I've been a mom since 1992

So as I'm getting ready for bed tonight, this is where my mind wanders...

A lot of what I do right now for my kids is encourage and cheer them on. ("Good job sharing with your sister! / pooping on the potty! / drooling! / using a fork! / not killing each other!")

Sometimes it's legitimate, and sometimes it's a stretch, but I'm always trying to encourage my kids even when they miss the mark completely.

Rewind a decade (or almost two)...

I was a cheerleader in junior high and high school. I went to Christian school for those 6 years, and at the end of the basketball games my girlfriends and I cheered for, if our team lost, we had this one cheer we would always do.

"WE! ARE! PROUD OF YOU! SAY WE-ARE-PROUD-OF-YOU!" ::clap-clap-clap::

{And repeat as many times as possible until the team disappears into the locker room, the stands start clearing out, the mood has passed, whatever...}

Oh my gosh, you guys. Only at a Christian school would there be a standard cheer for the games our team LOST.

And now I am mortified, as I reflect back. Do you think 7th and 8th grade boys want to hear that their female classmates, dressed in pleated skirts down to their knees (modesty first!), were PROUD of them when they lost a game? I am thinking that by high school when the coach took the guys into the locker room at half time, if he had run out of inspirational pep talks, he might have resorted to saying something like "Will you guys just please win this game, so that we don't have to listen to the cheerleaders chant about how proud of your terrible performance they are?". And maybe those guys dug down deep and found it within themselves to make a few more free throws so that we all could be spared the public humiliation.

So to all my male classmates from approximately 1992-1998... I'm sorry. So very sorry. It's like you had 10 younger versions of your mother standing on the sidelines of your basketball games. Smiling and telling you we were proud of you, when really? You just wanted to go home and forget about the humiliation of losing. We drug it out, made it worse, and I'm sure really made you want to date us. (haha!)