Watch like no one is dancing
Note: This column appears in the 2/9 issue of The Glendale Star and the 2/10 issue of the Peoria Times. Already having mastered soccer by age 2—and by “mastered” I mean “proven her lack of interest in”—our daughter recently began dance class. I am, so far, the only dad who attends these weekly Saturday morning classes. (At her first class, while our family was still in town, we showed up with a party of six adults, and everyone was forced to leave the room after five minutes because our daughter, who has the attention the span of a spinning top, was too distracted.) I promised myself I was there only to observe, but last weekend I was pirouetting and bear crawling on the floor. The reason I was doing this was to coerce our daughter to actually participate in the class. One of the most confounding aspects of parenthood has been, for me, the transition from the unabashed joy of home life expression to the reluctance of organized participation in those very same endeavors. Our daughter l...