Feel like ballet teacher is judging my parenting

[Stopfeedingthedog]

Dd is 5 and asked for ages to try ballet, she loves to dance, but is very high energy, not massively great at following strict rules, so I thought she may not enjoy. I let her have a try anyway and she did four lessons, she had some friends there and enjoyed it the first few, but last week, days before ballet, she started asking me if she had to go to ballet. I asked if she liked it and she said she liked seeing her friend from school and didn’t want to stop because it might make her friend sad, but that it was a bit hard and she didn’t like it and didn’t want to go. I asked her if she was sure/if she wanted to try one more time etc and she said she didn’t. I messaged the ballet teacher, who is an excellent teacher from Russia, but strict I feel for little ones. I apologised and said I don’t think it really suits Dd and there was no point doesn’t something she doesn’t like 100%
She didn’t reply for a couple of days, but then sent a message saying she was disappointed that she was just giving up and feels that a child like my Dd would benefit from discipline and that we can’t just give up on things in life…she’s 5 years old

Who is right here?

She's a professional teacher.

Do you usually show this lack of respect for teachers?

Eh? Spellings aren’t optional so it’s not a fair comparison. Also, I fully understood what she was saying and stand by the opinion that it was unwarranted.

We had the same thing happen to us! DD2 was around 4 at the time and she did ballet and swimming. The swim class time changed so there was a clash. DD2 chose to continue swimming. Ballet teacher got mad at me and we had a similar conversation. She actually implied my DD would never stick at anything because she gives up when things get hard. DD is 17 now and has stuck with the swimming so it wasn’t even true although I was sad at the time and wondered if we’d made the right choice.

Okay, instead of spelling, how about swimming lessons then? Most people wouldn't let their kid just pack it in after a handful of lessons if they didn't like it because they found it hard. The parent might find a different swimming teacher, but they would make sure their kid carried on with lessons.

Did your dc do ballet for 15 years? Because mine did, which means I can read between the lines of what the teacher was going on about.

Persevering at things you struggle with is character-building, and stands you in good stead for the future in all sorts of ways.

Swimming lessons are important because without those skills you are more likely to drown. It a false equivalence with ballet lessons that are mostly a study of toxic femininity.

If you live by the motto that you can't ever quit, I suppose you'd better hope your first choice is perfect, since you're not 'allowed' to listen to your body, heart, and gut, when one or all of them tell you it's not enjoyable. How stifling! I'd not want to try anything new for fear I'd hate it and be forced to keep doing it for no good reason.

Ignore the teacher. It's supposed to be fun; if it's not, what's the point?! I don't agree with five-year-old children being forced to do things like ballet unless they actively enjoy it. She'd probably get better exercise just running around the park with a friend, and 'discipline' is something they can learn at school.

Well my DD started ballet almost as soon as she could walk, trained full time and is now principal of her own dance school, so am I allowed an opinion?
Of course if you are serious about something and want to become skilled at it you have to stick at it through adversity and need to be prepared to put the hours in doing things you might not always enjoy. But this child is FIVE. She probably isn't serious about anything yet and nor does she need to be. She's a little girl, looking for a hobby, and may well try quite a few things before she finds something she really enjoys. She doesn't need to take ballet lessons. Hobbies are supposed to be enjoyable. If she is clearly not having fun there's no point in her continuing and forcing young children to do things that they don't enjoy can be very counter productive. She may do better with another teacher, or come back to it when she is older but it seems apparent that this teacher, at this time, is not working.
Even as an adult you can like the idea of something but discover you don't enjoy it when you try it. I always fancied water skiing but when I eventually got to have a go I absolutely hated it and gave up after a few lessons. I probably could have become vaguely competent if I'd carried on but why would I force myself to do an entirely optional activity I didn't like? I made a mistake and I moved on. If adults can't always know whether they're going to enjoy something why would we expect small children to be able to?
From my perspective as a sports coach, if one of my good tweens or teens hit a rough patch or started moaning about training and wanting to drop out, that's when I'd be having the conversations around perseverance. But the 4 or 5 year old who comes a couple of times and is clearly not enjoying it? Nope. That probably just means that our sport doesn't currently suit them. So we thank them for coming and let them know that they're welcome back if they want to try again when they're older, not give them a lecture about the character building benefits of persevering through adversity.

This.