Coordination does not run in our family. We are a family of tall people, and I grew very quickly as a child, reaching far over five feet at the tender age of twelve. My daughter seems to be on a similar growth program and at four she is often mistaken for a seven-year-old.
While it is delightful to be able to reach high shelves, being tall has its disadvantages. One of these can be poor coordination. My daughter didn’t reach her physical milestones very quickly. She sat at around ten months, crawled around a year old, and walked just shy of eighteen months. She was very tentative about her physical milestones, and I suspect that was because she was so large. She had a long way to fall and a lot of weight to put behind her fall. In her first year of preschool, the only concern the teachers brought up was that she was afraid of climbing, while the other featherweight children scaled bars like nobody’s business.
Fast forward to today, to dance class. I flunked out of modern dance as a child when I would not willingly become a butterfly, at least not the kind of butterfly the teacher wanted to see. My daughter is entranced by her new tap class, but she is just as graceful as I was: gangly horse instead of floating butterfly.
Luckily, our teacher is very patient and my daughter adored her first dance class in months. She shrieked with delight when it came time to do the circle dance that she remembered from when she was three. She galumphed heartily across the room when it came time to prance across solo.
I’m not telling her that she’s uncoordinated. She loves her dance class, and I’m hoping that some of the skills she learns will help her feel good about her body, whatever its coordination level. I must confess that I quietly mentioned this to the teacher today though, as it seems like my child is the only one in the class who can’t do most of the exercises. She reassured me all was well. Luckily, she’s tall too. Maybe she remembers.
Do you have an uncoordinated child?
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