Interesting article in the Mail today

[Legseleven]

I agree Aileen, I have also noticed that mothers who were bullied themselves/cast themselves in a 'poor me' role tend to project the same feelings onto their children. Perhaps if Sarah Vine had told her daughter that others in her ballet class may indeed be better than her - despite having done ballet for a shorter time (?!) - but that this is a fact of life, rather than pandering to her daughter's belief (if it is in fact her daughter's belief rather than her own - and I am not convinced) that these dancers are better simply because they are 'the right shape' for ballet, any incipient body image issues could have been avoided.

 

And yes, I would be very interested to hear how a 9 year old, even one who has been dancing for 8 years (!), is apparently performing grands jetes and has run up huge ballet lesson costs.

[tomuchtallent]

My dd has done ballet for 6 years and does grand jetes and she is 10, but it hasn't cost much.

[Anon2]

I just feel for the daughter not only has she been named, it must be hard enough growing up with parents in the public eye. For whatever reason she wasn't enjoying her ballet classes and felt unable to talk to her parents about it even though she was sending out strong signals. Time for them to be building relationships not spending their time blaming ballet.

[Moomin]

If she's nearly 10 she could have been doing it for nearly 8 years as there are a lot of classes that start at 2. Although I probably wouldn't have reacted the same there is some truth that ballet requires certain attributes and there are a few children just not cut out for it. Hobbies are meant to be fun!

[Huddsballetmum]

Ballet is an activity which requires a high level of physical fitness and expends a great deal of energy.  It is therefore likely that many dancers will be slim as they burn off the calories that they consume.  They also need to eat healthily to be able to expend the energy.  The article strikes me as poor body image being an issue for the parents not the child, and if I was concerned about my daughters body image, then I would not be filling her full of sweets.

 

By the way, my dd started dancing early at the age of 2, and have never met a dance teacher yet that will take children at 12 months old as most of them have only just learned to walk! 

[Pups_mum]

 I've noticed other mothers doing this. If a mother was bullied at school she perceives every slight or upsetting incident as bullying. It's not good for the child (IMO) that s/he is cast as a victim in these situations. One of the most important lessons that a child has to learn is resilience and having a mother who blows every unpleasant incident out of proportion is not going to help the child develop this skill.

 

 

 

 

I agree Aileen, I have also noticed that mothers who were bullied themselves/cast themselves in a 'poor me' role tend to project the same feelings onto their children.

 

Sorry to go off the topic somewhat, but speaking as someone who was bullied at school i cannot let these comments go unchallenged. I was bullied in the "tied to the school railings and left there for hours" sense of the word and I most certainly do not encourage a victim mentality in my children. It is a ridiculous over generalisation to suggest that this is widespread behaviour amongst mothers who were bullied as children. In fact if anything I have to remind myself to take my children's concerns seriously enough on occasion as I perceive them as minor compared to my experiences and I have to control my tendency to tell them to pull themselves together and not make a fuss about things.

 

Yes, children do need to learn resillience and to take the rough with the smooth. Life isn't always fair and they need to learn to get on with things, true enough. But there is a fine line which must not be crossed. Many bullied children, myself included, keep their problems to themselves and if we encourage our children to take everything on the chin and dismiss their concerns as whinging then we play into the hands of bullies. I don't want my children to develop a victim mentality, but I don't want them to keep years of abject misery to themselves either. To avoid the latter we must be willing to take concerns seriously, even if they don't seem it to us. Sometimes the correct answer is to gently tell them to pull themselves together, and often it's to help them figure out a way to deal with things themselves rather than rushing in to protect, but I don't think it's ever right to ignore their upset. I would like to think that those who know my children in real life would see them as pretty resillient, despite the fact they have a mother who was bullied!

 

I also suspect Sarah Vine is over reacting in this instance and I don't believe that "running away" is often the right answer to a problem. There will also probably be an element of exaggeration for dramatic effect - she's a journalist after all. But to effectively suggest that she is neurotic because she was bullied as a child is not on. Sorry for the rant but adults who were bullied in the past often have enough to deal with without the suggestion that they are creating pathetic children en masse.

[Anna C]

I agree, Pups_Mum. I too was bullied at senior school and as a result have tried to give my dd much more resilience and self confidence than I had. People all have different levels of self-awareness and will therefore all deal with past traumas differently.

 

We don't know WHY Sarah Vine chose to write an article on this issue as opposed to dealing with it privately. I can disapprove of her actions but not her motivation as we don't know exactly what that motivation was.

 

But let's not generalise against past victims of bullying please.

[Legseleven]

My sincere apologies, Pups_mum, if I upset you, that was certainly not my intention. I should have made it clearer that what I have noticed is that SOME mothers who were themselves bullied tend to project a similar mentality onto their children. Equally some, like yourself and like spannerandpony, use their own awful experience to empower their children and to give them self confidence and resilience. That is why I would have hoped that if Sarah Vine's daughter really did believe that children who were 'the right shape' for ballet were therefore better than her, Ms Vine would have drawn on her own negative experience with ballet lessons to nip such beliefs firmly in the bud and to make it clear that thinner does not necessarily equal better at ballet. It isn't healthy for a 9 year old to be allowed to think that the reason another child may outperform her in ballet class (if indeed she was being outperformed) is because the other child is thinner than her and to develop issues with food as a result. In fact, not only has she been allowed to believe that (no matter that she may be in class with the next worldwide ballet star...talent obviously not being the dividing factor here, only thinness!) but her parents have pulled her out of ballet classes and publicised this to the world at large.

 

It does make me cross that ballet lessons are being demonised by high profile parents, when a reasonable reaction from them to their daughter's apparent belief that thinner must equal better at ballet might have avoided any food issues on their daughter's part.

[aileen]

On re-reading my earlier post I realise that I should have made it clear that it is only *some* mothers who were bullied that react in the way which I have described when it comes to their children. I don't want anyone to be under the impression that I don't think that bullying is a problem - it most certainly is and I know that the effects can persist well into adulthood. I stand by my point about the importance of not over-reacting to *occasional* unpleasantness directed at one's child though. Pups_mum, what you went through was an extreme form of bullying and if it had happened at school today I believe that it would be regarded as a criminal offence (whether or not the bullies were prosecuted) and would lay the school open to legal action if it had happened on school premises. If anything like that happened to my child I would make sure that the bullies were publically identified in the local community so that other parents were aware of how nasty those children were (with a view to getting those children ostracised) as well as complaining to the school and the police.

 

I still feel that there's a rather odd tone to the article. The "embellishment" rather undermines the serious point which SV is trying to make. IMO the "story" doesn't ring true.

[Ian Macmillan]

Same topic, another view:

 

http://blogs.psychcentral.com/mindful-parenting/2013/06/mindful-parenting-its-not-about-the-words-we-use/

 

The author's earlier article is here:

 

http://www.kveller.com/blog/parenting/the-ballet-hating-mom-goes-to-a-recital/

[CeliB]

I disagree that 'many' dancers (certainly at recreational level and aged 9) would be doing sufficient ballet to burn off so many calories they would be slim as a result. My DD is 14, does weekly 1.5 hours ballet, 1 hr contemporary, 1 hr swimming, 1 hour trampolining and also goes to the gym once or twice as well as walk to school every day. She is generally fit and healthy but has over the last 2 years developed into a very womanly, marilyn monroe type body shape (takes after her Dad's side of the family). She is (IMO) gorgeously curvy and beautiful but considers herself the fat, ugly one amongst her leaner friends. She is probably far fitter than any of them but that's little consolation to her. Weight anxiety in girls and women is a pernicious ill in our society and certainly extends well beyond the perceived requirements of ballet dancers....<br />I also agree with many posters above that no matter what the rights and wrongs of the situation at hand one shouldn't use one's children as examples in the national press...

[balletla]

Ian - thanks for posting What an amazingly candid article. My favourite bit quoted below is so so true. I still catch myself sometimes wondering why my DD isn't as enthusiastic about some things as I am or is into things that I think are a bit boring....it's because she isn't me!

 

"I need to take care of the children I have, not the child I wish I could have been. Each time I let my own life experiences, good or bad, dictate the choices I make for my children, I risk robbing them of potentially important and beautiful opportunities–including dancing ballet."

[aileen]

Children, like adults, have different builds. It's not just the amount of "flesh" that the child has on his or her bones but the type of muscle and the underlying skeletal structure. I'm speculating here, but I wonder whether the girl (or her mother) thought that she might go far in ballet but, following a passing remark or a discussipn with her teacher, her dreams were dashed. I'm sure that there are teachers on this forum who have been asked directly by parents whether their child could get into, say, the RBS and have been put in the position of having to tell the parents that their child does not have the right physique for a career in classical ballet which, understandably, is upsetting for both the parents and the child. I believe that there is more to this story than we have been told.

[taxi4ballet]

My ballet teacher told my mother that I wasn't really cut out for ballet as I was getting too tall.

 

Now, looking back... I realise that he probably said that rather than tell my mum that actually, I was useless at ballet!