Ever wish you could go back in time and change just one action?

In all the craziness of the last several weeks month- I have gotten tired, grumpy, and frustrated with some things at my daughter's dance studio.

We pay A LOT of money each month and then we add costumes, studio apparel, travel for competitions etc. My girls have been dealing with an instructor that is not there very much of the time. The class assistant has a difficult time teaching the girls what the main teacher wants them to know. This is because the main teacher can't keep her choreography straight AND she is absent so much that no one can check in with her to make certain.

Some parents have emailed and complained to the main teacher about how the dances look. Her response was to yell at the girls at the next class about how poor they were doing. She isn't thinking about how difficult it is to read her mind.

She is a 4.0 college student on the touring ballroom team. This is not easy when it's all you do and this past December she got married. I really think that she had too much on her plate. I expect people to be responsible and let the employer know when it's too much.

So here's how this breaks down in my brain:

• Since the teacher only gets paid when she is there and there is rarely a substitute covering where is my money going that is supposed to pay for said instructor?
• If the studio owner knows that this is a problem why isn't she doing something about it?
• She knows the teacher isn't there, she doesn't cover, she just pockets the money for my girls and their teammates to practice what they think the teacher wants them to do. Why?

We go to competitions and the studio owner decides, while watching the girls warm up and run through their dances that she doesn't like how it looks. AT COMPETITION!!!! Then she changes it up and confuses the girls.

Saturday rolls around. I am sitting with some other moms and listening to them express the same frustrations that I am having. Discussing how this was a problem LAST YEAR- yet nothing was changed. My girls come out and are sitting by me in between numbers with some other team mates. They are frustrated with her complaining about their dance. They don't even want to go back to run through.

So I let them sit by me and ignore the ballet teacher's mom who is being nasty about everything. (She apparently gets really Type A at competitions). I didn't even know who she was until yesterday.


Then I did a really dumb thing, that seemed like what needed to happen at the time.

So let me set the stage:
Several girls struggling to even want to perform, parents expressing frustration, and a teacher strutting around like she is great, but hasn't shown up to any competitions until now!

I wrote a note saying that her attitude was not helping the girls and to build them up or shut up. Then I wrote that their poor performance was a reflection on her absence at classes, not their lack of skill or practicing.

The ballet instructor talked to me about how my timing was poor form. After thinking about it over night, I agree. I should have worded it a bit softer, too.

I am not proud that I reacted to all the stress and frustration that was around me. I do think that she needs to know that we notice her absence and are not going to stand for her berating our daughters for not being able to do what she envisions when she isn't there to help them see it.

The irony:

• The number she was frustrated and complaining about took 1st place. The one that my girls & others didn't run through took 4th- with the girls that did do the run through not knowing their moves as well as those who watched the company team perform.

None of that excuses my behavior. Certainly not my finest moment.