My daughter loves the Little Critter books by Mercer Mayer. Little Critter is easy for her to identify with; he forgets his boots, leaves the tap running, and “accidentally” eats the whole bag of cookies. One of my 4-year-old daughter’s current favorite books is When I Get Bigger. In it, Little Critter lists the things he will do when he is older. Things like: pour milk into his own cereal, walk to the corner store alone, make a phone call by himself and camp out in the backyard.

At the end of the book, Little Critter concludes that “Mom and Dad say…I’m not bigger yet.”

Sometimes it’s hard to know when my children are ready for new things.  Is my seven-year old son ready for guitar lessons? Is he ready to go on a sleepover? Is my four-year old ready to play at a friend’s house without me? Will she be ready for full-day kindergarten next fall?  We’ve all got these questions. Sometimes our kids need a little push to try new things. Sometimes it’s hard to know when to push and when to give our kids more time to grow up.

My daughter loves dancing. When she’s in the mood to dance she disappears up the stairs and into her room. I hear a few thumps and bumps, and drawers opening and closing. When she comes out, she wears a hand-me-down, frayed yellow tutu, too-small, pink teddy bear slippers and a purple shirt. She switches on my dusty old CD player and Frozen’s Let it Go blares into our living room. She tilts her head to the right, closes her sparkly blue eyes, twirls, jumps and spins, and gets lost in the music and her imagination.

Like a typical momma with a little girl, when my daughter turned three and a half, I thought “She loves to dance so I must sign her up for dance classes!” We convinced two of her best buddies to sign up for Tiny Tutus and Tights at the local rec centre.

The first day she was excited; the yellow tutu and teddy bear slippers were ready. When we got there the moms were told to wait in the hall while the little girls hesitantly followed the teacher into the studio. That seemed okay with my daughter, on the first day.

The second day it was a completely different story. My daughter refused to enter the room of three-year olds in tights. I tried every trick in the book: encouragement, getting her to hold her friend’s hand, even bribery with the promise of ice cream later, but under no circumstance would she enter that room without me. The tears came, then the loud cries. She clung to me. There was no way she was going to dance class without me. The teacher suggested “tough love” (that I should walk away and leave her) but my gut said it wasn’t quite time for that. I wasn’t invited to come into the room and watch.

Out in the hallway my daughter buried her  grape-shampoo-scented hair into my chest. Her tiny hands grasped my neck and hung on for dear life.  “Let’s <sob> go <sob> get hot chocolate mommy.”

So we did. We walked, hand in hand out of the rec centre. Maybe if I had pushed a little harder I could’ve convinced her to try it the next week. I don’t think so.

Three and a half is a time for twirling in the living room in teddy bear slippers. Maybe four will be a better time for leaving momma in the hall.

She’s not bigger yet and that’s okay with me.