Am I pushing?

Well this past Saturday was the season's first competition for my daughter and her teams.  Overall she did GREAT!  Both her teams(Poms/Baton) got 1st in their divisions,  my daughter got first in Novice Baton Solo, and she got a medal for her Military box.   We had a great time, we enjoy our team friends and parents...and all that.  

 Here's where the question comes in.   Her first solo type event of the day was Basic Box...which is the EASIEST thing she does.  All she has to do is hold her baton and march in a square to the beat of the music, stop and bow her head to the judge.  She LOVES box, because it's fun and it's easy.    WELL, when they do these events they place the kids in alphabetical order and since my daughter's name starts w/ a B and her last name starts w/ a B she is almost always first in line.   So I'm standing there in line w/ her and she starts freaking out...instantly crying, telling me she can't do it, she doesn't want to do it, can't keep time w/ the music and all that.  Let me point out, this is NOT her first time, she's done Basic Box in competition before.  So the judge comes over, asks me if she's ok, and offers to wait a second.  I ask the judge if she can just go last in line, and yes, that's fine.  So the other two girls go first, and then it's my daughter's turn.  I give her a little nudge...she leans back against my hand.  I nudge her a little harder...she crosses her arms and looks at me and says "I'm NOT doing it!"  Meanwhile, the judge is waiting.  Finally I quietly tell my daughter, "if you're not out there marching that pattern in two seconds I WILL spank you where you stand!"  So she proceeds to trudge out there, barely picking up her feet, dragging herself in a circle (not a square like she supposed to), stops..looks at the judge and then walks off.   I walk up to the judge and apologize, and the judge(very nice lady went above and beyond IMO) asks me if I want her to receive a medal or not,  I said no.  The judge agreed and said, " if she'd at least tried, I wouldn't have asked you, but she just didn't"  She also said, "if it were my daughter I'd make her pay me back for the class."  Good idea, I take that into consideration.

  SO, she's also signed up for military, which she doesn't particularly care for, but knows how to do, AND she wants to go for a title at Nationals this year, so pretty much needs to do Military box to qualify.  At least, that's my understand according to her coach.   She goes out, does it how she's supposed to, and gets a medal...WHAT?!  How does that happen?  One meltdown and she's over it?!  OK, great cause she still has her solo to go and she has to do it twice, once for rating(basically practice), and once for judging.  She has a bunch of time in between and starts practicing like madwoman, now this is a girl who is LAAAAZY when it comes to practicing...it's hard to get her to do it at all.  I ask her why she's practicing so hard, she says, "cause I wanna WIN!"  Hmmm...so I guess the drive was back. 

Now let me be clear, I LOVE watching her do baton, and poms and I enjoy hanging out w/ the other team members and their parents for the most part.  It's kind of like our own special girl time.  I let her make the decisions about whether or not to do baton solos or other events.  I don't feel like I push her to do this stuff, well except for the one meltdown there.  It's something she wants to do.  I don't know...there was a minute there on the floor in the midst of the situation that I personally wanted to have a meltdown.  I was at a loss, what do I do, do I make her do it? do I let her get away w/ not doing it?  I felt bad for her that she was upset, but I also felt frustrated because this is something she loves and is good at AND it's paid for, she's wasting the judge's time, she's wasting my money...?  These are the times when being a parent sucks.  In the end I'm glad I made her do it.  We talked about it too in the down time between events.   I asked her if she thought it was fair to waste my money, to waste the judges time, to make her coach look bad, to act the way she did.  She agreed it was not. I decided not to make her pay me back for the class as I felt the lesson had been learned at that point, but I did have her apologize to the judge, who incidentally also judged her solo and gave her a 1st.  The judge gave her a hug and told her she was glad that she redeemed herself w/ her solo.
Anyway...that's my 'edge' moment for today.