This is Goth Child. Well, a few years back.
She gets annoyed if I take her photo when she's not actually ready for her close-up.
She also gets mock annoyed with me when I tell her how proud I am of her.
I try to tell her this a lot. But I'm especially proud of her at the moment.
She's doing things I'd have given my right leg to do as a kid but never had the guts. Actually, that's not totally true, I did try to do them for a while...until too many people told me I couldn't do them and I started to believe them and stopped trying.
We're mainly talking about singing here.
Goth Child's school actually lets her choose 'Choir' as an elective subject. If the Americans reading this think "yeah so, loads of schools do Choir as a proper subject", this isn't the case in the UK. Choir would be an after school thing, an extra not considered something done during school time because it isn't valued the same in the UK. In America, Choir is worthy of school time because they believe it teaches team-work, self-confidence, performance and presentation skills (they're big on these).
Aaanyway, I'm getting sidetracked.
This last week, Goth Child blew me away. She not only decided she wanted to go to the school dance (she's never shown an interest before), but she stood up in front everyone and sang 2 songs on the karaoke. I'd never have had the guts to do that at 13.
More than that, she auditioned with her Choir for some parts for their next concert, and she got some solos! I would like to take some motherly credit here for showing her how to ham up doing the narrator bits in the Monster Mash - and we have a suspicion that having an English accent might have helped too. But she's going to sing in front of an audience, and in front of her peers she's going to step out and take the lead for some bits. And as I said before she's 13, a time when young teenagers could become highly self-conscious and stop doing things that get them noticed. I know I did.
She's brill.
She fills me with joy and hope that she has the confidence to do this sort of thing.
It's stuff like this that makes me relax and know that she's going to be ok in the future.
It's very cool indeed.
And now she's annoyed with me for telling you....
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