My daughter’s school gave all of the students (Grade K – 5th grade) the opportunity to participate in a ‘Kids Corner’ writing contest where they had to complete the sentence “My favorite thing about winter is..”.

I wasn’t going to make my five-year-old daughter participate in the contest because I thought that it would take her a long time (10 minutes of sitting still is an eternity to me sometimes) to write the sentence and the chances of her winning the contest were very slim.  Yes, I deserve a bad mom award for thinking like that. 

So here’s the story..

The night before the contest entry was due I decided she needed to participate in the contest.  She needed to work on her handwriting and when I saw this sentence on the entry instructions “If your child can only write one sentence that is OKAY. We are trying to encourage our children to write. They will be judged against their peers in their grade level.” I thought that it might now take as long for her to write her entry as I originally thought it would.

Here is her sentence:

We sent the contest entry to school with her the next day and we didn’t hear back… for a long time.  About two weeks ago, early April, she came home with a certificate saying that she won first place in the Kindergarten class!  I was shocked.

That’s when I gave myself a Bad-Mom Award.
I shouldn’t assume that just because my kids might not be enthusiastic or really great at a particular something, they can still do a great job!  I shouldn’t have assumed that she wouldn’t win and I am glad we gave her the opportunity to participate in the writing contest.

Here’s the kicker..

Because I have been very busy and I don’t keep up with noticed from school very well (for which I also get a bad mom award), I didn’t realize that she was able to read her entry at her school’s book fair.  Then to top it off, the day of the book fair I thought I’d read the award certificate again and somehow I had missed the entire sentence about the book fair being at Barnes & Noble!  All of the kids with winning entires were given the opportunity to read their entry at the school’s Barnes & Noble Book Fair.

Here is the video I took of my daughter reading her sentence at Barnes & Noble

I thought surely there wouldn’t be very many people at the book fair but boy was I wrong!  The parking lot was packed and there were at least 100 parents and kids from her school at Barnes & Noble.  When we walked in I wanted to turn around and leave.  I thought she was going to start crying and say that she wanted to leave but it turns out that she was amazing!  She stood in front of everyone, spoke through the  microphone, and did a great job. She stumped on one word, build, but other than that she did a great job.

I am very proud of my daughter!