Saturday, March 23, 2013

maya's turn

It's Maya's turn. Finally. Thursday was her first riding lesson. She's starting out in a half hour private lesson, just as Abby did at this stable. I'm not going to lie to you, I wasn't really sure what to expect. Longtime readers and real life peeps know that Maya is a total riddle when it comes to dealing with life. Which makes being her Mom a total riddle sometimes, but that's a post for another day. All kids are different yes, but I don't think you can help, but compare your own kids. I'm not talking in a one is better than another, why can't you be more like your sister kind of way, but rather just identifying those differences so you can be the best parent you can be to each one. Abby is a very social kid who has almost always enjoyed participating in organized activities. For most of Maya's life so far organized activities have been her kryptonite. Where as Abby has always known what she's loved to do, art classes, choir etc and been vocal about asking to participate, Maya has shown no true love for anything. She tags-along to choir and art class, but I would argue that the pure love for either activity just isn't there for her and she participates with varying degrees of excitement.

Now that she's seven, the offer was made to her to start riding lessons and she quickly accepted. I asked her several times if she was looking forward to lessons and she always answered in the strong affirmative, but see paragraph one. Maya = riddle. Odds were medium high that she could get to her lesson, dig her heels in and refuse to get on the horse. I've seen it before with choir and continue to see it each and every week. It goes a little something like this, Me - Maya are you going to sing with the choir this week? Maya - Nope! And she doesn't. Not even when her little bestie is there to sing with her. So I was alittle bit surprised and a little bit teary when I showed up to watch her lesson and this was happening.....

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And I guess all those endless hours of watching Abby ride taught her a thing or two because she looked very comfortable in the saddle, knew what to do with her hands and was surprisingly adept at getting Star to stop and turn. Her instructor said Maya kept getting shyer and shyer as the lesson went on, but she was out there, so success!! She walked and stopped and trotted and led the horse and LOVED it!

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Maybe she's found her thing too!

1 comment:

Betsy Hart said...

Love it! =) Sometimes its just hard finding what your "thing" is and even harder as a mommy to help them find it without getting frustrated.