Miss F is growing up into a very lovely young lady who is everything I would want in a daughter – kind, caring, happy and loving (unless she’s mid pre-teen hormonal mood). She’s turned into quite a girly girl who loves clothes, make up and most other things that you would expect a 12 year old girl to be into.
Except for one thing! She’s decided that she would like to join the local boxing club and although I’m not going to say no, I really don’t want her to go.
It’s not because I don’t like boxing because as much as I don’t like the sport itself, I know it will be good for her in many ways. It’s great for keeping fit and let’s face it, in a few years time when she’s going out with her friends, I’ll no doubt be glad if she can throw a well aimed punch to defend herself if ever she needed to.
She’s taken much more of an interest in exercise since she started senior school. In fact, she’s gone from thinking she was going to die during a cross country run last June to going swimming and even to the gym. Although to be fair, her gym sessions seem to consist more of a gentle pedal on the exercise bikes while she plays on her phone – I’m sure she beat her high score at Flappy Bird last time she went!
I don’t mind the cost of the club as it’s only £1.50 a week and I usually encourage her to do things out of school usually as I think it’s good for children to try new things. The boxing club is near to where we live and it’s on a night when we don’t do anything else so in theory, there should be no reason why I don’t want her to go.
My problem is that she’s a girl and I don’t want her to go to Boxing full stop. I don’t want her going to such a male oriented club and learning to hit people and even more importantly, I don’t want her getting hit!
I know there are some great role model female boxers and I know it’s wrong that I’m happy for her brother to go along and try it and not her but I just can’t persuade myself to feel any enthusiasm for this new club. For the first time ever, when she goes to a club or tries something new, I’ll be hoping that she decides it’s not for her and doesn’t want to go back.
That makes me sexist, right?
