Dancing Darling

We went to the birthday party today of Ethan and Emily's cousin, Avery. The kids had a great time. One of the things that they had fun doing was dancing. Here is a video clip of Emily and Avery dancing.

Later, all of the kids got up on the stage and did the same dance. I somehow didn't get a video of that, though. It was very cute. There was something very interesting that I found out today that has me just so upset that I could almost cry. As I was watching my daughter up on stage having the time of her life doing this dance with her cousin, Lori came over to me and asked me if I was aware of the fact that they do this dance in PE at school and that Emily is not allowed to do it. I looked at her and said, "WHAT?!?!" No, I was not aware of any such thing at all since my child never shares anything with me about her day. The only thing she has ever told me about was the time she got in trouble in PE because she was accused of wearing the wrong shoes to school. (Which, by the way, I have never addressed because Ethan got sick the next school day and was out for two weeks.) I asked Lori what the heck she was talking about and she told me that apparently Emily was not allowed to participate when they do this dance at school because they are worried that Emily will fall down and hit her head. So after Emily and Avery were finished with their little performance I asked her if her PE class dances to this song. She said yes. I asked her if she got to do it, too. She said, no, but not because she was in trouble. I asked her what she did while the other kids were dancing and she told me that she just had to sit out and watch. This just broke my heart into a million pieces. At the beginning of the year I thought I was protecting my child by getting a 504 plan in place for her. She was going through a growth spurt at the time and was more unstable then and it was also just a few months after her brain surgery. At the time there were a few unknowns about how she would do and we were trying to be better safe than sorry. I regret ever getting that thing now and I feel like she has been punished because of it. When I was watching Emily dance at the party today and having so much fun, it took everything I had not to just cry my eyes out thinking about her having to sit out in PE while she had to watch everybody else have fun.