We are lined up at the starting post. I cast surreptitious glances at the other competitors, checking their postures and assessing who to beat. I feel sick to my stomach, my extremeties are tingling, and the starter gun fires.
I watch my beautiful 5 year old girl trot down the field.
I am a sports mum. The worst kind. The kind that desperately wants her child to win, the kind that seriously considers pulling grotesque faces at the other kids to put them off, the kind that anaylses every race and competition in retrospect to try and improve for the next time.
Luckily, my daughter has no idea.
I think I do a pretty good job of hiding it. When she manages to run a whole race without looking behind her, I cheer and high five. When she slows down at the finish line to let the person behind her catch up, I say what a good friend she is. When she runs into the high jump rope instead of over it, I... ok, I ask her to please please try and jump next time, and she gives me puppy dog eyes and says "but mummy, I did!".
It's not easy being a sports mum to a kid who has no interest or desire to win. She really doesn't care. She quite likes the games, she loves playing with the other kids when she's waiting in line and she seems to have a talent for shot put. But suggest that she may like to beat someone and she'll look at you (ok, at me) like you're crazy. She just doesn't have that killer instinct. Which is just as well really, because she doesn't have any particular talent for it either.
But that's ok. My daughter is extremely gifted in areas that are hard to measure. She is incredibly kind and really cares about other people. She shares her love and possesions equally freely. She has a finely tuned sense of social justice and is beginning to stand up for people who can't stand up for themselves. She happily asked her friends to bring presents for puppies and kittens that don't have any home instead of presents for herself - how many 5 year olds could do that? She loves her baby brother with all her heart and happily (and sometimes unhappily) helps look after him as much as she can. In this mix, does it matter that she can't run or jump as well as the other kids?
No. It doesn't. But I'm still getting Jason to take her to competitions from now on. My blood pressure can't handle it.
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