When I started this blog my oldest was six, he’s now thirteen. Every day was a struggle at school that taught us how to overcome. Fast forward a few years and we've become homeschoolers. 2020 pulled back the veil thusly bringing a sharp and decisive death to public education in our home. I decided, "I could do better."
So I did.
And what can I say? Success is boring! I've had very little to write about once we took them out of the environment that caused so much distress. However, the same methods of determination, setting goals, and being relentless have remained. Our goals are bigger these days. And we’ve been focusing on learning the things that are important to us like ballet, JiuJitsu, building businesses, homesteading, and more.
A few things happened during the covid years that forced us to move Lyla to a new ballet studio. Which ended up being one of the best things we’ve ever done for her.
The new teachers helped her push harder into this art form that requires more sweat equity than football. And yes, I said that in the deep, deep SEC territory of lower Alabama. Fight me if you dare but just so you know I train in JiuJitsu now, I can take you.
Last summer during a week of intensive ballet study, Lyla had a moment that reminded us that dyslexia can still sneak up on you, cripple you, and plop an obstacle in your path.
She had been telling me for a few weeks prior that she was struggling with learning to "spot." Spotting is that thing ballerinas do when they're pirouetting repeatedly and do not get dizzy and we all sit in the audience and wonder how on earth they do that on their toes?
Spotting is how.
They pick a spot and stare at it with their eyes as their body turns waiting until the last possible moment to turn their head and upon rotation re-acquire that same spot.
I sat in the parent’s observation chairs. Lyla was in her element. The summer intensive week was on its last day of five-hour-long classes.
I noticed the teachers were introducing a lot more combinations and more French names in those combos. Lyla looked tired and I quietly pulled out my notebook to ask the teachers to write the new words down so later we could look them up and work on our ballet French at home.
The “bell rang” and it was lunchtime. Mr. Jeff stood at the door encouraging each child as they left. Lyla was at the back of the line with her head hung low and her shoulders sunk. She exited the studio with tears staining her leotard.
“Hey! What happened? What’s wrong?” Mr. Jeff asked seeing the tears at the same moment I did.
She didn’t make eye contact with him opting instead to walk straight to me, “Mom? Can we go? Now? I need to go home. Please. Right now.”
Mr. Jeff looked just as bewildered as I felt.
He tried to encourage her, “I know you didn’t get it right on your first try. No one does. Don’t sweat getting something wrong. Learn to laugh at yourself and keep going. This is hard and you’re doing great.”
Lyla finally remembered she had manners, nodded at his words, then turned back to me, “Can we just go, Mom? Please?”
I knew Lyla.
She didn’t get upset simply because she failed at something. I’d been teaching her to fail for a few years now. When we fail it means we were brave enough to suck at something new. And in our house that bravery is celebrated and downright enforced as a way of life and patriotism. We laugh at ourselves. We don’t hold ourselves to a perfectionist attitude because we know that leads to quitting.
We climbed into my truck and before I could start the engine sobs were racking her little body.
“Care to explain what’s happening, Kiddo?”
Her lips trembled, “I tried to spot and it terrified me.” Her words were barely a whisper.
“Terrified, huh? That’s a scary word.”
She nodded and squeezed her eyes shut trying to stop the tears.
“Hmm,” I sat and thought quietly. Terrified was quite the word choice for Lyla who ordinarily is fearless. Exhaustion, coupled with new foreign words, on top of midline exercises? Well, that was a dyslexic disaster just waiting to strike.
“Kind of sounds like you maybe had a panic attack.”
And it all suddenly made sense. I knew exactly what, why, and how the obstacle had landed for her and it was time to parent.
First things first…feelings.
Well…
Food first, mostly protein. Feed the body, feed the mind. I drove us to a local hibachi restaurant. Lyla ate in contemplative silence.
“Do you remember that day I went to swim in open water until it didn’t terrify me?”
Lyla nodded as she chewed on her steak and veggies.
“Did you know that I had to do that to conquer my own panic attack I had during an open water swim race?”
She shook her head.
“During the race, I couldn’t see. I put my hand in front of my goggles and still couldn’t see my fingers. My body got so scared it tried to throw up under the water. When I came up I got stung by a jellyfish which made my fear even worse. Do you know what I did to fix it?”
She shook her head again.
“I swam at the pool with my eyes closed.”
“But how? I mean wouldn’t you run into things?”
“Oh yeah, I crashed into the lane dividers with every other stroke. Those things pinch. I had marks on my arms for a month! And I scraped and bruised my hand when I hit the concrete wall. The first few times I did it I had to stand up. It made me so dizzy I felt nauseous. But each time I did it. It got a little easier until I could trust my swimming skills.”
“Did it work?”
“Yep. I went back to open water and swam almost a mile. But I was still scared.”
Her brows knitted together as she cocked her head in confusion at me.
“Here’s the thing about fear. I should be scared in open water. There’s a bad current that can pull you out to sea and drown you. There are sharks, alligators, string rays, and jellyfish. All of which can hurt, maim, and kill you. Fear lets you know that something ‘could’ hurt you. But fear becomes the threat if you don’t control your mind and your actions. That’s when panic sets in. What stands between panic and fear is training.”
“Good thing you didn’t drown.”
We both chuckled and she shoveled more food into her cute little cheeks.
“Spotting can be dangerous. If you don’t do it well you’re likely to get dizzy and this can cause you to fall or run into something or even break a bone. It’s only natural that your body fights back a little. This is especially true if you’re dyslexic and have a hard time grounding yourself to your spot when you cross the midline.”
She took a deep breath.
“Fear can be very useful to our bodies. Fear lets us know we’re in danger. Stress lets us know something needs to change. Remember how you felt at your old studio? The stress it suddenly put on you that made it not fun anymore?”
She nodded.
“That stress let us know it was time to change teachers. Not that it was time to quit ballet.”
The light bulb went off in her eyes.
“If we let fear or stress make our decisions for us. When we run from the feelings they become a threat to our goals and our happiness.”
She swallowed her food.
“You have a decision to make.”
She made an ugh face and plopped her head on the table.
“If we go home right now you will feel relieved from the anxiety of today. You’ll be able to get under the covers in your bed. It will feel good. But will it help you or hurt you to learn to overcome this?”
“Probably hurt me.”
I nodded nonchalantly and decided to provoke her a little. “Of course, there is a third option, you could qu…”
Her head shot up and she glared at me. I swear I saw daggers sharpening in her eyes, “We don’t quit, Mom.”
That’s my girl.
“What’s it going to be then?”
“It will only hurt more to delay it,” she gazed out the window. “Let’s go back.”
She finished fueling her body. We cranked up the rock music. And Lyla was out of the truck before it was in park marching into the studio. She rejoined her class and it didn’t take long before a genuine smile crept across her face that preceded a laugh.
When I walked in I overheard her teacher and the director of the ballet in the office having a powwow. They didn’t like how Lyla had looked leaving. And they were trying to decide what the best thing to do next was. Reach out? Wait?
I grinned.
They didn’t know me yet to trust that I would never let her quit over something so trivial as an emotional outburst after four days of exhausting intensives. This is why intensives exist. To push you to your limits so your limits get moved back. And whenever a limit is reached emotion comes out. Doesn’t scare me a bit. I opened the door and they both looked relieved.
I explained how a panic attack had snuck up on her, and that for each rotation of a spot, the eyes have to cross the midline twice. Exactly the same way they do per line of text in a book. If you’ve ever watched a dyslexic’s eyes as they read aloud you can see them wobble when they cross the midline. The eyes lose their place, their “spot.” And the child will often say the words out of order or will combine the words into gibberish. They stumble because the brain stumbles at the midline.
Forming the connections across the extra big midline in a dyslexic takes tremendous effort and time. In fact, it takes a dyslexic five times the amount of energy and time to do this than a non-dyslexic. This particular issue is what gives dyslexics so much anxiety.
That anxiety can teach the body to panic when it encounters a midline issue such as reading out loud. Catching a baseball between their legs. Or spotting in ballet. The list is endless but the action required is not impossible to learn only hard.
“The movement needed to spot is unnatural and the body doesn’t develop the skill without being explicitly taught and stretched and moved in uncomfortable ways. And then it becomes second nature. This is hard for everyone.” Mrs. Jacqueline, the ballet director, explained.
“Which means it’s five times harder for Lyla. Hence the panic attack.” I said praying that she would understand that dyslexia sometimes is like an amplifier for hard things.
The director’s eyes seemed to click as she nodded in understanding. “I know what we need to do.”
“How did it go?” I asked as Lyla finished her class.
She drank her water and gave me a thumbs-up.
“Good. I need you to keep your slippers on and follow me.”
Her eyes crinkled as she sipped her water and stared at me as if she could open my forehead and peer inside at my thoughts. Apprehension crossed her features and she cast her face to the floor. “You’re going to make me spot again aren’t you?”
The tears were already at the surface waiting on my answer.
I put my finger under her chin and lifted her eyes up to mine. “You’re damn right I am. For my daughter is fierce and brave and would never let a dyslexic strike stand in her way.”
I cupped her face and gently wiped a tear away, “Put the fear into your tears and let it leave your body. Because that is a tear’s job. Follow me.”
Mrs. Jacqueline was waiting with a swivel chair in the next studio over.
Lyla sat down tentatively and I watched as she did something extraordinary. It is no small thing to conquer fear, to face down the emotions tormenting your thoughts and threatening your goals. But face it she did.
Mrs. Jacqueline stood behind her in the chair. “I love the shape of your eyes. They’re almost like almonds. Check them out. Stare piercingly."
Lyla obeyed still looking nervous.
"Love your eyes. Love your face. And that is your spot. You need to love yourself. You’re a beautiful, beautiful ballerina and it’s going to show from the stage once you love that spot! Keep your eyes on you.” Mrs. Jacqueline slowly turned the chair taking all the pressure off. Letting her brain focus only on tracking.
"Open them wide. Smile. Keep your eyes on you."
Every class we had to go early and stay late so she could practice her spotting. At this point, I should change my address to the studio. We live there now.
"I spotted today! And I landed perfectly!" She proclaimed a few weeks later.
It's been ten months. During the warm-up session at the ballet’s Spring performance, Mr. Jeff asked if anyone wanted to come out and practice their fouettés?
Lyla’s hand shot up before he finished the French word. She picked her spot on that big impressive stage. Opened her beautiful eyes and smiled. Showing off what incredible feats the body is capable of doing if you don’t quit when life gets hard or overwhelming.
The music started and Lyla began twirling at a speed that takes your breath away. It wasn’t flawless. She got off balance and laughed at herself. Failing beautifully. Yet succeeding epically.
Fouetté French for whipped. Because one leg whips you around the other at a velocity using angles and vectors that physics professors love to sit around and calculate. And it brings audiences to their feet in rapturous applause.
It’s intensives time once again. Hard days are ahead as we work toward new goals. Unafraid to fail. Unwilling to quit. Only focused on being better than we were yesterday. Living the good life.
