The year is 2023 and it is the beginning of February. Our daughter, Azaria is 5 years old and is thriving in kindergarten. My wife, Megan and I have our 10-year wedding anniversary this coming April. We currently have 2 cats that have been with us for our whole marriage so far. My wife is the director of a gymnastics program at the local YMCA. My daughter is on the team, and they have a home gymnastics meet this weekend! While we are excited, we await the unknown and pray for a successful gymnastics meet.
It is the first time that my wife has had 5-year-olds on a competition team, so with that comes the unknown. The first timers did great their first meet 2 weeks ago. While you could tell that the older kids were scoring higher on many events, the younger one’s held their own and provided great competition. As a parent watching your child compete is a viewpoint that I have never quite had before. While you want your child to do great, we all know that with competitive gymnastics there will be slips, trips, falls and injuries and there is pretty much nothing you can do as a parent except to try to be there and be present.
I know my daughter wants to do great as she really has put a lot of effort into getting to this point, but I so want her to know that I love her and am proud of her no matter how she scores at her gymnastics meet. I want her to know that if something does go wrong, to not be embarrassed and more importantly to know that she is loved just the same and that a gymnastics score is not the judge of her happiness. Gymnastics is so good for expanding the mental and physical abilities of our children and I am excited to see how this journey goes for our family but ultimately, no matter of score I want my wife and daughter to know that I love them and am proud of the sweet souls they are (my angels literally)!
Ryan Hartman 