Most people agree that it's inappropriate for parents to put extreme pressure on their kids to achieve, and it's really inappropriate to try to live vicariously through them. You grownups had your chance to be a prima ballerina or an astronaut, the thinking goes, but your moment is over, and it's fine to encourage your kids but there is a line you shouldn't cross.

Most everyone agrees on that, and yet the dirty little secret is that even the healthiest, most self-aware of us still cross the line.

[Some people go way past the line... "You are so far from the line, you can't even SEE the line. The line is a DOT to you." --Joey Tribbiani

I don't have anything else to say about the extreme line-crossers, I've just always liked that quote.]

Here's my latest foxtrot with the line. I take Fridays off, and as much as I love spending time with my daughter, my creative well often runs dry of things to do with her. So I was looking for some kind of mommy-and-child class. But which one?

The kid, I can say in all honesty, seems very musically and verbally gifted. Other impartial people have affirmed this as well, so you can trust me, whereas normally you can't, because my husband's and my theme song with our daughter is "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic."

So anyway, we were weighing the options, which come down to Kindermusik and the Little Gym. My husband and I are athletically challenged--in fact we both laughed when I was pregnant about what we would do if our child defied genetics and turned out to be a jock. At the same time, we are both musically inclined, so wouldn't it be great (the conversation went) to enroll her in a Kindermusik program; maybe it would really nurture her gift, because who knows, maybe she's really really talented?

See how easily it happens?

Hey, maybe she is a budding prodigy. But she's 19 months old. So we enrolled her in the Little Gym.

We attend the Beasties class every Friday morning at 10:15. Well, I can't say C is very attentive in her attendance. She wanders happily around on the equipment and wants nothing to do with the group activities on the Big Red Mat. When it comes time for the class to learn a new skill, she can usually be found demonstrating for me the proper operation of the water fountain, and commenting enthusiastically.

"Wa-wa! Cold!"

Meanwhile Delaney and MacKenzie and Aidan and Insert Trendy Name Here are happily complying with the teacher's instructions, hanging and rolling and climbing. And when they aren't on task, their mommies are only too happy to re-direct in a way that often stays on the nice side of the line but occasionally does not.

I am happy my girl is happy, even as I wrestle with my own personal demons of needing to be good (nay, great) at whatever I did, and if I couldn't excel at something, why bother? I realize how much my dislike of sports stemmed from not being good at sports, and what would it have been like to find a place where it was OK to play sports badly? Maybe that place doesn't exist. Even non-competitive leagues keep score. Maybe it would have had to be an internal place. I think about this as I watch her walk towards me on the balance beam that's twice as wide as the normal one and sits on the floor. It takes her a painfully long time to do it, and there's a graceless shuffling to her walk. Meanwhile Trinity and Sierra are prancing across the elevated balance beam, 4 inches wide, with minimal intervention.

But what my daughter lacks in physical grace on the beam she more than makes up for in the dazzling smile she gives me as she collapses into my waiting arms, a long journey ended in triumph for her! And I realized that toddlers live in the Place Where It's OK to Do Things Badly. In fact there's no such thing as doing things badly, there's only learning and enjoyment with the occasional goose egg or bruise. What a healthy place to live. I hope it will be like that for her, for a long time. And I hope it will be like that for me, some day.

I'm glad we enrolled in the Little Gym. Truth is, she is learning a lot about confidence and having fun in her body, and can do things that she couldn't do a month ago. But I am learning a lot too.