Thinking Allowed: Taking to the podium

As I sat in an unheated gym last weekend watching Sophia's gymnastics competition I had plenty of time to think about competition. We humans seem to be naturally competitive. Biologically that makes sense, because we are animals and, theoretically, if I run faster than you I am more likely to survive. In reality, I wonder if competition makes us better or worse. Sure, competition pushes people to work harder and excel beyond their regular limits, but it also causes a lot of strife. For this reason I have been trying to impart the message to the girls that we do not compete with each other. We each try to be our best person without comparing ourselves to each other. Is this the right message - who knows.

Except Sophia is now doing competitive gymnastics where she is meant to have different feelings than the ones I am trying to impart. She has been working really hard the past few weeks leading up to the competition. She comes home and practices more. I have received numerous lectures from her on required hairstyles and correct hand posture. Tova has been watching her excitement build up enviously. There were three gyms competing and it was interesting to see each gym's style. One gym looked like they had spent hours practicing their in sync fancy walking. One gym looked like a hairstylist had come to ensure all girls had the same perfect ponytails with ribbons. I was happy to see that Sophia's group took it all the least seriously. Thankfully she is at the beginning levels so the competition was more about participation than winning. Also, it turns out that Sophia still doesn't take it all that seriously and was a very giggly and smiley competitor. She says her favourite part of the competition was when they were waiting and got to play in the foam pit. Oh, and the frozen yogurt after.