Do I tell my daughter...?

[Carolyn]

I have a daughter that has faced every dissappointment there is. She is a power athlete not a speed athlete, if her school had power lifting she would be on top! Anyways way back when both her and my son tryed for a dance team, she has always been a "little" slower but by the time the performance is put on in the end she is no different then any girl. Meanwhile my son is a speed athlete and he made the dance team. My daughter has not made travel teams, volleyball teams and got pushed off of rec league the last year she played by a parent of a pitcher whose daughter was on a travel team but did not get any chances to pitch on it so he brought her to the rec league just so she could pitch. Yes you guessed it guess who didn't get to pitch much at all. All of this has thrown my daughter immensly but now at the ripe age of 16 she has learned that her mom and dad are right she needs to train harder then most of these girls to get her skills to where they need to be and witnessed it first hand with her brother who sat on a bench his freshman year in high school on the basketball team as he hadn't been playing that sport since he was 7 like most kids and needed to lift weights and work on his other skills all the time to get to where he needs to be and now he is a senior in high school and 6'7" and extremely talented and will be a varsity starter this year. A few of the freshmen kids used to tease him and have since been cut from the team. This too has helped her. Some kids need to work very hard at their sport to get good at it while others are naturally talented and don't need to so much. I can tell you that the "natural" ones do not get any better as I have witnessed with this pitcher and my daughter is. Don't get me wrong it can be a struggle to get her to work as hard as she needs to as she is very studious but she will do it and I intend to bring her in stronger and more agile next year. There is nothing that makes anyone stronger then disappointment and honesty and we have always been honest with her.