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2025

2025 was a year of growth and challenge for me, especially related to Nadine. Nadine is a quiet and shy girl who needs familiar and steady environment. For the first 4 years of her life, she got a routine to go to daily to a daycare called Kindercare, so her friends were pretty much kids that she already knew since she was a baby. Unfortunately things went downhill with the daycare so we had to move her mid-year during Pre-K class to St. Agnes School. 

Since Nadine was in St. Agnes, I started to observed a pattern of high anxiety. The trend continued when she transitioned to Starkweather Elementary for Kindergarten. Kindergarten transition was rough to say the least. Every now and then I got concerned calls and emails from teachers because she often shutdown and refused to participate in the class activities. Outside classroom, meltdowns happened frequently, when she was introduced to a new unfamiliar activities or people. We enrolled her to a few activities, started with Cub Scout and Swimming, then later she also joined Taekwondo and Piano. 

The anxiety pattern continued that we decided to bring her to a counseling. While we are continue the counseling, we tried to be consistent with the activities. Bringing her to activities was such an emotional roller coaster that demanded lots of my energy. 

Taekwondo was especially challenging. She started well and seemed to enjoy it, and the environment was so friendly and supportive. A few months into the lessons she started to get so nervous without obvious reasons. She said that she is so scared to join the class. She often cried and ran away from the mat to find me. Being a mom, it was so hard to see my kid struggling like that. We tried to teach her a few technique to calm down , things that we learned rom the counseling place. Nothing seemed to help when she is overwhelmed. Dave and I almost gave up. We called the owner to say we are quitting, but provided some alternatives like extra one on one lessons that seemed to help for a bit, and then all of a sudden meltdowns happened again over something simple like the uniforms that she did not like. It was so frustrating and exhausting for me, and often embarassing. I cried too in front of the owner, which happened to be our old neighboor. The only reason why we did not give up was because they provided a lot of encouragements, and she seemed to enjoy the activities when she is calmed down and not overwhelmed. With lots of encouragement and support from ATA we decided to stay. We know that introducing her to a new group activity will end up in the similar situation anyway, so might as well stick with this one. We added an extra private lesson on Saturdays to boost her comfort level and confidence. Slowly but surely, with lots of ups and downs in the class, she moved up belt by belt, and at the end of the summer, she finished the Tiger class and moved up to the big kid class (7 years and older). What an achievement! 

Along the same time, we also did the swimming class, which we did with a similar struggle just like taekwondo. She could not easily adapt to any changes, so any last minute instructor substitute often created anxiety for her. When the changes happen be it instructor, or introduction to a new stroke, she refused to join the class. It took her a few minutes (out of 30 minutes class) to be able to calm down. Often she had to be individually assisted in a special lane due to her meltdown. Just like taekwondo, we tried to keep it consistent despite the challenges. And just like taekwondo, she actually excelled and showed up as a strong swimmer, when her emotion does not overwhelm her. And about the same time that she graduated the taekwondo Tiger class, she also graduated the swimming classes and eligible to join the Swim Force program, which basically a more advance class to practice lap swimmings. 

With the ups and downs, I am so proud and grateful to be her mom. I learned about perseverance, patience, and courage by being with her. I learned that it takes time to build kids confident. At the end, it's all worth it. Our journey managing her anxiety is not over yet. I am sure there will be other challenges that require both Nadine and us to adapt again. But for now, I am just grateful and feeling super blessed.

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