Sylvia's Mother

Cheer camp is over, again, for, wait...FOREVER. Wow, that really hit me kind of weird. The last cheer camp of the cheerleader's high school cheer career. She is now an official senior and just returned from a three day camp that her squad has attended since freshman year. This was my fourth year of driving her to school for the early morning pick up on departure day. Yes, she can drive, now, but we didn't want her car left, unattended, at the school for that long in the parking lot. Anyway, this really isn't about camp as much as it is about my parking lot observations on the day we dropped off for camp.

In my ever changing moods, I am now the mom of a senior cheerleader and that makes me the mom who has come through the ranks and watched a lot of cheer moms. It is a weird year for both the cheerleader and me. It is weird for her to realize that she and her other senior pals are THE role models. THE leaders. Nobody is left ahead of them to continue to pave the way. They are the pavers. I have had to realize that the moms ahead of me the past three years are no longer there. Each year, I have watched them disappear, one by one. Now, we are the moms that I thought the newer moms would look to. Wrong. There is a new type of cheer mom in town. I call this new type of mom, Mrs. Avery. There were so many Mrs. Averys running around the parking lot on departure day. To me, Mrs. Avery has always been the ultimate control freak of a mom. I mean, seriously, what harm would it have done if she had just let Sylvia talk to the ex-boyfriend? And now, I get to watch all of these Mrs. Averys take over. It's both refreshing and scary. The year, I am sure will prove to be interesting.

I am of the moms that care and are supportive but have let our daughters cheer and stayed out of their business. Well, every group has it's one loose canon and our group of moms have had our loose canon. Yes, I blogged about it, last week. But, this is different. This is like a whole group of incoming freshman moms flying their own helicopters. You know, the hovering, bossy, competitive, my way or the highway kind of mom. The kind that wants to bypass all of that freshman cheer nonsense and have her Pookie front and center of Varsity. The moms that monopolize the coaches because they have MUCH better ideas. They complain a lot, too. Usually the complaint is about Pookie being wronged because she is not featured in each cheer or had to run an extra lap because she showed up in flipflops for practice. These moms don't like the uniforms, the bows, the shoes. They run in a group of 8 moms and are always huddled in a secret group at functions pertaining to cheerleading. They are stage moms and video every single step Pookie makes. They tell Pookie how to smile, cheer, jump. They criticize Pookie and tell her to loose weight/gain weight/wear a cheer face/wave to the crowd.

It is exhausting watching Mrs. Avery in action. If there is a parental meeting, Mrs. Avery and gang file in, tell everyone that THEIR way is the way we will be doing things. The senior moms just sort of look at them. They are like little annoying dogs that just keep jumping up and down and barking orders. We sit and stare at them, step over them, ignore them and get our way because not only are we senior moms but we are SILENT senior moms. The kind that the coach likes. I just want to get out a giant fly swatter when I see a Mrs. Avery approaching.

I usually take a deep breath, smile politely, let them state their case, stomp their feet, try to sway everyone to do something their way all while yelling at Pookie to stand up straight, put on a cheer smile, taking a quick picture and telling them to tumble on command.

Please, Mrs. Avery...take a step back and wait your turn. It will come, one day. It always does. Please let the senior cheerleaders do their thing, let the senior moms be the cool slackers. We have raised a different breed of girl and cheerleader. Once we are gone, next year, you can take over. Pookie will have her time in the spotlight and you can drive yourself insane by trying to control every minute of the next four years. Stop trying to control us and our daughters. I know that I have raised my daughter to cheer all on her own. I have never held her hand, made her jump through hoops, and let her make her own decisions. I am the anti-Mrs. Avery...the last of a dying breed.