Balancing Back To School & Back To Dance – A Guide For Dance Parents
As a parent, it can be difficult to manage the balancing act that is helping your child meet their commitments at dance with their school responsibilities. While you want to support your child’s passion for dance, you certainly don’t want to sacrifice their education for it.
Especially when your dancer’s schedule becomes more demanding as they progress in their skills and begin dancing at a higher level, how do you maintain that healthy balance?
We have put together 3 helpful tips for how to balance back to school with back to dance!
1 Maintain Open Communication
It’s important to maintain open lines of communication with your child’s teachers at school and at dance, along with the director of your child’s dance studio. Be sure you understand the schedule demands of any commitment you are making with your child, whether at dance or in terms of extracurriculars at school, so you can set expectations and honor your commitments all around.
This will also help you be sure you are made aware of any concerns that come up before they become bigger problems so you can make adjustments where needed to set your child up to succeed.
2 Make Goals Together
Help your child set reasonable dance goals and school goals for the year. Involve your child in goal planning, and write those goals down where you can both see them throughout the year. The act of visualizing your goals is important, and having set expectations together will help you work together throughout the year as a team in achieving those accomplishments.
Goal setting together will also help your dancer realize that, sometimes, there are sacrifices that have to be made. This is a hard one for many dance students to accept, but it is ok to put school work ahead of dance sometimes. Just because they have more fun at dance doesn’t mean they can shirk school
responsibilities, and having expectations set forth at the start of the year will help you both stick to them.
3 Share a Calendar
Set up a master calendar where you can view both your child’s dance schedule and the school schedule. Teachers on both ends should be able to provide you with at least a four-week plan of events each month, which can be used to plan and organize.
While online calendar apps and individual planners are convenient, I recommend that dancers and their parents make use of a large calendar or whiteboard and hang it in a highly visible location where everyone in the family can see it. Even the youngest of dancers can benefit from being able to see their calendar and prepare for the busier weeks. Setting a consistent schedule for you both will help minimize the inevitable chaos of a busy dance season and a challenging school year.
Ready To Get Back To Dance?
It can be tricky to help your child find the right balance between dance and school, but when you watch them blossom and grow in confidence while doing what they are passionate about, all the hard work is well worth it!
If you are looking for a dance studio that cares about your child’s dance/life balance, contact us at District Dance Company today. We offer dance classes across disciplines for all ages and levels of experience, including an elite level competition dance team!