Recital season is upon us, and we feel your woes, but nothing beats seeing your little rockstar on stage during their spring performances! Watching the other kids? Not so exciting, but seeing your spawn’s hard work paying off makes it all worthwhile. To offset some of the stress and unexpected mishaps that go along with these times, we’ve listed some tips to help get you through the season.
1) Firstly, love, respect, and recognize the teachers and after-school instructors who have not walked off the job. Think it’s hard for YOU to wrangle your little one? Imagine the difficulty they have.
2) It's important to support the kiddos, especially the clumsy ones. There's always a performer who is obviously terrified or tired of the situation, so applaud them, and hope the parent shows mercy and pulls her/him out of the program next year in exchange for something more enjoyable. And what about a soloist who’s flubs snowball into an all-out avalanche of mistakes? Is there anything that makes an audience feel worse? We clap because, damn, that kid made it through maybe one of the worst events of their childhood, and surely things will look up from here.
2 ½) Also: If there's a kid who is worse than your own, you’ll feel your anxiety lift as you sit in the audience. Your stomach full of butterflies subsides as you realize your kid probably won't be that bad.
2 ¾) OK if your child is that bad, as parents, we’ve been there. It's usually nothing that a trip to the ice-cream store can't fix. For both of you.
3) Attending your child’s recitals really makes you feel like a parent. When you are watching the eighth group of tiny gymnists struggle to execute forward rolls, sometimes you need to stop and appreciate that you have only a decade or two of your life witnessing this stuff. Just don't let your eyes pan over the audience to find all the grandparents; “Are they seriously sitting through all of this again? Does that mean all of us are doomed to a second round with our grandkids?!”
4) Sometimes zoning out is acceptable.
5) You’re really each there to support our own child. You know the saying about "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it make a sound?" I think for kids, if at least one relative is not in the audience, it's as if the performance maybe didn't happen and all their hard work was for naught. So it's important to attend.
6) Think of all the performances, games, etc. that your parents sat through; perhaps this is all just some big Karmic circle.
7) Be courteous to the other family members in the audience and do your best to stay out of the way when taking photos of your kid, less you look like the “cool mom” from Mean Girls.
8) Do your social media followers a favor and limit the performance photos+videos to about 3 for the entire event. Recitals make for great photo-ops, but keep in mind the over-kill factor.
9) Just keep telling yourself, “Summer is almost here.”
10) Most importantly, enjoy the times that your little ones want you around before they become teenagers and crave independence.
