Poor abused second child

So I headed to gymnastics with the kids this evening with the intention of disenrolling. Or unenrolling. Whatever the opposite of enroll is.

See we had joined gymnastics because AB mentioned that we always do sports and stuff for Leif, but not Skadi. I suggested gymnastics. Certain, that like me, she would love tumbling.

The first lesson went by and the teacher commented that she seemed a bit bored.

Second lesson went by and she liked it ok.

Third lesson ended in tears with questions like "why can't I just do swimming mommy?"

Well because swimming is opposite soccer, and Leif is doing soccer. Yes, sure, we could divide and conquer, but I was getting a bit weary of swimming. See she has been in swimming forever. Seriously forever. Like nearly her entire life.

And the teachers have a horrible time with where to place her and we finally decided to leave her in the younger class so that she was in with kids her own age. Occasionally we would get a class where her classmates were all about her same age and level and had been doing swimming for ages also. Those were good sessions.

Then we would get ones where the kids hadn't ever been in the pool. Those were the bad sessions.

We decided to take a break for a few months and resume when she was closer to being able to move up to the next level by age.

So here we are. Gymnastics.

And here we were this evening, convincing her to get her leotard on and go to gymnastics. She is whining about swimming, or maybe she could do ballet? Or maybe, she even suggested, she could try baseball! Yes, my daughter is asking to try baseball instead of going to gymnastics. I did give her the opportunity to stay home with Aunt Tara instead and then she did decide that maybe she would try it again.

Why push her? Why continue?

Because she has this older brother of hers. See the deal is this... he could either sit with me through the gymnastics lesson, or be in one himself. Yeah, sit and whine through the session. Forget that. He was getting enrolled. So I found lessons at the same time and we were good!

Except that for every bit that Skadi despises gymnastics, Leif loves it.

And as I watched both kids I realized what a great class it was for Leif. He isn't terribly coordinated, and his upper body strength needs work. And here they were working this stuff. In an organized, small group fashion. And he loves it. And he isn't terribly bad at some of the stuff.

Still. This was for Skadi. I decided to give them 4 more weeks and submit my disenroll this week so that in November we were done with that experiment.

Then AB came with me tonight. He wanted to see.

And well maybe, he suggested that this is really good for Leif. And he has no problem doing dinners on Tuesday nights. And I can get some downtime sitting and watching the kids. And Skadi isn't doing that bad, though she gets bored.

So I didn't disenroll.

Nope, the poor second child is being forced to continue with gymnastics for her brother.

But I have promised and committed many times over to put her back in swimming as soon as possible.