Yoga

I stood with the other parents and grandparents watching the Kindergym class through the window as they warmed up and stretched before their class. Olivia was right there in the middle, moving along with the instructor, doing some pretty awesome star jumps.

Then the instructor told the kids to stand on their x for a few minutes while she and her assistant got the room ready for class.

And O’s concentration ran away. The next thing I knew, she was doing several yoga moves I certainly never taught her.

As she bent and stretched and moved in ways I certainly can’t, I marveled at the fact that this child didn’t walk until she was twenty-nine months old. She didn’t crawl until she was seventeen months old. She didn’t sit up until she was a year old.

I was one of the lucky parents who never had a doctor tell me that Olivia wouldn’t walk or talk or do most of the things that typical kids do. The doctor who finally diagnosed Olivia didn’t put any limits on our girl. She didn’t tell us what Olivia would or wouldn’t do. She told us to take her home and love her and let her show us what she can do.

She told us that Olivia’s big sister would be the best teacher and therapist that Olivia would ever have. She told us to treat Olivia the same way we treated her sister, to expect the same things from O that we expected from A.

And so we did. And look at her now.

Sure, she can’t quite do a cartwheel, but who cares? She can do a forward roll with no hands. She runs, she climbs, she goes up and down stairs just like any other seven year old.

And she does yoga during gymnastics class.

I couldn’t be more proud. Well, maybe I could have been a little more proud if perhaps Olivia had been paying attention to her gymnastics teacher and doing as instructed instead of having her own little yoga class of one.