The theme this year was the Olympics and the kids all made flags from an assigned country (Megan's class did Ethiopia) and did a procession around the walk-a-thon course, thus earning their first lap. Then the kinder parents had to pick up their kids at the playground and walk them back to the course to finish participating in the event.
I expected to pick up a bouncing, excited child, eager to go back to the track. Instead my child was hungry, thirsty and hanging on by a thread; which snapped by the time we got back to the field. I couldn't get her to go back on the track to do anymore laps. She burst into tears every time I mentioned it.
I had assumed that Megan was going to really like the walk-a-thon, but I forgot how flustered she gets when she doesn't understand what is going on. And through her eyes, the walk-a-thon doesn't make any sense.
To begin with, the kindergartners are fairly sheltered from the older grades. They have their own playground and are released from school before the older kids. I think that this afternoon was the first time that Megan had been in the same space with all the other grades. Which is a long winded way of saying, there were a lot of kids there.
She also didn't understand what she was supposed to be doing. When I finally got through the thirst and the hunger (thank god for the watermelon slices at the snack stand), I got to find the deep issue. Megan didn't know where the finish line was. Of course she was upset, she didn't understand the task and she didn't know how to succeed.
Finally we ran into Megan's favorite classmate who was going back to rack up some more laps and I was able to persuade Megan to join her. My goal at that point was to complete to a couple of laps and call it a day. But once Megan figured out what was going on, and that there were metals to be won, her competitive instincts took off.
In no time, she ran/walked the 7 laps (1.75 miles) to get her bronze metal. I tried to get her to stop for a snack at that point, but since she had seen other children with two metals, she wanted to continue to work on her silver, 14 laps (3.5 miles). And then she just kept on going.
At lap 20 (5 miles) I did get her to stop and have some more watermelon, but since she wanted to for the gold she elected to eat it while walking around the track. Around 5:15 or so, I tried to get her to stop. The track was scheduled to close at 5:30 and Megan needed 5 more laps to earn her gold metal. It didn't seem possible to me that she would be able to move fast enough to reach her goal, and I didn't want to see her fail. I thought it would be better for her to bow out honorably.
But since Megan doesn't yet understand the limits of time and space, and she really wanted her metal, she pressed on. And since there were still many other kids on the track, the principal gave everyone an extra 10 minutes. And on the last lap through, Megan finished her 28th lap (7 miles!) and earned her metal.
I am so proud of her. She worked so hard. She ran most of those 7 miles. I would say that for every lap she ran between 60 and 75% of the time. And I am blown away that she did the whole 7 miles. I wouldn't have thought that a 5 year old could walk that far, let alone run.
But even more, I am proud of her perseverance. Bryan and I worry about Megan, because it seems like she gives up too easily when things are hard. And she didn't give up here; once she knew what she wanted, she worked hard until she got it.
1 comment:
That's my girl!!!
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