My 12 year-old daughter has been a passionate and capable dancer since she was tiny. Three years ago, for reasons of convenience and because it was the right thing to do for her, we enrolled her in the dance school of a ballet company of national repute. It’s a fabulous place, the teachers are superb and now the school is her second happy home complete with a social group of girls who are extremely hard working, excellent and passionate dancers just like her.
Second home because – she’s there a lot. Like gymnastics, ice-skating and similar endeavors, doing ballet well requires an accumulation of sheer hours early in life. This year, in 6th grade, my daughter’s dance classes are 4 days for a total of 8.5 hours a week, next year will be 5 days a week and in 8th grade, if all goes according to plan, 6 days a week. Rehearsal time for the occasional performance is added on top. My daughter is in heaven.
While in heaven, she has developed tendonitis in both ankles this spring. Fortunately, the company/school, being what it is, has its very own coordinator within Children’s Hospital’s Sports Medicine department and relationships with dance-knowledgeable orthos and PTs. She has gotten excellent care and guidance from all fronts and has been told that muscle imbalances caused by growth spurts are at the bottom of her issues. She has total clarity about what she’s doing and why, and is tackling her personal strengthening and stretching regime with daily, determined vengeance. As a inspirational friend has put it, she “believes.”
I, on the other had, am suffering from cognitive dissonance: I have a TWELVE YEAR OLD with an athletic OVERUSE injury who needs PT. It’s what we all read about these days and say, “tsk, tsk,” (myself included). But I am the mother who is enabling my daughter to do this. All I can do for this moment is help her ice, take her shopping for shoes and orthotics that fit, sit back and watch her stretch, and talk her away from the edge of meltdown when she becomes angry that she can’t make her stretching feel exactly the way it felt when the dance PT showed her the first time.
Being me, I have read and researched everything I can find about girls, tendonitis, ballet, etc. And being me, I have allowed myself copious wallowing in the distinct possibility that I’m a bad mother because I’ve enable my daughter to “over-specialize too young,” and that perhaps I have ruined her for life. However, when I momentarily paused my research and wallowing, I came across a helpful quote in a ballet book belonging to my daughter (Inside the Wings: Behind the Scenes at the New York City Ballet). The author, a company dancer, says, “Injuries teach dancers about their bodies. Dancers learn their weak spots, their Achilles’ heels, and they learn to stay on top of them. Also, injuries force dancers to reevaluate their technique and correct mistakes in their training. I always felt I improved more when I was injured than when I was performing every night of the season.”
Huh. Is that what my knees did and currently my calves are doing to me as I try to get ready for two triathlons this summer? Are they are teaching me how to be a better athlete and better at training myself? I suppose there could be a silver lining to this cloud: that if my daughter tackles her tendonitis and succeeds, she will know her body better than I ever did, and more importantly, will have faced a part of her body as an adversary and become friends with it again – by learning to how to treat it carefully and kindly. Which means ultimately she’ll be way ahead of many of us. I hope. I think.
