cancel on the dentist, or plans with friends, because we just can’t do it all.

I didn’t tell her that those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Hey, I’m the mommy who joined up for numerous Mommy and Me classes when she was a baby and pretty much dropped out of every single one of them. I learned my lesson. I’m not joining any more Mommy and Me classes with my newborn son, because I know I will not make it.

I think, in the end, my daughter did learn a valuable lesson or two. One is not to join a team when the practices are in the early mornings. It just doesn’t work for her and she is very well aware of this now. Two, she does feel badly about the entire thing. So she will think twice before joining anything she knows that she will not follow through on from here on.

She knows this was her one and only chance to join a team and drop out. She knows I will not be so generous the next time. I explained that no one likes a quitter and about letting a team down. She gets it.

So this ”team” didn’t stick. But she will know for next time. And, as a parent, as long as she learned something, even if she did quit, that’s good enough for me.

(photo: Robert Kneschke / Shutterstock)

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