ballet parents: can you help with SI questions?

College Majors Dance Major
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<p>bravaencore, thank you very much for sharing your article and I read it with great interest. It was very well written with great insights and, frankly, gave me a small nightmare. Your last sentence still ring in my ears: “Moms, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”</p>

<p>With regard to your reference about “College is a match to be made, not a prize to be won.” And “asking outsiders about “what makes sense” and how colleges view EC’s is totally off-course. What they WANT to see is how YOUR DAUGHTER made decisions and what she learned from those decisions.………” While I agree with the overall philosophy and I want my daughter to learn and make decisions for herself, she is simply too young (8th grade) to know where to gather the information and make these decisions. It’s my job to help her and guide her and give her the information in order for her to make informed decisions on very important issues such as college and career choices. As far as EC, I realize that ballet is such long term commitment which is the reason I am looking down the road and want to know how she can balance ballet with school and possibly other EC’s. And if she would to pick one EC which one is the most suitable for someone who is interested in academic pursue. </p>

<p>You stated “Any signs of groupthink is viewed as a weakness.……” I don’t disagree but want to say that I value the input of helpful parents on CC (including yours). I don’t just take a vote online and go with the result of gourpthink. I am more interested in people’s reasoning behind their suggestions. I then can use what I learn to help my daughter. Isn’t that the whole point of being on CC?</p>

<p>I hope this doesn’t come across as a rebuttal as that is not my intent. I just wanted to state how helpful CC parents have been for me since I really don’t have such help from people around me.</p>

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<p>4beardolls, I know what it’s like dealing with a pre-pro dancer in the Midwest and not having the background to know how to guide her. Certainly CC is great for parents to scope out some information for our kids, but nothing beats hands-on, first-hand experiences so our kids can be exposed to information, themselves, and make their own decisions.</p>

<p>The central thesis of my article is that I don’t believe in guiding or encouraging a female dance student TOWARDS the professional level AT ALL. In fact, it’s best to guide her AWAY from intensive training and towards all other academic and enrichment activities and only continue with the training when she insists on it. That must be her decision at all times. If your daughter is the kind who MUST dance, then parents must do their guiding from behind. In this way, I would scope out all the options I could find whenever my daughter hit a crossroads, presented them to her as best I could (including arranging site visits), and then stood back as she chose which path to take. The more she made her way in the dance world, starting with residential SIs when she was 12, the more she was able to contribute her own information-gathering to what I also collected. </p>

<p>I felt it wasn’t my role to figure out how she’d juggle school and dance, or deal with all the other hardships of pre-professional training. I also attended a magnet high school for G&T and I sure didn’t deal with pre-pro training on top of that. My older child opted for the most rigorous track of honors and AP classes, so my daughter saw how many hours her older brother spent doing homework each night. When the time came in 7th grade for her to decide whether to take Algebra in 8th grade (putting her on track to finish with Calculus in 12th grade), I told her she was certainly smart enough to do that, but she chose dance over rigorous academics and went with the regular track classes.</p>

<p>Through my work in a community college, I work with a lot of admissions advisors from 4-year colleges and universities. They’re a great bunch of people who LOVE getting to know future students. I would encourage you to take your daughter to your local college fairs and have her approach the tables and ask the reps what they think about different extra-curricular activities. Note that in my article, I explicitly said, “The more talented your daughter is, the sooner she’ll need to master these life lessons while also knowing how to take care of her own health, schedules, meals, and information gathering.” If she’s not ready to start doing some information-gathering and decision-making now, then that would be a sign to you to guide her ever harder AWAY from pursuing dance professionally.</p>

<p>My daughter is still dancing professionally and she faces a mountain-load of life-altering decisions every audition season between contracts. Personally, I could not be happy doing what she does. It takes a VERY driven woman to make it in that business and live off of peanuts.</p>

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<p>bravaencore, thank you very much for your well-reasoned post.</p>