Things I Wonder About While Driving to the Dance Studio

Presenting a series of rhetorical questions from Dance Parent Problems: 

1. As much as we pay in competition entry fees, would it kill the companies to provide free drinking water for the dancers?
2. Why do kids rush to be the first on stage at awards? Even after they've been told to wait.  At least 3 times.  Do they think that they’ll score higher if they are nearest the emcee?
3. When you're in a venue the size of Giants Stadium, why do you have to share a dressing room with three other teams?
4. Why don't the vendor tables sell useful items like clear nail polish, eyelash glue, scissors, and make up remover?
5. Why do the staples always come out of a $12 program book? Can't you buy better staples?
6. Why must one person in a hip hop number always break from the group and lip sync while waving her arms?
7. Do nice, polite kids ever get special recognition or do we just not notice because their parents aren't obnoxious?
8. What's up with awarding an automatic platinum just because someone's music stopped? Bent legs and no plie are not cause for a platinum, a capella or not. 
9. Why do all employees of a competition wear 6 inch heels.  Is that a skill you have to put on your resume?
10. Why do competitions allow a dancer who can do a perfect triple followed by a flawless tilt to remain in the novice category, yet, if you snap a pic on your iphone, they're on you like the KGB.
11. What's up with some competitions (who shall remain nameless here...as much as I want to call them out) treat intermediate teams like second-class citizens?  If you don't want the offer the levels, you don't have to.
12. How can a platinum be 290 at one competition and 270 at another.
13. Why do competition have bronze and sliver awards if they never use them?
14. Have you ever seen anyone NOT qualify for nationals?  I haven't. 

Dance Mom Survival Pack - A Helpful Guide

Sure, we all know the stuff you need to pack for a competition or a performance.

• Hairspray
• Water Bottles
• Bobby Pins
• Glitter Spray

But this is not that kind of list. We shouldn't neglect ourselves, parents. We know that we can take better care of our children if we are taken care of ourselves, right?

So, without further delay: Here's the Dance Moms (and Dads) Survival Pack:

• Rations. Any parent who has ever sat through 12 hours of competition with nothing but the venue's stale pretzels knows that there comes a point in the day where you feel like you may never get out. Keep these handy in case they are running an hour (or two) behind schedule. 

• Coffee Mug - A really really big one. Because snack bar coffee sucks. 

Will 52 ounces be enough?

• If coffee isn't your thing, or if it will only work for a certain number of hours, you might want to have a back up plan:  Wine Bra for the moms, Beer Belly for the dads.  I don't want to get all gender stereotyping on you, though, so feel free to interchange them.  Just don't send me pictures. 

                               

• The REALLY? Stamp.  For use on other parents, judges, or program books that think they're funny by listing the times in them. 

• Sucks Button -  Use sparingly, these ARE children. But the urge WILL come when you've just watched your fourteenth novice tap solo. 

• Homemade "Chapstick" Bet you won't find THIS formula on Pinterest. 

Shea Butter 

Lip Balm Tubes

Krazy Glue

Of course, you can find some other handy items over there on the widget on the side (unless you're on your phone and then you'll just have to trust me.) So, get packing! It won't be long before we'll all be needing this stuff.



 Disclaimer #1 - no, I don't actually suggest that you glue someone's mouth shut. Please don't sue me.

Disclaimer #2 - every one of those pictures links back to Amazon. Feel free to click on them. Then go buy something you really need from Amazon. ;-)


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19 Stages of Watching a Dance Competition

Stages of Watching a Dance Competition

1. You get up early. Like... let’s see the sunrise together early. Except that you can’t enjoy the sunrise because...

2.  You spend twenty minutes in a panic because you  can’t find the bottom to the first costume of the day only to realize that the last time she wore it, she had a quick change and it got shoved into the bottom of the Dream Duffel.

3. You spend the next twenty minutes trying wash off the superglue-esque paste that a combination of hair gel, hairspray, and eyelash glue have created on your fingers.

4. Then you have to go back to the car because you didn’t put the spare tights in the Dream Duffel and the first pair your child put on ripped.

5. You drape your dancer in an oversized sweatshirt so that she can eat some hotel waffles for breakfast without getting syrup on her costume.

6. You run out the door and race to the venue, only to find that there’s road construction/a parade/a road race blocking all known routes to the place.

7. After finding a parking spot far enough away to count as your cardio for the day, you enter the building to be greeted with the news that they’re running an hour ahead--even though the competition started 30 minutes ago.

8.  You hand off your dancer to the teachers, only after asking a minimum of 17 times if she’s stretched.  And then you go to find a seat...

9. And discover that some parents must have camped out overnight like it was a Best Buy Black Friday sale because there’s nowhere to sit.

10.  You insist that you’re going to watch all of the numbers leading up to your studio’s performance and seven minutes later find yourself finally beating level 141 of Candy Crush.

11. You start making notes in your program to add to Dance Competition Hub when you get home.

12. At around hour 7, you begin to question your involvement in this and begin pondering the vacations you could be taking with the money you spend on dance competitions.

13. Then awards happen and your child scores a platinum on her solo and you start mentally packing for the next competition.

14. You promise to stay and watch all of the studio’s numbers and then your Starbucks app sends a notification of half price drinks.

15. You sneak back into the auditorium with your coffee, conveniently ignoring the “no food or drink allowed” sign, only to find that the seat in front of yours has been taken up by three dancers who insist on sitting on each other’s laps and giggling loudly while taking group selfies on their phones.

16. You begin plotting the murder of the parent who is too cheap to buy her own program and keeps texting you every 10 minutes to ask “what number are they on?”

17.  You try (and fail) to hide rolling your eyes at the parent who insists her precious little snowflake did not win because “the judges hate her.” (While mentally noting that she placed second.)

18. As 10 pm awards approach and you've had nothing but coffee and a half a stale pretzel, you begin to wonder how long it took for the Donner party to turn on each other.

19.  You return to your hotel room and set your alarm so that you can repeat steps 1-17 tomorrow.




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Confessions of a Dance Mom

If you follow me on Twitter (and if you don't, what are you waiting for?) you'll know that I make fun of...well, everyone. A lot. I make fun of the crazy mom who is obsessed with her child's "career", the parent who never, ever has any idea what's going on. Ever. I mock the parent who insists on interrupting class at least once a week to fix her child's skirt. I make fun of dancers and choreographers and judges and parents and costume designers...everyone is fair game. I mean, the account IS anonymous - and I believe the appeal is that these people are in EVERY studio. Everyone has a parent who mentions their child's name so many times a day that you start to keep tally marks and place bets with the other parents on how many times she'll say it.  Every studio has a parent who thinks their child is going to be a superstar. There's always a super competitive parent that you're worried may turn into the Texas Cheerleader Mom. And all of these people are also in all of us. So, without further ado: Dance Mom Confessions from me, Dance Parent Problems.

• I've thrown shoes.
• I've threatened to glue my child's eyes shut with eyelash glue.
• I've taken cell phone pictures of costumes in the hallways to get ideas for later.
• I've brought food AND drink into the auditorium. 
• I showed up for my child's very first competition without bobby pins. 
• I've been known to sleep between our studio's numbers while at competitions.
• I pack for the first competition at least two weeks early. (I've come a long way since the "no bobby pins" incident.)
• I've yelled at someone else's child. More than once. (Watch your damned kids. This isn't a daycare.) 
• I've saved seats.
• I drive my child absolutely nuts before she does her solo. "Did you stretch? Are you sure you're stretched? Why aren't you stretching?"

I'm sure there's more. LOTS more. We all do crazy things. That's part of being a dance mom (or dad.)  The important thing is that we learn to laugh about it and not take ourselves so seriously. All of this will be over long before any of us are ready and some day we'll be sitting around longing for the days of spending a week's paycheck on costumes.